The Sandman Universe Presents: Hellblazer #1

I just want to see Constantine enter a Magic the Gathering tournament.

Holding this comic book in my hand, it would feel like being on the ground floor of an exciting and comic book changing series if not for the fact that it was written by Simon Spurrier. I'm just kidding (I'm not)! I'm sure he can do a great job (he won't). That Suicide Squad story that he wrote where the narrator was a nobody who figured he would die but then he saved the day. Unless he died. Fuck it, who can remember everything they've ever read! I'm certainly glad that I can't or else I'd have to deal with the whole of Ann Nocenti's Katana comics until the day I die (which hopefully will be soon). On the flip side, I've ready every single thing Kurt Vonnegut has ever written and I'm sure I barely remember ten percent of it. And who has time to reread it just so I can get a few pages into each chapter and say, out loud to the cat, "Oh yeah! I remember this part! This is where the humans who evolved to be more like seals still laugh at farts!"

Aw, don't take this personally, Si! I totally have faith in you! Notice I didn't put in a parenthetical reference there disagreeing with myself! That's a good sign that I'm now being earnest, right?! I've given up on being cynical because where does that get you? Partying all the time with a bunch of people who desperately want to be friends with such a cool guy as myself, really. But who has time for all that! I'm a vulnerable weeper now! I'm going to let this story touch me in ways I haven't been touched since my father first took me to see The Rescuers when I was six years old. That was not a molestation joke, you fucking perverts. My father sucked in a lot of ways but he wasn't a Goddamned fiddler of kids! That Rescuers revelation was me being sincere again! That movie made me cry my fucking eyes out and not just when I watched it for the first time. Every time I thought about Penny being so lonely, I couldn't help losing my shit. And then my mom got me a Rescuers lunch box because, I don't know, maybe she loves torturing small children with their intense feelings that they've yet to bury so deep within them that they lose the ability to wonder at the world and the last thing left to give them joy is shuffling ever faster toward the grave and thinking about the cold comfort of that destination.

What my existential dread and inability to see a vulnerable story through to the end without some kind of cynical disruption is that the original Hellblazer was a tour de force of adult story telling and this one probably won't be. But reality aside, I feel like it could possibly be and I'm starting at Issue #1 and I have to say (despite Spurrier writing it (sorry! Sorry! Won't happen again!)) I'm actually kind of excited! Oh for one wish granted that I could transport myself to the side of a Grecian Urn and retain this feeling! But I am a real life person and, so, I must accept the bitter disappointment that nothing in life is ever as good as we think it's going to be. Except for Sour Patch Kids.

But before I start! Here's a thing I hope Simon Spurrier decided not to inherit from so many past writers of Constantine: magic has a cost. Sure, make being a magician dangerous because other magicians and demons from Hell and avenging angels and cursed items used in rituals are all fucking dangerous. But enough of this bullshit "Let's think this through because magic has such a high cost I'd rather not do the magic until we are forced into a corner!" That whole "Magic has a cost!" thing is just the DC magic-user equivalent of a Green Lantern ring running low on battery power. It's a limiter to make the writer's job of telling a tense story easier. "A Green Lantern has the most powerful weapon in the universe! They can do anything with it! But, oh no, the ring has only got five percent juice left! I'm on the edge of my seat!" Just let Green Lanterns (and Constantine!) be bad-ass motherfuckers with their bad-ass motherfucking weapons! Stop writing easy and start writing well, writers!

The issue begins with Constantine lighting up a fag. That's a good sign, right?! He's allowed to smoke in Black Label comic books! Sure, he was allowed to smoke in all the other comic books he was in as well. But not in the television show! Although they always showed him exhaling smoke or in a haze of smoke whenever anybody came up on him, while he maybe mimed putting out a cigarette. Some executive may have not wanted him to smoke in the show but the writers and producers and directors and actors and grips and cameramen and lighting operators and Crafts services were all, "Let's make sure the audience knows this motherfucker smoooOOoooOOookes!"

Bah! Always a debt do! PTUI!

Years of DC magic-users casting backwards spells and magicking up solutions to problems without a hint of "always a debt do" and then, suddenly, nobody can cast a fucking cantrip without paying out of pocket somehow. I get the "always a debt due" when you're dealing with demons or devils or some other kind of help from a summoned or black magic creature. But why the fuck must all magic cost something insane?! Just let Constantine do magic but occasionally he's got to deal with more powerful creatures or magicians who want something in return. Don't make him need to pay for every little thing he does.

Something has eaten the sun so Constantine writes the word "Fuck" all over a decapitated pig's head. Can a head be described as decapitated? Isn't that the adjective for the body? Or does it only refer to both parts after separation? Anyway, you probably knew what I meant! I mean about the pig's head being separated from its body and not about how Constantine writing "Fuck" all over it will help return the sun.

Wouldn't be Hellblazer without the C-word. Although is it appropriate? I'm reading this prior to the watershed.

That's Chas's brief cameo in this new series. You might wonder how I know it's brief. Well, I read the next page where Chas dies distracting the evil monsters so that the super heroes can get the sun back. It's the quickest way for Simon to let the audience know that Constantine will do anything to save the world, even betray his friends. Plus he makes sure to say, "I've done worse for less," just to drive the point home. It's one of those revelations that would have greater impact over a long run of multiple different story arcs. But modern comic books don't understand that kind of accrued history anymore. Things have to happen quickly and in comic book shorthand, before the comic is cancelled. Plus, who wants to wait five years for sixty issues worth of history and characterization?! Spurrier knows Constantine has years of characterization and history already built up! Why not shove all of that into the first few pages of this new series and move on from there?!

Constantine takes a bit of Chas's taxi cab shrapnel in the side and now he's probably dying. Sure, he could probably save himself by casting a spell that sends five babies to Hell. But first he has to find five babies! Instead, he just runs into young Tim Hunter from the past. John is all, "Oh, hey! Tim! Remember The Books of Magic? Remember Fairie? Remember how we all hated your stupid prat face? Anyway, this is your future and the bad guy ending the world is grown up you. Jerk." Tim Hunter is all, "That's me?! I wonder if I've been laid yet! Man, just think how much my older self's dick stinks!"

Tim Hunter goes off to, I don't know, sue J.K. Rowling or something, leaving Constantine to die. But before Constantine dies, he's visited by old man Constantine. If things seem a bit crazy, it's because Constantine kept mentioning something about the world going mad or everything leading to madness or something that I didn't mention. But now I'm mentioning it so that all of this weirdness makes sense.

Old Man Constantine wants John's soul in exchange for saving him. That's a pretty good deal, really! I'd totally go for it! Give up your soul to yourself way in the future? It's like putting it away for safe keeping! How the hell do you pass up that deal?!

That was my point! Take the deal, mate!

Constantine thinks Old Man Constantine is probably a Constantine from another universe and that there'll be some kind of catch. But he's dying and he doesn't have much time to decide so he takes the deal. That'll probably be important later!

Old Man Constantine heals John, tells him to be the best John he can be, and then transports Constantine to some mental ward somewhere. Another universe without the sun being eaten? Maybe that was just the prologue to describe how Constantine leaped from the main DC Universe to the Black Label DC Universe. And now we can forget all of that Tim Hunter ending the world stuff that was so 1990s DC Vertigo weirdness. Now it's time for Constantine Unplugged! That just means he can say cunt again.

Constantine manages to talk his way out of Ravenscar psychiatric hospital and discovers he's in modern London where Brexit is happening. Or not happening. Or not not happening? I guess we'll find out the next chapter of Brexit after the special elections. Go Labour!

Constantine having a bit of a philosophical thought about his own entanglement in a comic book ret-con.

I feel bad for comic book fans who need a moment like the panels above to justify comic book continuity. Who dreams of having some kind of solid, historical timeline without any errors throughout? Especially when your main characters never age. What the fuck do they want? Magic?! Anyway, I think Spurrier does the best he can here dealing with the audience he knows he need to fucking explain every little thing to. He's just putting it right out front: "Yeah, Constantine has a bunch of memories that don't mesh at all and he's now in 2019 and he's in his thirties or something and yes he was heavily involved in the 70s punk scene and maybe just get over it, okay? You're reading a funny book about magic. Grow the fuck up."

Constantine finds Chas possessed by all the demons that meant to kill him years ago. He's dying of cancer from second-hand smoke and tells Constantine to fuck off and ruin somebody else's life. So John fucks off to go ruin somebody else's life. Or maybe to be a better version of himself. Or just to go drink himself into retirement.

Sandman Universe Presents: Hellblazer #1 Final Thoughts: I guess this is the Hellblazer #1 prologue introducing the new series starting this week in Hellblazer #1. That's going to be really confusing for my image tags if I forget that I labeled these images "Hellblazer1.jpg" and such. If the scans in this review don't seem to make any sense, it's because you're reading this a few months on and I forgot about the image tags and reused the same tags for John Constantine, Hellblazer #1 coming out this Wednesday (but which I won't probably review for another week or two). Sorry!

The Hellblazer #8

Why isn't this how we display the corpses of our ancestors?

The Review!
In this Teen Plus non-Vertigo issue of Hellblazer, Constantine almost says cunt. That's about as close as you're going to get with the Rebirth version. But at least it's better than The New 52 version! Although the DC You version wasn't so bad.

Speaking of Teen Plus comic books, a man came into my local comic book store yesterday with his daughter (she looked about eight. But what do I know about fucking kids? I don't mean what do I know about having sex with kids! Gross! I was just using the word fucking as an intensifier!). She wanted to buy an issue of Green Arrow and he was asking the owner if the issue was appropriate for a young child. Before I could say, "A few issues ago in Green Arrow, John Diggle fucked a bear in a field of heroin!", the owner pointed out that the comic was Teen Plus and might have some stuff that wouldn't be suitable for an eight year old. So her assistant took the father and daughter into the back to find a copy that wasn't sealed (it was the issue with the Badlands comic book sealed up inside). I'm assuming that once they went into the back room, some Oompa Loompas sang a song about destroying the innocence of children.

"What do you do when your kid wants some porn?
Whip them and beat them and fill them with scorn.
Let them read violence and horror and gore!
Cause if they see sex they will...become...a whore!
Just like ma and pa did!"

I told that story because I don't have anything to say about this comic book. In John's pursuit of a way to kill Djinn, he's figured out that the gang member he chased away from the old guy's house has the old guy's journal. And since a rival of his, Misabel Lefebve, is seeking the journal, John figures it must be what he needs. So they team up to go steal the book back from the French kid who stole it last issue. He's a good kid taking care of his younger sister, so I'm sure he'll die horribly.

The Ranking!
No change!

The Hellblazer #7

Paris Uber is the worst.

The Review!
This issue begins with Constantine declaring it a deal breaker if somebody puts their tea bag in after pouring the water. Usually I'm completely behind everything Constantine does or says because he's the greatest DC Comic Book Character in their entire universe¹. But I hate this fucking attitude. I'm sick of people having such strong convictions over meaningless aspects of daily life. If one more person throws a fucking fit over pineapples on pizza or does a spit-take while reading because they encounter a serial comma, I'm going to start stabbing everybody in the throat. Great. Have your fucking opinion on something that, if other people think differently, won't change your life in the least. But stop acting like you're Joan of Arc willing to be burnt at the stake in defense of your mundane opinion. Tea bag in before or after the water? Who bloody fucking cares?!

Cue people telling me I'm having in inappropriately strong conviction over something that doesn't matter in the least. Also, fuck those people. They probably can't stand it when other people chew ice on an airplane. I'm allowed to have hyperbolic reactions to things because that's what this fucking stupid blog is all about, you morons. It's like that one asshole one time who decided that he would point out all of my typos after I got done savaging Howard Mackie's writing on The Ravagers. Those are two completely different situations and if you can't see the difference, you're either willfully stupid just to feel smug or, you know, just stupid. DC had editors and was charging people money to edit his work. I only edit my reviews a month after I've written them, when I reread them for the first time just before reading the new issue of the series. If anything, that asshole would have just been helping me out in the editing phase. I think he just thought he would be humiliating me. He never responded again after I thoroughly disemboweled him with my word katana.

You're in DC Comics' Paris. The Eiffel Tower is in every single establishing shot of the city. How else would I have known Constantine was taking Paris Uber just by looking at the cover?! The filthy pigeons could have made it any city!

This issue is part one of "The Smokeless Fire." But they weren't done with the last story, were they?! I guess Mercury trapping a genie in her head while the other genie gathered the Magicians of London together to save the world and/or battle Constantine was an ending? At least for awhile? This is probably just one of those stories that needs to be told before finishing the other story because something integral to the plot in this one will be used to save the day in the other one.

The story is the story of the man Constantine and Mercury have Chunneled to Paris for help against the Djinn. The story is about an expedition he took in 1936 to a place where Djinn were said to live. Constantine first heard the story from the old man in a bar. Now he's come to Paris because he's starting to think the old man's story was true and not just an attempt to get into John's pants.

Nice synopsis panel for those of us with bad memories. I also included the next panel because John uses the word "arsehole" and Mercury references Through the Looking Glass.

Constantine and Mercury aren't the only ones trying to find Old Man Genie Killer, Esquire. A bunch of young Parisian punks have decided they're going to rob his ass. They almost run over Mercury while fast and furiousing their way to steal the old man's antiques. Mercury manages to read their minds and realizes they're after the same bloke. I guess Constantine and Mercury having a conversation while they walk to the old guy's home wasn't exciting enough for a comic book. This is the action part to keep everybody's penises in their hands. Yes, that's a sexist statement. Just wait to hear what I have to say when there's a kiss!

The old man confesses the location of his secret diary to Dante, the newest and most human of the gang². When John and Mercury arrive, Dante flees with the book as the old man lies dying of a heart attack. Mercury stays behind to save the old man's life with her, um, mind powers? I guess? Constantine takes Paris Uber out the window and onto the rooftops. But he misses his connection, falls into a bush, and is arrested by Paris cops. Dante flees back home and begins reading the diary of the old man. Well, at least Dante will know how to kill a Djinn! That could come in useful in some other story that's about Dante and not Constantine. Constantine, on the other hand, is fucked.

The Ranking!
No change! I'm disappointed that Moritat didn't do the art again. But everything else was satisfying. Except maybe that part where Constantine held a mundane conviction too strongly. __________________________
¹That I'll be mentioning in this comic book review.
²Dante had a scene earlier teaching his little sister math and promising to never leave her. The other gang members were inhuman monsters. You could tell because they didn't get any scenes in which they weren't just stereotypes.

The Hellblazer #6

Constantine's face looks like a cross between David Duchovny and a lamp post.

• It looks like we're still trying to discover the poison truth! This is part six! Exclamation points for everybody!

• While Constantine and Mercury are headed to France via the Cannibalistic Hell Tunnel (you know, the Chunnel), they have time to discuss what happened to Mercury while she searched for Abby Arcane. John also decides to tell her about the time he did mushrooms with Mercury's mom.

One time when I did mushrooms, I spent one thousand years in a time loop in the parking lot of a strip joint, was spied on the entire time by Jupiter, and invented comic books.

• One time, I pondered why you push the pause button on a DVD remote to pause the action but then you also pressed the pause button to resume the action.

• One time, I realized the secret of everything resided in the shape of a triangle due to the number three.

• I loved doing hallucinogens but I never claimed to anybody that they gave you actual insights into spirituality or the answers to the universe or helped in any other way than to pass the time in a thoroughly enjoyable manner.

• When Mercury left Swamp Thing, she wound up in the dimension where God banishes his mistakes. No wait. God probably doesn't make mistakes. It's where he banishes the creations he has grown bored with. Although can God really get bored? I mean, he's probably always bored, being omniscient. And if he's always bored, why send some creations to his Dimension of Discarded Toys? Maybe that's where creations go that he wills himself to forget about because they served their purpose. What purpose, you ask naively? God's mysterious purpose, of course! Duh!

• In the Dimension of Discarded Toys, Mercury met Adnan, the brother of the genie who wants to destroy humanity (for their own good!).

• Meanwhile, Clarice has sent out little red invitations with goat emblems on to every mage she knows. She's been forced to work with the genies and they need a bunch of magicians in their corner if they're going to defend against whatever stunt Constantine is going to pull to stop them.

• Oh, I also get an answer to a question I asked previously.

Enh. I'm still going to call them genies. Who cares what word a creature prefers when that creature is about to commit genocide.

• While Clarice convinces the other mages to work with Marid the Genie, Mercury finishes her story. Adnan helped her escape but she left him behind.

• Surprise! That was a lie! It wasn't my lie though even though it's usually my lie when I lie here like a liar. No, this was Mercury's lie. She actually did rescue Adnan from the Dimension of Discarded Toys and locked him away in her own mind prison to use later. She has this power because she's really a...well, nobody actually says. She might be a fairy or a genie or a hobgoblin or just Irish. Constantine probably already knows her secret but he's keeping it to himself to use later.

The Ranking!
No change! This issue is basically just a train ride and a cocktail party. Nobody dies or has sex. There weren't even any robots fighting. So boring.

The Hellblazer #5

Stop oversexualizing Constantine, Comic book artists!

• The huge revelation in this comic book is that genies actually exist and weren't just made up by Scheherazade. Not that that's much of a revelation since Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt is a thing. The genies had decided not to interfere with humans so that they wouldn't be discovered. Maybe that's why Thunderbolt chose to act like he was working with a human. He could help make the world a better place while hiding in plain sight. Also, maybe nobody even fucking remembers Thunderbolt since Johnny Thunder is apparently 90 years old and stuck in an elderly care facility, according to DC's Rebirth.

• The previous bullet point took over twenty minutes to write because I asked Lord Google for the proper way to spell Scheherazade (because I'm too lazy to pick up my copy of Volume I & II of The Book of The Thousand Nights and a Night sitting on my desk in arm's reach and flip through it to get the proper spelling) and wound up on a forum where some guy was bitching about how the Magic the Gathering card, Shahrazad, should be banned from play because it annoys the fuck out of him. If that were the basis for banning cards in official Magic the Gathering tournaments, I'd have to ban every single fucking card because the people playing them annoy the fuck out of me and isn't that really the same thing?

• I don't play in Magic the Gathering tournaments anymore. Let me get out my wide brush: people who play Magic the Gathering are intolerable.

• Yes, I play (or used to play? I suppose I'd still play Sealed Deck leagues if I could stand other players) Magic the Gathering. That isn't proof against my statement.

I scanned this for the sentiment. The plums that look like pudgy little penises are a bonus.

• I often wonder why it seems like there isn't as much time during each day as I seem to remember there being. Then I think, "Oh yeah! The Internet!" What a time sink that thing is! Why isn't anybody regulating this thing?!

• That was a joke!

• The man fingering the plum is actually a genie. He's not as hyperactive as the one in Aladdin but then how many of them are? Probably not many of them. Although Aladdin was really lucky to find a genie who wasn't into cutting off the heads of everybody he met or dismembering people and hiding them in trunks. This genie wants to save mankind from itself in the usual way which probably means genocide with some additional enslavement. The woman, Clarice, is a mage who he's forcing to work with him. If she doesn't, he'll banish her to the Land of Discarded Toys. I think that's the island where Darien Wolf died to save his sister Therese.

• I guess that's a spoiler but if I don't mention what it's spoiling, it isn't really a spoiler, is it?!

• Meanwhile, Swamp Thing is declared physically unfit to continue doing a favor for Constantine. Also, the new artist draws Mercury in such a way that I instantly lose my crush on her. Apparently I never actually liked Mercury herself. I only like the way Moritat draws Mercury. Also, I like the way Moritat draws Tallulah Black. And also Charlotte the Harlot. And also Lorna Kyle. And also Gina. And...okay, every female Moritat draws, I fall in love with. And also some of the men! Like Jonah Hex! But I think that had more to do with the writing in All Star Western and less with his physique.

• Swamp Thing explains how he goes to the water closet and then disappears into the Green. Now it's up to John, Chas, and Mercury to figure out why the genies need an elemental.

• I should probably call them Djinn since that's what they call themselves. But I also would just rather use the Anglicized version. Since they don't actually exist, I'm hoping that I don't get called a disrespectful racist for not using the term they prefer.

• Ha ha. I wrote "disrespectful racist."

But genies is okay, right?!

• Constantine decides to get to know Mercury better by telling her three things he supposes she doesn't know about him and then getting three pieces of information from her that will probably help him when he needs to cast a spell on her later.

• Fact #1: Constantine can't ride a bicycle. I wonder if anybody went through every issue of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer to verify this fact or if they just went, "This is fucking Rebirth, motherfucker! Everything is what we say it is! Boom! Is this the appropriate time to drop a mic?"

• I bet his other facts are "I've never eaten peanut butter" and "I suck dicks. Lots of dicks. All the dicks."

• Mercury's number one fact is that she used to eat McDonald's. Ew! Slut!

• Constantine hates the word "moist." Boring. Fucking boring! You know who I hate more than the people I actually hate and aren't just pretending I hate to make a stupid point? People who say they hate the word "moist!" Along with moist, Mercury also hates these words: slacks, smear, squirt, nomads, Indians, and saints.

• Constantine's third fact is that he wished things had turned out differently between him and Mercury's mom. Or maybe the creepy pedo means between him and Mercury! He's about as clear on the point as The Bible is on its use of pronouns.

• Mercury's third fact is that her mom is in Cane Hill Asylum which just happens to be one left turn away from where they're currently playing John's game in the back of Chas's black cab. So they go to visit!

The bit about nobody being ready for real life is something I often think. But then how do you explain all the people running things and trying so hard to look like adults? If they're as truly not ready for real life as I continue to be then I can only think they're monsters. They're some kind of mimic desperate for other people to approve of the way they're doing the thing that gets approval from people who think that's the way they're all supposed to be. Also, it might just be about sex. You act like an adult because confidence, responsibility, and financial security are all things people look for in mates. Otherwise you just wind up fucking your next dependent.

• Mercury calls Constantine a tosser which reminds me I'm not playing Overwatch. My main character is Tracer and I always have her in her Vivienne Westwood outfit because while wearing it, she sometimes calls people she kills wankers or tossers.

• Meanwhile, it seems Simon Oliver finished the script a page too early so he threw in a scene where Swamp Thing tells his parents to go stuff it. Sort of.

The Ranking!
+1! Constantine didn't swear at all this issue! I think maybe he's been replaced by a simulacrum!

The Hellblazer #4

This looks like a cover for The Watchtower. "Top Ten Tips For Asking Jesus To Keep Your Tie From Getting Caught In Your Bicycle Chain."

• This issue begins with John Constantine tied up next to Chas. Well fuck that. My favorite part of kidnapping stories is when they tie the person to the chair! I can't get enough of amateurs tying ridiculous knots that you know will never hold! One time, I saw a kidnapper tie someone with a few slipped round turns! Ridiculous! Or, like in this comic book, when they tie two people together back to back and think that's going to hold! People are squishy! You can generate a lot of slack just by puffing out your belly when you're being tied! Then, once everything seems taut and in place, you suck in your belly, deflate your lungs, collapse your ribcage, and voila! You're free! Idiots.

• Constantine knows the bookie thugs from school. Apparently they're racist assholes. Come on, Oliver! Not all bookies are racist violent assholes! Some are just violent assholes! Although I probably shouldn't assume that Simon Oliver is commenting on all bookie thugs just by his characterization of this one. Although a large number of citizens did vote for Brexit due to their fear of foreigners coming into the country, so maybe this guy's racist tendencies are less because he's a bookie and more just because he's a working class Brit.

• I'm not slagging off Brits! I'm an American! We have even more racist working class and president elects than they do! Also more racist everything elses, like whatever you call the other classes in America that aren't working class. First and business?

• The racist bookie wants John to teach him how to pick horses before he blows John's head off with his shotgun. That seems dangerous. If I knew somebody who could do real magic, I don't think I'd try to force them to teach me a spell. They might teach me a spell that causes me to not feel when I have to take a shit anymore! And I'd have the added embarrassment that I cast it on myself!

• Constantine sends the bookie, White Boy, out to get some magical supplies. He's just stalling until the genies show up. This is like a movie by that guy who married Madonna! You know the guy! He made that heist movie called Vagina, and that other one, Two Smoking Barrels and a Microphone!

• So that was the first quarter of the comic, spent in Chas's kitchen arguing with a racist jerko. The next quarter will be about Swamp Thing as he waits for Mercury to return from her wormhole adventures. He's probably going to fight a bunch of Rotlings during this part. It's probably a good time to go to the bathroom. All you'll miss out on is a poorly choreographed fight between a plant and a decaying pile of ooze.

Hurry back! It's almost over!

• Constantine had better hurry up and get out of the chair he's tied to because Swamp Thing isn't doing well battling The Rot inside The Rot. But right now, John's too busy trying to convince Chas that Chas isn't going to die even though every person who ever winds up in a comic book with Constantine winds up dead. Well, maybe not every person. But a lot of them! Although most of those that die, John didn't rely upon for transportation.

• By chanting a bunch of Latin words, Constantine stalls long enough for the genies to arrive. At least I think the words are Latin. They look like the kind of words I've seen inscribed on pretentious marble structures.

• The Djinn arrive and kill all of the racist assholes because racist assholes aren't allowed to live happily ever after in stories. It would be irresponsible of a writer to portray a world where being racist and an asshole (I mean, a major asshole and not just a minor asshole!) brings you success and good fortune! I suppose there are stories where the racist pretty much wins in the end, like Othello. But right up front, the author makes sure the audience knows that the story is a tragedy and that everybody should be sad when Othello loves so well that he murders Ophelia. Unless it was Desdemona who he murdered. Or Cleopatra.

• Constantine shows up at Mercury's farm just as she and Swamp Thing return from The Rot. Mercury didn't find Abby but she found traces of Djinn, just like Constantine. So now, after four long issues, Mercury is going to be a main character! My boner is celebrating.

The Review!
The majority of this story takes place with the main character tied to a chair in a dirty London kitchen. When the violent action does take place, it happens off-panel and in the dark. Sure, there's a scene or two where Swamp Thing battles some Rot Monsters but I think that was thrown in to compensate for the lack of action elsewhere. The thing is, Swamp Thing's bit was the worst part of the story. I wouldn't have minded if it was left out and replaced by a few more pages of Chas and Constantine discussing how dolphins are total bastards. I'm now a fan of Simon Oliver's writing. And I'm lucky enough that one of my favorite artists, Moritat, is providing the scenery. Four stars! Or whatever.

The Hellblazer #3

How did this cover make the cut? If I were editor, I would have scrapped it and just went with a blank red cover.

• For years now, journalists have heaped scorn on and rolled their eyes at Internet news bloggers. But have any of those journalists ever become the shadow puppet master of the future president of the United States controlling the appointment of key cabinet figures to tear down the whole entire system? I think not! Journalists, you owe bloggers an apology! They were apparently far more powerful than you ever considered! Oh, and probably far more vile and racist than you ever could have imagined. And now because you were afraid to look biased and too left-leaning (even though, no matter how much you tried to move right of center, you were criticized anyway!) while Internet news sites (both fake and super fake (and, of course, racist and misogynistic)) didn't mind destroying the right end of the spectrum to open up some new and fertile land even further right from the center than ever before, we have a large chunk of the voting populace too blinded by hate and propaganda to understand the stakes of what is happening.

• Here's an easy test to find out if you understand propaganda: if you think scientists are biased and lean too far to the left and have some sort of pernicious agenda, you might be a redneck. Dammit. I fucked that up and stole garbage material at the same time! I meant to say you're being swindled by textbook propaganda. I know, I know! If you're one of them, you've just rolled your eyes and scoffed and maybe snorted a french fry out of your nose while thinking, "You've fallen for propaganda!" That's why propaganda is so insidious! Because one side sees reality for what it is and the other side confidently thinks they see reality for what it is but are just pigs at the trough soon headed for slaughter. There's a saying the conspiracy nutters rely on: Follow the money. No scientist is getting rich by trying to explain the reality of the world through science and the government isn't getting rich off of creating regulations. But the people who deny climate change? They do so because regulations limiting pollution cost them money. Regulations limiting the accumulation of resources cost them money. Regulations protecting people from corporations razing the land limit profits.

• One of the bits of propaganda used to get people rabidly against the idea of climate change is that it will somehow affect their lives drastically. But the changes being made will affect the average person as much as the estate tax affects them. Meaning it won't affect them at all. You might be encouraged to recycle or compost but that's just because it's as easy to do those things as throw shit in the trash. And guess what? You really don't have to do it, if you're that maddened by the entire prospect. Just like you'll almost certainly never have enough money to be affected by the estate tax when you die, you will also never generate enough pollution in your individual life that the government is going to regulate how you live it. Government regulations to limit pollution are there not because they're growing too powerful and uppity and doing whatever they want. They're there because without them, corporations would simply flip the bird at every citizen in this country, trading safety and health for higher profits.

• Yes, yes. I know. I'm the pig at the trough, yada blah blah yada. Keep oinking and clutching your guns, you geniuses. Enjoy four years of gloating that your horse won while your horse pads its wallet while Wyrmtongue whispers in its ear.

• Oh, I mention guns only because that issue is like abortion. If you're against abortion, it's the only issue you vote on. And if you think your guns are in danger, it's the only political issue you really care about. Basically, you vote for anything anti-government because you believe the government is going to kick in your door at any moment to take your guns, after which they can stick you in a FEMA death camp where they'll hold lotteries to kill as many people as possible for their population control agenda.

• If you're thinking, "I liked this blog better when it was about comic books," then you have another think coming. It's never been about comic books! Mostly it's been about me. But you can thank Donald Trump and the Electoral College and all of the people who, for whatever reason, heard Donald Trump speak time and time again and couldn't see he was a big dopey gasbag who is unfit for practically any professional position. I won't be shutting up about how terrible this whole situation is.

Oh look! Simon Oliver feels the same way I do! Except in British!

• Boris Johnson's Knob, the horse Chas put Constantine's money on, wins the race and makes Chas two hundred quid. I mean, the odds were 500 to 1 and he probably put more of Constantine's money on it than that but Constantine only offered to give Chas two hundred pounds for placing the bet. What a chump!

• When Constantine's story continues, he's falling into a seemingly infinite void talking about dolphins. My first reaction was, "Here we go again! Some writer wasn't sure how to start the story so they wedged in a little fifth grade report on something that has nothing to do with this comic book." But by the time John ends his thoughts on dolphins, I'm totally on his side and thinking, "Man! That was a cute take on dolphins! And thematic too! It was like a little chocolate mint short story to get me in the right frame of mind! Sort of like those little candy suppositories waiting on the pillow when you check into a hotel."

• The dolphin introduction is interesting in that, in most cases, an opening like this would simply annoy me and I'd be fuming while reading the rest of the book. "What a shit way to start!" I'd think as I continued to read Rob Liefeld's terrible comic book while also thinking, "I wish Rob were also drawing this terrible comic book because two terribles makes a fantastic time!" But because I enjoyed Constantine's take on dolphins, and I like how he tied it all in to his own reputation, I'm all wet and ready and eager to receive the rest of the story.

And then I orgasm too early because the dialogue following the dolphin shit is just as entertaining.

• Speaking of orgasming too early, I'm reminded of the Loudon Wainwright III song that goes, "You used to say I came too early but it was you who came too late." Such poetry!

• Meanwhile, Mercury and Swamp Thing head into The Rot to search for Abby Arcane. She was the Avatar of the Rot so she shouldn't be missing. But since her role in the Swamp Thing Mythos has always been of partner and lover, I imagine her disappearance is to set the New 52 record straight. This is Rebirth, after all! That means all of the things that had sort of been changed but not really as drastically as everybody proclaimed by the New 52 must be set back to rights. So Anton Arcane probably has something to do with this! He's more of the Avatar of the Rot sort of guy. I think he was in Hell but that's never stopped him before.

• From Map, Constantine learns that he's being chase by Djinns. Constantine doesn't believe in the Djinn but he figures something is after him, so he should probably listen. He discovers that they're actually after the Swamp Thing who he pawned off on Mercury. So now Constantine is going to have to track them down in The Rot.

• In The Rot, Mercury discovers a wormhole and heads through it alone. Swamp Thing must wait for her return in The Rot which probably means he'll be attacked and nearly killed! But Constantine will save him next issue and they'll go on fabulous adventures together.

• But before John can get to Swamp Thing, he needs a ride. So he heads back to pick up Chas and his cab only to find Chas bound and gagged and surrounded by a bunch of bookie thugs. They'll probably get ripped apart by Djinn next issue!

The Review!
This book is written well, interesting, and lovely to look at. So it's surprising that this is the cover DC went with. This cover makes me think the story within is going to be a frightful mess about that time Constantine shit himself while exploring the haunted subway under Parliament. Instead, it's about genies and Constantine vomiting on himself while exploring the spooky underground. Totally different.

The Hellblazer #2

That motorcycle seat is so lucky.

The Commentary!
• Last issue, I was disappointed that Constantine was abandoning Mercury and Swamp Thing to find Abby on their own. But according to the cover and the picnic on the first few pages, I was mistaken! And I'm glad I was because Mercury is my new comic book crush! Some people might have begun reading this issue and thought to themselves, "Who is this adorable woman talking with Swamp Thing? Why am I so stupid and irrelevant that I can't remember her name? And why didn't Simon Oliver mention her name?! Why didn't he Lobdell this issue and begin it, 'My name is Mercury. I was created by NOWHERE to be a living weapon'?" But I remember the names of all of the women Moritat draws who I inevitably get a crush on. Like Tallulah Black! And...well, I think so far it's only been Tallulah and Mercury.

• Swamp Thing is giving Mercury some insight into Constantine's character. She believes he's a "total wanker" who only cares about himself. She's mostly not wrong! Swamp Thing points out that if he really only cared about himself, he'd hide away from the real world and toss it all in the bin. But he doesn't! He keeps himself present in the real world! He saves it daily although he often sends children's souls to hell while doing it. That might be where he gets the reputation for only caring about his own ass. Most people would be all, "I would totally throw my life away to save just one child because children are precious creatures and our future and I care about our future and blah blah self-aggrandizing lies blah blah blah!" But they're idiots because they're not looking at the long game. If a train was bearing down on a child and you could save the child but you would die, it's actually a mistake to save the child. Because how many people is a stupid child going to save? Like, probably zero! But you have the ability to save children all over the place! So by keeping yourself alive, you could probably save a couple more children later in the week without throwing your life away. See? Saving the child was a dumb choice!

• Meanwhile, Chas is politely kicking Constantine out of his house so that his wife will come back.

Boris Johnson was the mayor of London until he panicked over the Brexit vote and buggered out. He's basically the Donald Trump of England, judging by his awful hair. I know the mayor of London but I couldn't tell you the current mayor of Portland, Oregon! I stopped paying attention after my step-uncle, Sam Adams, left office. You might have seen Sam in Portlandia as the mayor's assistant.

• Knob is a British slang term for penis. You know, just in case you're an American and you're not into knowing all of the slang for dicks.

• I watch a lot of British panel shows on YouTube. Currently I'm enjoying the newest seasons of Would I Lie To You? and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. I've also been watching Dara O'Briain's Go-8-Bit when I can find an episode not taken down for copyright infringement. And I'm eagerly awaiting the new season of QI!

• Constantine probably has no intention of making Chas's life easier so Chas's best hope is that John gets caught back up in the Swamp Thing road trip to The Rot story. Which, according to the title and the cover, is going to happen!

• So far there's been no mention of those angels who didn't prevent World War I! Maybe that'll take place after the advertisement.

• Chas drives Constantine around London in his black cab. I wonder if Chas not only has The Knowledge but also The Occult as well? That's probably what cab drivers call knowing all of the spooky paranormal haunted routes in London and how to traverse them without getting possessed or encased in hellfire.

• It's nice to have a British writer on Hellblazer again. Constantine just isn't Constantine without a proper British voice coming out of his mouth. Hell, it's just nice to have him back in London!

I know soccer...excuse me, football has become a lot bigger in the States over the last half decade or so but I just can't see an American writer coming up with Constantine comparing his face-off against a demon to a football match. I mean, they might! But I doubt they would have worded it like this with the whole "taken it to penalties" bit. Which reminds me! I haven't watched the latest Rob Beckett YouTube video where he plays FIFA against his friends. I can't wait until he plays Alex Brooker.

• It wasn't until I scanned it that I noticed one of Invader's Space Invader tiles behind Constantine.

• Constantine decides to meet with some of the occult power players to make sure he didn't ruffle any feathers with nearly sending everybody in London to hell. Doesn't seem anybody is too bothered with his gamble. Although he sort of pisses of Marid, the angel who wants to destroy mankind, when Constantine refuses to meet with him. Clarice Sackville is an old power player (but she doesn't look old!) who is giving Marid advice on how to deal with Constantine. I guess Marid realizes to destroy mankind, he's going to have to get past John first.

• Marid's plan also involves the Swamp Thing. So I guess that's part of how all of these stories are going to intertwine.

• Clarice gives John a secret warning that some bad shit is going down and he heads off to do some detectivanting. But he's followed by some spooky cherubs trying to look like grown ups in suits instead of floating babies in diapers. To give them the slip, he heads into the subway tunnels to look for Map. He winds up falling down a dark pit and into next issue.

• When is Mercury going to be a main character in this thing?!

The Ranking!
+2! I know he never said "cunt" but this feels more like Constantine than even the last series felt like Constantine. It just keeps getting more and more Hellblazery.

The Hellblazer #1

This is the look John gives you right before you wind up in Hell.

The Commentary!
I was going to say this is John's look right before he sucks your dick but I think I've used up my quota on using dick sucking to replace sincere thoughts and feelings. Now in my forties, it seems to be my go-to move. Back when I was a teenager, everything I wrote was filled with my over-dramatization of my feelings of unrequited love. In my twenties, my writing was full of philosophical quandaries about my direction in life. In my thirties, I began to fill my writing with a lot more whimsy and began sculpting the pretentious bullshit so that it could fit within the confines of the story or essay. And in my forties, it's all just pretty much about dick sucking. I can't wait to see what I'm writing about in my fifties! I hope it doesn't get me arrested.

This issue begins with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Some guy named Marid tries to stop the assassination but he's stopped by some other guy. Hopefully this Simon Oliver hasn't decided to steal my detectivanting idea! That's where a few upper class British men and women form a club where they gallivant around the world doing detective work. My idea was that it would become all the rage in Edwardian times and the young people who did it would be so careless and narcissistic that they would cause more trouble than good. And eventually their idle shenanigans would start a world war. Just like these miscreants in the opening to this comic book! I hope they aren't Detectivanters! I'll sue Simon Oliver for sure!

But before the reader is allowed to know any more about this great big mystery, the narrative turns back to the present where Swamp Thing is calling on John Constantine for a favor. How hard could a favor for Swamp Thing be? Water? Sunlight? Mineral supplements? Easy peasy!

John decides to talk directly to the reader to tell the story about how he came to owe Swamp Thing a favor. Twenty-two year old me is all, "Shit! Cool! So postmodern!" Forty year old me is all, "Suck a dick."

That's every time in your life if you give it about five years!

Being that the person you are in the present no longer truly resembles the person you were five to eight years ago, it really changes the perspective on going to prison for life. Eventually, you hardly recognize the version of you that committed the crime and yet you still must pay for that person's acts. A lot of people are unsympathetic to this because they have some weird belief that people don't change at all. I believe that there's an aspect of our personality that we really can't change. My first grade report card reads like a person describing who I essentially still am today. But I've also done really stupid shit when I was younger and, looking back, I can't even understand who that person was that would choose to do those things. In a real way, it's not me. It was a person who became me but it's not the me I am today. It's possible only flawed people can understand this. It's generally the people who claim they've never done anything horrible in their life who cannot forgive those who have. I'm not saying we should do away with life sentences! I mean, we should probably do away with life sentences for quite a few crimes, probably! No, what I'm saying is that I, at least, feel terrible when I see somebody who is being incarcerated for life at a young age knowing they'll never be free again. It's a strange idea that one mistake can ruin the life of the future you who will no longer resemble the person who committed the crime. Maybe we need a justice system where the victim or victim's families are in control of the sentence. Not that they get to set it! But maybe they alone can one day forgive the crime and end the sentence. Or is there just no place for redemption and forgiveness in the American justice system?

Judging by the way people on Twitter want to fucking destroy everybody who says anything they think is beyond the pale, I'd say there probably isn't.

John's story begins with Swamp Thing asking John for a favor. So John must mess up pretty royally for this to wind up a story in which John owes Swamp Thing a favor!

Oh wait. It's just that Swamp Thing did his part of the favor exchange first. He kept Wonder Woman and Shazam at bay while Constantine nearly damned everybody in London. Now it's John's turn to pay up. Swamp Thing wants Constantine to help him find Abby because she's disappeared from The Rot. I'm not sure Swamp Thing should be looking for Abby if she's missing. She's probably missing for romantic reasons and he's just going to wind up walking into a room in hell to find Abby sucking demon dick.

Constantine decides to recruit Mercury into the search because of her psychic abilities. Plus she was introduced in Rebirth and she can't just be forgotten already. She needs to have a big role in this comic book. Bigger than Chas's even, I hope, because she's cute in that way Moritat makes the women he draws cute. They're like little fuckable cartoons. I mean, they're drawn with great personalities and tons of agency!

Oh, who am I kidding? I don't care if Mercury has any agency! As long as she looks cute and acts adorable, I'm pretty happy with her characterization.

"Abby who?!"

I fucking love that look John gives the reader in the above scan. Maybe I don't mind that John interacts with the reader. He's kind of the Ferris Bueller of the DC Universe.

Mercury agrees to help Swamp Thing but sends Constantine away. That's too bad! At this point, I'm more invested in the Swamp Thing story than whatever situation Constantine is going to get into involving the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand!

Constantine goes off to pout because Mercury is more interested in a plant than his cock. Not that she'd be interested in his cock anyway because he's so old. Unless, of course, she has Daddy Issues! Hell, maybe John is her daddy! She'll fuck him for sure if that's the case.

The issue ends with the two guys who didn't stop the Great War when they had a chance. The good one who didn't stop the events that led to millions of deaths over the next century is killed by the bad one who wanted to prevent those deaths. I mean, I guess the bad one used to be the good one. Or maybe I'm using the wrong adjectives. The good one was actually the selfish one who didn't want their presence to be discovered by "the creator" which is what would have happened had they stopped the assassination. The bad one was actually the one trying to help the humans even if it risked revealing himself to "the creator". So apparently they're angels on the run. That's totally what I figured they were. Masonic angels from outer space disguised as reptilian creatures from another dimension. Totally nailed it. So anyway, the bad one who was once good has decided that it's time to completely interfere with the humans because they are ruining everything with their free will.

The Hellblazer Rebirth #1

The Commentary!
Let's try this again! Hellblazer was going along fine and dandy over in the Vertigo world when some asshole at DC Comics decided that Constantine needed to be actively engaged in their superhero universe. Most of the people enjoying Hellblazer at the time probably thought this was a really stupid idea. And I want to point out how it wasn't a really stupid idea so that I can make those snobby elitists look like royal assholes! But I'm one of them! It was a bad idea! You cannot have a John Constantine who isn't allowed to say "cunt"! It just doesn't work. DC finally realized that it doesn't work so they dumped the awful New 52 Constantine which basically consisted of John battling magic monsters and then casting a spell which will have real horrible consequences. It always worked to drive away the monster and Constantine and his mates never really had to deal with any consequences. I guess Constantine once had to make it so Zatanna never loved him while he still loved her but who the fuck cares about that?! You don't need magic to love somebody who doesn't give a shit about you!

In the re-revamped version of Constantine, DCYou's Constantine the Hellblazer, John was now allowed to swear as much as he wanted! But the letters in the swears were all replaced by pentagrams. The series was much better for it but not perfect because he still couldn't say ⍟⍟⍟⍟! DC Comics, unaware of the real problem haunting their inability to recreate the Constantine magic, killed Constantine the Hellblazer too. It was time for John Constantine to get a Rebirth! That's the comic book I'm going to read now! And I should already point out that it's not going to be very good because it's an American comic book that isn't rated for Mature Readers Only, so no way is John going to be able to say cunt. I might as well not even bother!

The issue begins with a little two page story about how John Constantine lost his home of London and was banished to New York City. It's the usual Constantine story. John pisses off a demon. Demon gets ready to make John pay. John says some things that makes the demon rethink who might be the most powerful person in the John/Demon relationship. John lights a cigarette. Demon lets John live. John adds another vastly powerful entity to his list of immortal enemies.

And maybe John said cunt? Does "lie like a cunt rug, mate" make sense?

But then Donald Trump began making a run for president and Constantine decided there were some battles he doesn't want to get caught up in, so he headed back home to London and his buddy Chas who apparently isn't dead. Whether or not he had died somewhere along the way, I have no idea anymore. And since this is a Rebirth, I don't have to know anyway! Free pass for everybody! Continuity police can reset their watches after their done sitting flummoxed in their La-Z-Boy recliners pouting and covered in nacho cheese sauce. There's not time for arguing how old Constantine might be or whether or not he's had sex with Swamp Thing! Because those things don't matter anymore! Well, I guess John's age might matter, eventually. As it is now, it doesn't matter if he lived through New York's Punk Scene or if he missed it because he was way too young. It doesn't matter if he's in love with Zatanna or if he's in love with that little blonde thing from Chelsea. Also, I might have made up the blonde thing. But that's my point! It doesn't matter!

This nameless lass is my favorite character in Rebirth so far. Maybe she'll become the new Anguished Fat Man! Vapid Stoner Girl!

Since this is Rebirth, Oliver is taking the readers on a quick synopsis of the things that now matter in Constantine's life. The most important one of those is that if John spends any appreciable time in London, his soul will leave his body due to the curse placed on him by the demon he humiliated. But Constantine has a plan to break that curse so that London can get back to being his Gotham. He never really was suited to be a New Yorker, no matter how many times the reader was told that he was on the cutting edge of the punk-magic scene and how many people he fucked in the bathrooms at CBGB.

Somebody should open a mediocre restaurant franchise and call it CBGBs. Maybe all of the boarded up TGIFridays can just rebrand without doing any renovations: CBGBurgers. That would be punk, right? Instead of a restaurant with sawdust on the floor, CBGBs can be a restaurant with sawdust falling from the ceiling! And exposed insulation on every wall! And raccoons living in the ceiling! That's punk, right?

Meanwhile a woman who lives in a hobbit hole and and raises goats is...well, sticking candles in her vagina? I'm not too clear on that. All I know is that there's suddenly another female character drawn by Moritat that I'm probably going to develop a huge crush on, candles or no candles.

I know I was making jokes about the quality of a Constantine comic book relying on whether or not he can say the word "cunt" but I didn't realize you could get away with having Constantine say "circle jerk".

I don't know how you hold a circle jerk together with old chewing gum but I'm going to find out by introducing chewing gum at my next circle jerk.

I have never believed in magic until I heard Alan Moore talk about the existence of magic. And then, through the magic of Alan Moore's words, he cast a spell on me so that I suddenly believed in magic. It was really easy to do too! He just told me to look at the definition of a magic spell and I was, "Oh yeah! Spells are cast with words and they change reality. That's just fucking words! That's making a speech! That's putting together an advertising campaign! That's convincing half of the American population that the world is burning around them and the only way to make it better is to vote in politicians who only have their own selfish interests at heart and don't give a shit about anybody else! Donald Trump is a demon summoned by the incessant rhetoric chanted by multiple Republican talking heads over the course of the last twenty years. That is real life magic and we're all going to be ass-raped by the vile and disgusting incubus the Republicans have summoned into being!"

Constantine's plan to escape the demon's curse is to transfer the curse from himself to every other resident of London. It's not that he doesn't care about the other people in London (he may or may not!), it's just that he definitely cares about himself. So even if his plan to overload the demon's realm with eight million souls all gathered at once doesn't get the demon to stop the curse, at least Constantine will still be alive!

Oliver makes sure to throw in a couple of pages of some Justice Leaguers discussing how something horrible has happened in London and it's probably Constantine's fault and that maybe they should kick his teeth down his pint of Guinness. But Swamp Thing shows up to tell Wonder Woman and Shazam to maybe stand down on this one because even though everybody in London is about to die, Constantine probably has a handle on the situation. That's good enough for Wonder Woman! Especially since Swamp Thing will be to blame if everybody dies. If anybody says, "Wonder Woman! Why didn't you do anything?!" She can just say, "Swamp Thing told me not to! It's his fault!"

Constantine and the demon engage in one of those conversations that John always manages to get started which his opponents should really know by now not to be tricked into. The smart thing to do when you've got the upper hand over Constantine is to close your eyes, cover your ears, and scream "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" until Constantine is in hell. It's because Constantine knows that the real magic is in the words. The spells are just the special effects. That's why he's more con man than magician.

This time (as with loads of other times), Constantine's speechifying was just to buy time until the hobbit, Mercury, arrived to save the day.

Not only can she swear in pentagrams, she's also psychic! So she gets the demon's name for John so he can have some power over the bastard.

With the demon's name, Constantine ends the curse and Wonder Woman doesn't have to call a press conference to explain why she let everybody in London die.

The Review!
Since the comic book couldn't say it, I'll say it here: cunt! There, now it's a complete Hellblazer comic book. Oh, excuse me: The Hellblazer. How fucking stupid is that the?! I'm fucking choking on that piece of shit the! It doesn't have to be their, DC Comics! It's fucking stupid! As you might know, it's okay to have a new comic book with the same title as the old comic book, no matter how fucking confusing it is. You've done it countless times before! Just think how many Teen Titans #1 comic books are out there! Aside from the lack of cunts and the excess number of "the"s, this comic book was a pretty great start to a new John Constantine book. We got Chas and London and Constantine humiliating a demon and a woman who hates Constantine but is going to be forced to work with him so that he doesn't destroy the world trying to save himself. He eats some curry, he smokes a cigarette, he wears a trench coat, he has blonde hair. That's pretty much all I expect from a Hellblazer comic book! I wonder how many people are upset he didn't fuck a woman and a man in this issue and were all "How dare DC erase his bisexuality!" I suppose we all have different things about Constantine that we find are important to the character. Some people only give a shit about where he sticks his dick, and other people are into his mystical battles with the forces of hell and the trail of friends' corpses he leaves in his wake. If you're into the dick aspect, you might not like this issue because he doesn't outright state what he does with it. If you're into curries, you're going to fucking love this issue because Constantine fucking wrecks a vindaloo!

Constantine the Hellblazer #13

Is Constantine bisexual because everybody he meets gets fucked?

The Review or Whatever!
• This issue is called "Worthless" which is a good start toward my prediction that Constantine's plan to rid New York of Neron was to make New York worthless to him.

• Constantine and some of his Justice League Dark pals who he's steal on speaking terms do some magical tweaking of the very nature of New York. Apparently that's something magicians aren't supposed to mess with but since it's never been mentioned until this story, it's really easy for Constantine to break that rule. He breaks them all anyway, right? But how much easier to break a rule that was just made up to be broken! So easy!

He won because the writers are on his side, dummy.

• Constantine has turned New York into the most boring city on the face of the earth, full of boring bores whose souls are worthless. So it's Portland now?

• I wonder if Portland, Maine, has a couple dozen confused hipsters living there?

• Lady Alexandriel of Faerie proves she's a top one percenter by offering to buy out Neron in his time of desperation. She smells somebody about to lose it all and she offers him next to nothing for everything he has. I bet a lot of this is going to be going on in Britain in the next few years. Does Britain get to declare itself its own continent now? Did leaving the European Union cause it to leave Europe completely?! That'd be awesome. Maybe they can call their new continent Pluto.

• In return for helping make New York a part of Faerie, Constantine gets Oliver's daughters' souls back. And New York is...well, probably not a whole lot different. Maybe there will now be a few more musicals?

• Constantine learns a lesson that most people never learn: communicate! Make sure the people close to you know what you're doing so they don't call the police when you keep on taking dozens of kittens into the basement. You don't want to find out the hard way that your Kitten Cuddle Room has branded you as a serial killer. So instead of letting Oliver know that he had a plan to save Oliver's girls, Constantine just rushed off to do it after telling Oliver he failed. So Oliver went out and made a deal with a devil to get his girls back on his own. That devil was Blythe, who really dislikes Constantine right now.

• So once more, Constantine loses somebody he loves because that's just the way Constantine's life is. I would like to say it's a curse and it's through no fault of his own but that would make the character far less interesting, wouldn't it? No, John knew when he approached Oliver that Oliver was probably going to end in a bad way. And even though John thinks he cares, he knows he didn't care enough to simply stay away. He tried to leave Oliver but, of course, that was after it was way too late. And it's not like Constantine didn't already know that it was going to be way too late the moment he introduced himself to Oliver.

• I'm excited for the next chapter in Constantine's life! I love seeing innocent people damned to hell for being too sociable to the wrong people! Serves them right!

Constantine the Hellblazer #12

I think I've drunk this drink before.

The Review or Whatever!
Rebirth is here and I'm still slowly wandering out of the old universe looking at all the dead flowers. That's a metaphor. Metaphors are good because they add a layer of emotional feeling to the action which people might not automatically perceive. This metaphor points out how reading Prebirth comics already feels like I'm reading stories from a dead universe full of a weird, rotting, perfumed smell. Metaphors are not analogies. Analogies are bad. Oh, sure, sometimes they're entertaining. But usually the reasoning behind an analogy is that the real situation is too complicated to expect everybody to feel the same way about it, the way life always is. But if you can come up with an analogy that's slightly reminiscent of the original situation but viewed through a telescope while on Valium then you can convince anybody of anything! So if you have a situation like abortion which is really complicated in a lot of ways and even if you're on the correct side which is pro-it's-not-your-life-so-butt-the-fuck-out you should still be able to see how people can be on the other side which is pro-I'm-going-to-force-you-to-live-by-my-beliefs. But it's much easier to pretend it's analogous to kicking puppies so you can end your argument saying something like, "And who would kick a puppy? Only a monster because there's never any reason to kick a puppy!" I know, I know! It's a poor analogy (like they all are) because even now I can think of a whole bunch of reasons I'd kick a puppy. I hope you get my point because I'm tired of this train of thought and am ready to move on.

Here's a thing I hate about writing to the masses on the Internet. You often feel like you need to over-explain every single thing you write because people are waiting to ambush you for any particular thing they can easily and purposefully misunderstand to turn your words against you. But I'm not writing to those idiots and assholes. I'm writing to intelligent people who can understand what I'm saying quickly and efficiently. I would high-five those people but high-fiving is like genocide.

Last issue began with Constantine moaning about people who try to compare New York and Los Angeles being jerks and missing the point or something. I don't really remember because that was a whole universe ago. But I got the feeling he thought they should all shut up because it annoyed me that he then went on to bash Los Angeles. Well, now he begins this issue raving about New York. So I think maybe he's one of those people. Or maybe he meant those people were missing the point because Los Angeles and New York are incomparable in the way that cats and dogs are incomparable. One is obviously so much better than the other because the other is a worthless, needy, drooling dog.

It's interesting that if you hold an opinion so strongly, you can really upset somebody else whose opinion differs. I suppose a person's reaction to me saying cats are way better than dogs depends on how a person defines themselves. If they believe the sum of who they are is based solely on the opinions they espouse, they think I'm insulting them personally. Their self-esteem probably factors in as well since somebody with a healthy self-esteem who likes dogs would just snort, know I'm wrong, and continue reading. I don't think of my ultimate self, my ego, as being composed of the things I like or the clothes I wear or my opinions on mundane bullshit. I picture the essence of who I am is how charming I am at parties.

New York has currently been taken over by Neron and turned into the Club Med of Hell. John doesn't care about that. That's not why he's suddenly getting involved. The reason he finds himself ensconced (enmeshed? Entangled? Embroiled? Imbrogliod? Embroiled in an imbroglio?) in this ordeal is because John's current lover's children have been sent to Hell by Neron. So John meets with Neron to clear up the situation using honest talk and rational logic.

That's exactly how Constantine wants his opponents to view him! Nobody worries about a tiny speck on a wall! Although sometimes that tiny speck (especially if it's partnered with an eerie weird buzzing sound) becomes a hole through which the wasps living in the walls emerge! Um, true story!

Constantine discovers that all of the people he fucked over while in Hell have joined with Neron to make Constantine's life miserable. He broke a deal with Blythe so Blythe is now able to force Constantine to follow one command of hers. It's in the Hell's Rules By-laws. You'd think Hell wouldn't have any rules. Especially when Constantine began this story saying how New York had no rules. I think that's a clue as to how Constantine is going to beat Neron. Neron is from a place where rules matter and Constantine is from a place (okay, fine. Currently been living in a place since he's actually from Liverpool or Northampton or Newcastle or something) where they don't. That's kind of Constantine's thing, anyway. To think outside the unspoken rules of any conflict.

Constantine breaks the news to Oliver that his kids are going to have to remain in Hell and Oliver gets upset for some reason. John said he tried to save them! But Oliver doesn't care and finally walks out of John's life. And John goes off to live his life like he always does after ruining the life of somebody close to him: he goes out to get laid. While chatting up a bird, he has his House, M.D., epiphany and realizes how he can beat Neron without breaking Blythe's command to stay out of it.

Back at Neron's pad, Papa Midnite continues to worry the Constantine Factor in his mental jaws.

Constantine's greatest weapon is being off the board!

Zatanna, Deadman, and Swamp Thing have started their own little Magic Club and are working on the problem of ousting Neron from New York. But this isn't their comic book so they have no idea what to do. They'll just have to wait until Constantine arrives with the plan. They don't have to wait long for him to arrive because there are only a couple of pages left this month. But they will have to wait another month to hear that plan. I suppose the plan is somehow going to make New York City valueless to Neron so that he leaves of his own volition. I can't guess the specifics though because it's magic and I'm not a magician. So one more Prebirth Issue of Constantine, I guess!

Constantine the Hellblazer #11

This is exactly the type of hedonistic deviltries I expect people in Hollywood to get up to.

The Review!
This version of Constantine has managed to retain the spirit of the character unlike the previous sanitized New 52 version which was just John getting into trouble with magic or demons and then John casting a dangerous spell with dire consequences to save the day and then never really having to deal with the dire consequences. It might not feel quite as gritty and dark as the Vertigo version but it's close enough that I'm really enjoying it. And besides, the main constant in Constantine's life is that every few years, he gets a new creative team to tell his stories. And this is a new team with an interesting take and conflicts that need more imaginative sorting than the ones found in the previous version.

The Commentary
This weekend, my seven year old niece wanted me to pick her up because she had a secret she wanted to tell me. When I picked her up, she said, "Will you carry me forever?" Some people may have been overwhelmed by the loving gesture but I instantly saw it as a moneymaking opportunity! I said, "Sure I can. If you pay me!" She said she had no money so I asked her how much her mother had. Long story short, my niece owes me a quarter next time I see her.

Here she is doing a better Lobo impression than Twat Lobo from The New 52.

Another thing that happened is people on Tumblr began reblogging my favorite X-men story joke but not understanding it was a joke because it was such a spot on parody of the mess the X-men have become thanks to decades of loony time travel stories. This is what I said: "Favorite X-men story: the X-men time travel from the future to stop the time traveling X-men of the past from time traveling into the future to stop the future time travelers from time traveling." It turns out this must fairly accurately describe some New X-Men story arc that I've never read because people keep tagging it with New X-men notes and defending Hank McCoy's decision to...I don't know! Fuck up continuity?! Other people have reblogged it thinking it really is an example of somebody's favorite story arc because they agree with it and think it's awesome. I am left with the conclusion that people are far too earnest than they probably think they are. My story idea is obviously nonsense! Although if it's an accurate representation of a story that happened in the X-men universe then fuck the X-men universe because that shit is shit. Which it must be because somebody replied to my joke with this: "In the end, retconning the story and making it seem like nothing happened." I shouldn't be so surprised that I can make such an educated guess as to the stories of the X-men even though I haven't read one since Grant Morrison and Josh Whedon were writing for the series because I am, after all, a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader.

To be fair, it's not like I can check all of the tags people add to every reblog. I should be earnest enough to believe that everybody gets it's a joke and stop being overly cynical about every single fucking thing that ever happens in this universe. I also should have made my niece sign an IOU.

To be more fair, one person tagged the post "No Joke". No, actually it was a joke. It was a fucking joke! It isn't actually my favorite story nor did I realize such a story seems to actually exist! I can't tell what is real anymore!

Anyway, Constantine is currently in L.A. instead of New York so that he can bitch about how people like to point out the differences between the two places. He says people who compare the two are missing the point and then begins shitting all over Los Angeles because he thinks they think they're better than everybody else. Which is probably true. But it isn't any less true about New Yorkers, so why even bring it up?

This guy's night just got interesting!

The party is being hosted by the angel Gabriel. Get it? Because it's the city of angels! Is that the real difference between New York and Los Angeles? One is full of demons and the damned and the other is full of angels and shit?

Gabriel is the guardian angel of Hollywood making sure that the entertainment industry doesn't get taken over by all those filthy demons from New York. That sounds like it could be an anti-Semitic allegory! Although if it is, it doesn't make any sense because the Jews already own Hollywood which would mean Gabriel totally fucked up his job.

Constantine has come to Gabriel for help against Neron. Oh yeah! I forgot that there was an actual story lurking in the shadows here. Constantine's argument for Gabriel's help is that if New York is taken over by Neron, all of the seedy magicians and their annoying familiars are going to flood into Los Angeles. I happen to think a good amount of them would wind up in Portland because why not? Every other loser who believes they have an ounce of creativity has found their way here.

It's possible I just insulted myself in the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

Ugh! No! I just said...NO, DAMMIT! ENOUGH!

Gabriel says he won't help so Constantine decides to just fuck off. Let somebody else deal with it. He's just going to go get drunk. The problem with that is Constantine can never just fuck off. Something always pulls him back in. And this time, it'll probably be Oliver. Or drugs. Maybe some hot sex. Alcohol? Could wind up being anything, really.

I forgot Deadman was on the cover so it surprises me when Boston Brand becomes the thing trying to pull Constantine back to New York. Although John swears he's still working with the angels even though Gabriel politely declined to help. He probably put something in the smoke he kept breathing into Gabriel's face that will cause Gabriel some kind of mystic discomfort which only John can cure and he'll only cure it if Gabriel helps. That sounds like a Constantine plan.

Eventually, Deadman just possesses John and drags him back to New York against his will. On the flight, John manages to banish Deadman but since John's stuck in New York overnight now, he decides to head home to his own bed. That's where he discovers Oliver who explains that his daughters have been taken to Hell. Whoops!

Constantine the Hellblazer #7

Worst picnic ever. Which is pretty bad because picnics are shit.

Do Millennials know what picnics are? Are they even allowed to go outside? Do they want to?! I mean, obviously they want to get outside of their parent's supervision which means going out of their parent's house. But that's just to get inside somewhere else, right? Outside is boring and gross and probably Islamophobic. Not that I ever really wanted to go outside much in the eighties once I got my Apple IIe computer. But I sort of had to go outside to hang out with my friends because we weren't tethered by a mass of devices which provided instant communication with each other. We had to drag our asses somewhere else to speak face to face. It was awful! Although all the girls I had crushes on were friends of my female cousin so I always wanted to be at my aunt and uncle's house anyway. And all the biking I did riding BMX bikes up from the valley to the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains and, occasionally over the other side into Santa Cruz, I didn't really want to do! I mean, it made me fit and gave me a body that women wanted to have sex with, so that was a good thing. And it allowed me to spend time with my friends who loved the torturous ride up the mountain. And I did love the ride down the mountain even if it almost cost me my life on a couple of occasions! But all that exercise and outdoor air and weather and sun and crap?! I'd rather have been home playing an Infocom game or the new Wizardry!

This issue is called "Twisted Anatomy" which is probably some kind of sly wink at the time Swamp Thing became a character worth reading. I'm not going to argue with anybody who thought Swamp Thing was a good comic book before Alan Moore's "Anatomy Lesson" because you're wrong and I don't want to waste my time. Just suck up the loss this time and shake my hand and congratulate me on winning this debate and we'll get back to Constantine.

A couple of sexers are torn apart in a park by a bunch of evil dryads. "Sexers" is my word for "sexters" but who don't use a phone. Doing it in person--instead of masturbating while taking pictures of yourself and accidentally sending them to everybody in your phone book--is totally going to become super popular some day.

Constantine has just had some sexing too! But he didn't get torn apart by dryads.

John really is distracted if he thought any message he was receiving would have been appropriate to play in front of his lover.

I wish Ming and James would have John use his lover's name so I can speak about him like he's a real person and not just one of Constantine's accessories! I mean, Scott Lobdell would have rewritten the entire last issue in the first four pages of the next month's comic book. Not that I'm asking for that! I'm asking for something between not mentioning a fairly new character's name at least once and wasting four pages repeating shit that wasn't interesting the first time I read it. Like how about this for a compromise? Mention the guy's name one time!

Anyway, John's fucktoy discovers that Constantine's bathtub is clogged with Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing has a problem with the Green. That was an obvious statement, wasn't it? It's not like he'd come around for tea or some Netflix, right? So he tells John about some trees in Central Park that have been eating lovers.

Well, maybe not people. But some plants do eat meat, so what's the problem?!

Swamp Thing says some things that I could summarize really quickly but I'm going to draw out at length so that I have a bit of a word buffer before I insert another scanned panel that's just too adorable and vulgar for words and crotches. Central Park in New York City (not to be confused with Central Perk in Fake TV-Land New York City) has become closed to his Swamp-Thing-Sense. He needs Constantine to become Johnny Swampthingseed and spread Swamp Things jism all over the park so he can once again take control of it. That's probably enough words now.

These two are so cute together.

Constantine takes a bundle of little Swamp Things into the park to let them run wild and plant themselves everywhere to allow Swamp Thing to enter Central Park. The little Swamp Things are as cute as ever. They'll probably all be killed.

Constantine mentions the kid fiddling with the helmet of Fate which is a strange thing to mention when everybody in New York seems unworried about the flooding that's ending the world. Maybe this takes place after the first story arc of Doctor Fate ends which--extrapolating based on how long it feels it's run so far--forever and ever.

Constantine scares away some women about to have sex which is really disappointing. But I guess he needed their sexy mojo and then his urine to summon up the Dryads.

Ugh! I hated having to babysit newbies on their first trip!

The Dryads are just raving toddlers so Swamp Thing brings back the Mother of All Dryads to teach them to be peaceful. And just like that, the sexy tree adventure is over. It's really just another piece of evidence that John's New York is going full Ghostbusters.

After the adventure, Swamp Thing gives John some love advice. His advice is not to.

Constantine heads home thinking about the danger he's putting Oliver in. Oliver! That's what I though his name was but then I wouldn't allow myself the luxury of feeling secure about my guess because I assumed I was only thinking of Oliver because of John Oliver. Stupid brain is smarter than I realized.

John gets home and calls Oliver to break up. But Papa Midnite answers the phone because Oliver is naked and ready to be sacrificed with mystic symbols all over his chest and--oh yeah!--tied up at the moment. I knew there was a cliche in there somewhere!

Constantine the Hellblazer #7 Rating: No change. I'm sorry to wish death on poor old Oliver but we can't be playing now, can we? John gets all of his friends killed eventually so why should Oliver be any different? Okay, sure! I'll give you that he doesn't need to be killed immediately! He can survive this thing with Papa Midnite and then tell John that he's willing to risk a relationship with him and maybe even help him on some ghost hunts. He'll be all super into it and it'll make his dick as hard as rock and he and John will end every magical adventure filling each other up with come! But he'd eventually better fucking die, goddammit!

Constantine the Hellblazer #6

Homophobic zombies are the worst.

I feel like "homophobic zombies" is a redundant phrase. Before the theme of zombie movies became the less than subtle "humans are the most dangerous monsters," wasn't the theme usually something along the lines of the loss of critical thought multiplied by apathy and increased by the power of selfish desires turns people into unthinking creatures driven by consumerism, prejudice, and fear? Wait. Are we currently living in a zombie apocalypse?! That's too bad because I don't own a shotgun. My only weapon is this blog and that's just fucking pathetic. And now I'm asking people to pay for it! Christ, who do I think I am? Christ? Although for just one dollar per month, you can enjoy being blasted in the face by my carelessly offensive words on a daily basis! You know what? It's probably a good thing I don't own a shotgun.

Has anybody tried defeating zombies with Pop Rocks? I don't know how it would work but I think I've grabbed hold of the tail of some fantastic scheme!

This story has nothing to do with Pop Rocks but you'll realize why I thought of it after I tell it. One time, I was on LSD while at the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, California. My friend Mike and I were walking up to stand in line for The Demon (standing in line for a roller coaster while on LSD is like a sine wave ranging from overwhelming hilarity to soul-crushing paranoia). A small boy was standing around the front of the roller coaster where you enter. As I passed him, he looked up at me, held out a long sparkling plastic package and said, "Want some Fizz?" My eyes grew huge, I held out both hands as if I were pleading for alms, and said, "Yes. Please." Fizz, if you've never had it, is a hard candy with a center that fizzles like burning gunpowder when it hits your tongue. Except it isn't painful like I imagine a mouthful of burning gunpowder would be. If I were of a religious bent, I would claim that boy was a small miracle sent from heaven to provide me with an experience I didn't know I needed while tripping balls. I would probably also be really fucking annoying and use the word "blessed" way too fucking often. I would also need to look up the definition of the word "miracle" and stop using it in cases that most obviously aren't. I'm glad I'm not of a religious bent!

Constantine isn't religious either although I think maybe he should be. He does deal with demons and angels a bit too much for him to logically be anything but a believer. He might be a self-hating agnostic though.

The issue begins with Constantine dealing with a health and safety violation in his apartment building.

I feel like this would be less annoying than a tenant living with a dog.

The little girl turns out to be Walter, an ex-Arch-Duke of Hell. He figured Constantine would help more quickly if it were a little girl in trouble. Walter has been spending his time on Earth rescuing cats and getting them set up in nice apartments with subservient ape roommates. Constantine compliments Walter by calling him the most boring demon he's ever met.

Since I don't have anything horribly nasty to say about this comic book after the first four pages, I'll tear into Scott Lobdell for a second. If this were a Lobdell comic book, the first four pages would have been spent reminding everybody who the characters were and repeating the last four pages of the previous comic book (although sometimes changing things because he had a new idea in the interim between writing his scripts). I get that "every issue is somebody's first issue" but he takes it to the extreme. I suppose if I wrote comic books as poorly as Scott Lobdell does, I'd expect the only people reading each subsequent issue would be new readers because who the fuck would read a second issue after wading through the crap tsunami of my horrible story? Oh, um, the reason I brought up Lobdell is because the first four pages of this comic book are more entertaining than the entire run of Doomed. Oh, sure, I've seen some people praise that comic book. But those "people" are only defined as "people" by the narrowest of margins.

Now see what I mean about being "blasted in the face by my carelessly offensive words"? Any of you morons who enjoy Lobdell's writing are now suffering from my word flak.

I may be a plebe for watching shitty television shows but at least I've never damned anybody's soul to Hell! I don't think.

After John gets his fill of sitting around his house naked and causing me to think about how I will never again sit upon somebody else's furniture, he checks his Craigslist...I mean, "Kregslist" ad to find sixty four people seem to be in need of an exorcist. When Constantine mentioned he was going to pay his rent legitimately, I thought he meant he was going to go work as a line cook for a bit. I'm not sure an advertisement on "Kregslist" to do exorcisms counts as real work. Okay, maybe it does count in the comic book world and/or Portland, Oregon, but normally I'd just assume it was a scam.

Constantine accepts a job to exorcise some demon named Gordred out of a young boy. I'm sure just using the phrase "young boy" causes all of the latent pedophiles to giggle uncontrollably after which they rush off to troll women on the internet because they view all women as protective mothers which threatens their ability to destroy youthful innocence. In other words, misogynist trolls are all pedophiles. Quid pro exacto quorum.

I should probably learn the actual Latin used as the punctuation for an argument proven demonstrably instead of just making things up. Maybe it's "sum emptor caveat"?

I hope I didn't accidentally send anybody's soul to hell after writing out all that Latin! I'm pretty sure spells only work if the caster spouts a bunch of Latin.

Constantine solves the first exorcism of sixty-four because he knows the demon inhabiting the kid. They go out for a drink and then he moves on to some other cases.

No! Keep it as a pet! Constantine, you need a raccoon pet! I need you to need a raccoon pet, you tosser!

Constantine brings a raver down off of demonic molly, clears out a Karaoke joint of unwanted dragons, finds a family whose faces were stolen, fixes Nightvale's Dog Park, and repairs a washing machine before finally winding up in Central Park to find out some important information from a gargoyle named Bartleby. I think they meet at the fountain where Death took that kid playing soccer that one time.

Bartleby points out that Constantine is going to be forced to help the city whether Constantine wants to help New York or not. I guess some Ghostbusters shit is going down and Constantine is the only one who can save New York. I suppose other magic heroes could save New York but they don't have their own comic books, do they? Lazy bastards.

I really wish Madame Xanadu would get her own book so I could publicly vent my vile hatred for her. Maybe I'll buy her old series just to rant and rave. That fucking barn owl Xanadu pisses me off so much!

John's night ends with him running into Oliver hanging around his apartment with a big bag of curry. Mmm, curry. Mmm. Mmmmmmmm. Um, I think this comic book is over now. Something came up that I need to do! So, um, Constantine decides maybe fucking Oliver won't be the worst thing in the world since he's gotten people killed so many times before, what's one more? Especially if that one more can make him wail like a banshee who is coming because it's being fucked in the ass while getting a rough, ball-slapping reach around.

Constantine the Hellblazer #6 Rating: +1 Ranking. A real comic book reviewer would explain to you why the comic book they just read is better than a lot of other comic books they tend to read. No, wait. A real comic book reviewer would, in most cases, say a bunch of nice shit about any comic book they've read, especially if it were written or drawn by a professional whom they've met and with whom they feel they have some kind of rapport. But I'm just this stupid asshole who enjoys hearing myself type. You get what I mean. So I don't know how to express why this book is so much better than...let's say...Cullen Bunn's "Lost Army." I mean, I could tell you why that comic book is crappy crap of a...well, just smear crap on a bunch of words and that pretty much describes it. What I might be getting at is that when a story forms around a well thought out character, the comic book tends to be better than when a character is made to fit within the confines of the plot. Like Cullen Bunn's "Aquaman"! That isn't an Aquaman story at all, so it doesn't work. It's also possible that I just don't like anything I've read by Cullen Bunn and so I decided to use this space to criticize his writing. Yes, that's also possible. Who knows, really? Ultimately my intent doesn't matter because the reader is so fucking important that apparently whatever the reader concludes with their tiny minds is what matters. Pshaw! I mean, unless that reader is a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader! And then the Reader is more important than the Writer! Whew! I almost wrote myself into a corner there. Nice save, me!

If you enjoyed this review and want to help support me so I can keep justifying spending time doing these things, how about supporting my Patreon? If you support me, I'll try not to insult you personally. I promise I didn't just keep my fingers crossed as I typed that.