| Comic Review | A.C. Hall |
Hellblazer
#223
Writer: Denise Mina
Artist: Cristiano Cucina
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Jared K. Fletcher
Plot: John Constantine is summoned into the sewers by
his friend Map, who is suffering from crippling visions. As
John arrives he finds his friend dying as he projects
visions of London being destroyed and decimated. Meanwhile,
some nut job prepares to go out and destroy London.
Review: This was the first Hellblazer comic book I’ve
ever read. Prior to this, my only exposure to the character
was by watching the movie Constantine. I knew one of two
things was going to happen when I read this comic book. I
was either going to really like it or I was going to really
hate it. Let’s just say I really didn’t like it. At all.
I’m not even sure where to start with my complaints of this
comic book. First up is the terrible writing I guess. The
plot of this issue follows every bad comic book cliché there
is. The forced dialogue really made me cringe. All this time
I thought Keanu Reeves was just a bad actor, but compared to
the dialogue in this issue his dialogue in Constantine was
like Shakespeare.
I don’t want to spoil anything for all of you Hellblazer
fans out there, but since I doubt there are any Hellblazer
fans out there, I’m going to spoil it anyways. This just may
have been the most useless issue of a comic book of all
time. Half of the pages are spent building up a villain who
is then neutralized over the course of one panel on the last
page. Map’s insane spiritual death crisis has him dying in a
taxicab on one page, and then being reborn as an eternal
time guardian on the next. With no explanation or meaning as
to how or why it just happened. Then, Constantine just walks
off.
I’ve known some huge Hellblazer fans and I’m more than
positive that even they wouldn’t have liked this issue. This
comic book has been in the hands of some brilliant writers
and visionary creators. Denise Mina is the opposite of
brilliant and visionary. It’s amazing to have a non DC or
Marvel comic on issue 223, but if they don’t get it back
into a competent storytellers hands soon, I don’t see this
book lasting much longer.
Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.
