HellBlazer: Original Sins! The original John Constantine comes to comiXology

A man goes hungry on the streets of New York City while across The Atlantic John Constantine returns to his cozy London flat to find it riddled with flies and an old friend waiting for him. Thus begins one of the darkest tales of the DC Universe as the wildly popular Hellblazer series debuted hot off the heels of Alan Moore’s Watchmen back in 1988 to continue the much darker adventures of the supernatural detective Moore himself introduced while working on Swamp Thing a year earlier. Originally a ground breaking title for the main DC comics imprint it wouldn’t be till years later that Hellblazer would become the Vertigo staple that it is today as One of the few titles that often features a much darker take on the mainstream DC Universe.

Since it’ s humble beginnings Hellblazer has become a long time fan favorite as a series combines noir style horror with old fashioned ghost storytelling and a hint of british slang thrown in for good measure and these early issues capture the character of John Constantine at his dreary eyed best.The first nine issues of the Hellblazer series are available for download collecting the American debuts of Writer Jamie Delano and Artist John Ridgeway with it’s first story arc “Original Sins” noted for it’s strong political undercurrent as well as laying out the geography of the DC universe through Constantine’s travels where he faces off against psychopathic murderers, a group of eccentric evangelists, London gangs, demonic hoards and even the horrors of the Vietnam War. Taking readers from the plains of Sudan to the backstreets of Gotham City.

This is one arc that has continues to elude serious collectors to this day but is now available for download. Daring to go where even angels themselves fear to tread Delano and Ridgeway along with superstar covers by Dean McKean set a high standard for the series debut that would later be followed by other industry greats like Mike Cary and Mark Buckingham and continued to this day by Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini.

Hellblazer is a series that takes readers to hell and back by way of dark and dirty back alleyways, posh nightclubs, and of course demonic kingdoms of despair; blurring the lines along the way and always leaving readers hungry for more. John Constantine is a man with a haunted past, a troubled mind and a supreme gift, a hero for a world ruled by the damned and populated with mystery.

Get started with Hellblazer #1 for only $.99 cents then pick up the rest of the series after all it would be a sin not too.

Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors issue 2 – A man throws up snakes that then eat eyeballs

This week Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors issue 2 was released and I was pleased with what it contained. The cover is a little misleading, anime death angel Bleez only shows up at the end, but nonetheless the contents were definitely strong enough to merit a purchase. The series focuses on Guy Gardner, who’s a great character, but succeeds generally in it’s closer focus approach to the Green Lantern Corps and its mythos. Whereas Green Lantern is the superhero book and Corps is the team book, this book is about the space cop and his troubles. This theme is explored through the main character, who contemplates his legacy at the start, as well as other characters like Arisia and Kilowog, whose analyses of their stations in life were sorely needed. It even looks like we’ll get a greater focus on members of the other corps, something many fans have been calling for since their introduction.

I’d read some reservations about the book when it was announced and with the release of its first issue, but if things continue this way I can say confidently they were without merit. Green Lantern charges along, too quickly, adding to the mythology and GLC’s scope is too large to give us important face time with the characters. This book bridges that gap and in so doing pumps up the Green Lantern mythos and makes it come alive.

On a side note, this issue pointed me to a success of Johns’ restoration of the GL franchise I had never seen before. As referenced in the blog post’s title, this issue introduces a psychic villain who vomits up snakes that somehow by eating eyeballs allow him to take control of other psychics and form a psychic network with the aims of revenge on the Guardians for some previous wrongdoing. That’s just kooky comic villainy in its most delicious form. What I realized was that in creating (or putting a greater focus on) the concept of the mistakes of the guardians of the universe throughout time, Johns has given the Green Lantern a rich new well from which many villains can be born. Batman villains are all about mental illness. Now Green Lantern villains can be about sins of the past. This idea– that a policing or governing system can make mistakes and that these mistakes will come to haunt it– is iconic and fits perfectly with everything that the corps is about. One more reason why the Lantern’s dominance may be here to stay.

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