As someone who is wary of the DC universe in general, but in love with Neil Gaiman's Sandman, I've been meaning to read a John Constantine comic for awhile. I've spotted flashes of him in cartoons, or Gaiman storylines, but it was just the brief wink of gritty charm and devastating magic. When I picked up Constantine: The Hellblazer at the library, I knew the time had come to for a longer look. No other storyline is going to appeal to me more than one written by a woman of color who is excited to make John's bisexuality explicit on the page.

With London a little too full of his past, John jumped the pond to New York City. New faces, new places, new start, right? Incorrect. Just because this cityscape is American doesn't mean things are different. John still has the worst luck and finds himself in the most impossible scrapes (very Clint Barton "Okay, this looks bad, but..." vibe). The detective struggles to relate to his fellow humans. Ever since he "crossed over" to the magical world, it's been much easier to chat up demons, ghosts, and other creatures that go bump in the night. An entourage of ghosts count as friends, right?

The answer is a solid maybe. Demons love a good back-stabbing, and a giant tentacle monster is devouring his ghost friends. London's calling him back, and he's got to put that past to rest. remember that time he was in queer magic rockband lol

"Maybe" is a good way to describe my reading experience. I enjoyed the art, and John's bisexuality was lovely and spoiled me rotten for good rep. His love interest, Oliver, is adorable. From my peeks of him, I knew John is supposed to be the smarmy bastard type, the one who straddles the line between hero and anti-hero. What I didn't expect was him to be so...stupid about it? John's actions aren't morally ambiguous so much as morally dense. I can follow his logic up to a certain point, but then he seems to make a bad decision out of churlish, contrarian impulse. On the next page he bemoans how shit he is, and I'm left confused. Does he seek redemption or not? Does he want to live with humans, monsters, or a combination? Worse, the narrative can't seem to decide how to frame John either: he is good, evil, charming, sympathetic, repugnant, alarmingly bright, and depressingly dim-witted all at once.

When the comic finished, I was left with a vague feeling of sadness. Like, this poor moron. If you want redemption, you seek redemption. It is that simple and that hard.