John Constantine: Hellblazer - In the Line of Fire

Written by Paul Jenkins, with art by Sean Phillips and Al Davidson
Year of Publication: 2015

Magician and con man John Constantine has once more evaded damnation.  This time by splitting off the negative aspects of his personality and sending them to Hell in his place.  However, things are far form over for him.  Haunted by the loss of parts of himself, Constantine has to find out what kind of person he wants to be.  In the meantime there are ghostly dogs, haunted houses, demonic soccer fans and the spirit of England itself and more to deal with.  At the same time he has to confront the deepest and darkest of his own past in order to become whole again.

John Constantine was first created by legendary comics creator Alan Moore in the pages of Swamp Thing in 1985.  In 1987 the character graduated to his own title, John Constantine:  Hellblazer, which ran for 300 issues until 2013.  Throughout it's run Hellblazer was one of the cornerstones of Vertigo, the mature readers imprint of DC Comics.  In more recent years Constantine has become part of the more mainstream DC Universe. John Constantine was a working class English magician, who was always at best an antihero.  He was a con man, a manipulator, a thief and often extremely unlikeable but usually sympathetic, even when he succeeded, it was often more due to luck, bargaining  or trickery than any magical ability.  Fortunately for fans, Vertigo are reprinting Hellblazer in bulky large format books.  In the Line of Fire is the tenth volume collecting issues 97 to 107 which ran throughout 1996.  It's part of the hitherto uncollected four year run on the title by writer Paul Jenkins and artist Sean Phillips.

The book consists of loosely linked mostly one and two part stories and one three part story.  The story about the soccer hooligans and the demon is possibly the weakest, but it is still pretty fun and the rest are good slices of classic Hellblazer.  Interestingly, for an American comic published by an American company, the stories are very British and full of references to British politics, history and mythology.  Jenkins has a good feel for time and place and roots the comic very much in the Britain of the mid nineties.  The horror is rooted in the characters and is well complemented by Phillips' artwork which is at turns realistic and moody.