By Brian Azzarello & Marcelo Frusin (Vertigo)
ISBN 1-84023-433-4
In this volume Brian Azzarello continues to explore human monstrosity, dredging the darkest depths of life. Freed from prison (see Hellblazer: Hard Time -ISBN: 1-84023-255-2 for the grim details) the magical, morally ambivalent Trickster-Magician has headed deep into America’s rural Southlands. Constantine has a half-baked idea of explaining the true circumstances of his incarceration to the family of the man he’s supposed to have murdered. It doesn’t help that the bereaved wife is actually one of his old girlfriends, from the days when he was a punk rock singer, and a mere dabbler in the dark world of the supernatural.
Doglick, West Virginia is a sleazy, broken hole in the ground. Dirt-poor, with no jobs for anybody the dumb, redneck yokels that abide there are every hillbilly hick cliché you could imagine. Constantine and the Fermin boys go back a ways, and his old girl friend married Richard. They used to call him ‘Lucky’, but that was before he killed himself and framed Constantine for the murder.
Inured to the horrors of the Outer Dark and the vile lust for power that infects human and Unhuman alike, the Magician is totally unprepared for the different kind of horrors that infests the poverty-stricken hell-hole he finds himself trapped in.
Azzarello & Marcelo Frusin have challenged John Constantine with a truly different kind of horror. Cloying, oppressive and inexorable, this visceral and truly disturbing wilderness tale is a powerful testament to the versatility of the character. Constantine has been many things: Con-man, hero, villain, thief and even monster. Here he is also pitifully human…
Compelling storytelling – even if only for those who can handle it.
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