Constantine finds himself with a group of new age hippies and seems happy but of course that never lasts long. They stumble onto a group that is tapping the ley lines in order to create fear and change the political parties in charge. John is on the run from them and also trying to get to get one of them back from the group that is using her mental powers to charge the fear machine. While on the trail he enlists some nonmagical allies that bring everything into focus but as usual nothing good happens to anyone that helps out Constantine. An ok story but didn’t leave me wanting to pick up the next volume as soon as I can. ( )

Well, what's there to say about this? There's lots of hippies, and government conspiracies, and towards the end a lot of mixing of mythologies that don't really mesh all that well to create a deus ex machina. I'm not entirely sure this comic made any sense. It starts off well enough, a mystical girl is kidnapped by the badies who want to use her powers for evil and Constantine needs to save her. But it all falls apart towards the end, and Constantine does literally nothing except maybe act like some sort of dildo? I honestly don't know, I think Delano just pulled the last 20 pages out of his ass after a bad trip. ( )

Second time around (first read the Hellblazer series back in the 1980s in monthly comic form), I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this collection. The artwork feels somewhat clumsy in places, but the storyline - which sees JC taking refuge with a bunch of a new-age travellers - still resonates. It's interesting, too, how much of the social commentary remains true. The theme of female emancipation / liberation certainly rings big bells...

This young(ish) version of Constantine is more vulnerable and less hard-bitten than he's written in later years. The dialogue is no less entertaining, mind, and the series has kept its feeling of freshness, of daring. For a 'horror comic', it's remarkably daring in its blunt appraisal of the human condition.

Hellblazer can be challenging. It features counter-culture ideals, sexual expressiveness, recreational substances, a cast of intriguing supporting characters who drift in and out, and a stack of bad guys (usually but not always demons. The Snob is no good guy, for instance). It's self-referential, DC-universe referential, occult literature referential and deliberately obscure.

This self-contained story is reasonably easy to get to grips with, but even then if you're unfamiliar with the series then some of the back-story will be opaque.
7/10
( )

On the run for murder, Constantine connects with a group of new age travelers whose psychic abilities will be exploited by a defense contractor out to create a Fear Machine. Even if John Constantine as a hippie is on the unlikely side, it's still entertaining to see his acerbic self mingle with more earthy people. Mercury is also a great character and it is interesting to see how Constantine connects with her without being flippant. The first half of the volume is a little slow as Constantine is such a passive character and some "real" magic and action would have kicked the pace up, but after the train "incident," the story picks up properly and comes to a very convincing resolution (other than the absolutely ridiculous egg-situation at the end!). Constantine is one of my favorite comic book characters, though, so I have a hard time faulting his sarcastic, witty self regardless what he does, but I think the story is universal enough to be interesting to all fans of good-versus-evil comic book readers. ( )