Not happy with letting him exist within his own dark corner of their publishing line, DC has brought Constantine fully into the fold with their new ongoing, “Constantine.” But does the dark magician find the appropriate home within this new world?
Well, not really. Not more so than he already had, anyway.
Written by Ray Fawkes and Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Renato Guedes• The star of JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK is unleashed in his all-new ongoing series!
• Liar, cheater, manipulator…John Constantine is all of these, and yet he uses these skills and more to protect the world from the darkest corners of the DC Universe.
• What Constantine learns in this first issue will shake the very foundations of the New 52…and only he knows how to deal with it!
All things considered, if there’s one character who doesn’t need any kind of re-tooling, it’s John Constantine. He’s a pretty simple guy: surly Brit does magic, pulls clever tricks. That’s about all there is to it. Throughout years of “Hellblazer” issues, that much always remains true no matter how in-depth into his personae the creative team decides to guess. They never over-humanize him or try and turn him into an entirely sympathetic character, because like the Punisher over at Marvel but with less magic he’s an anti-hero.
And it’s not like DC doesn’t ostensibly know that. Constantine has been popping up in books left and right since the New 52 began, even getting a starring role in “Justice League Dark.” His role has remained very much concurrent with what makes him charming, just showing up to do a few actions that are debatable as to whether he’s helping or hurting, mostly in the Dark titles like “I, Vampire” and “Swamp Thing,” but he’s still basically a prick. He’s less of a bastard than usual overall, sure, and he’s definitely becoming more of a sympathetic character (especially in the current arc where he’s lost his “lying powers”), but he’s still very much just a version of John Constantine with a censor bar over his mouth. It takes some of the fun out of it, but it doesn’t ostensibly make him any less enjoyable.
It’s with that in mind, then, that it is sort of bewildering why the creative team of “Justice League Dark” can’t make a more entertaining debut for the character’s new solo title.
See, the biggest problem with “Constantine” is that it’s a fairly dull book. There’s nothing exciting, nothing particularly clever about it. It’s about as run of the mill as you can get, not giving any particular insight into the character of John Constantine nor the world he lurks in. All of the things that make “Hellblazer” entertaining – the dark comedy, the twists, the sarcastic and slightly sardonic dialogue – is missing, replaced instead with a man who is borderline inept, sort of fudging his way through events in his life for a story that’s over before it really begins. Reading “Constantine” feels like reading a small piece of a larger puzzle, as if Lemire and Fawkes are trying to create a big magical mystery tour to throw Constantine on, but in setting up the future they neglect the present, and the book suffers because of it.
Not to mention the pretty misleading solicit there, but whatever. That’s a grain of sand on a beach full of let downs.
Admittedly, part of the problem here could conceivably be the rushed nature of the title. Robert Vendetti, the book’s original writer, stepped down to focus on other projects (assumedly “Green Lantern”), leaving Fawkes and Lemire to quickly fill in the blanks and put together a script for the issue. But that’s what it feels like: Rushed. Forced. A touch insincere. Nothing about “Constantine” #1 makes “Constantine” #2 seem particularly appealing, and that’s a grand shame for a character like him, who has such a terrific legacy of writers and artists behind him. Every creative team that has worked on “Hellblazer” has left their own stamp in one way or another, whether it be grand gestures like Garth Ennis and Peter Milligan or minor but still memorable stories like Jason Aaron and Si Spurrier. This, while it’s meant to feel like a fresh start, basically reads as a complete 180 from everything that came before, everything that made his book interesting in the past, in order to fit in more with a line that changes its notion of what it wants to be weekly (almost daily at this point, really). And that’s disappointing.
Continued belowIt’s tough to blame Fawkes and Lemire, though. If any creator was put in a bind, it was them. Lemire is an incredibly talented storyteller, and his work on “Justice League Dark” and “Animal Man” is great, showing that he is the man for this kind of job. Fawkes is talented as well, with his book “One Soul” being one of the most memorable graphic novels of the past few years, and while it’s early in his DC career you can’t help but want the best from him, whether it be two issues on “Batgirl” or a “Pandora” ongoing; I honestly want Fawkes to be DC’s next big hero, in the way that Snyder and Lemire were. But nothing about “Constantine” particularly endears either creator on a positive light here, and you’re better off reading “Justice League Dark” if you want a book that’s more entertaining, and arguably more coherent.
Even Renato Guedes isn’t on top form in this issue. His work isn’t necessarily phoned in, but it’s at least a few rungs under that on the ladder. A lot of the art is fairly chaotic, the characters not fully formed and often times blocky. Even the book’s big finale isn’t particularly interesting visually, if only due to awkward blocking and framing that downplays any potential shock (not to mention it being pretty eye-roll inducing anyway). The coloring by Marcelo Maiolo gives the book a weird, digital look as if most of the characters were made in some kind of 3D animator, and the whole book generally suffers visually because of it, with washed on colors that don’t bring any real definition to the characters. Guedes’ art is much better than this, and his past work on various Superman titles will show it, but the art of this issue – like pretty much everything else in it – doesn’t feel 100% to the talent of the creator involved.
Of course, despite all of this I will note something: “Constantine” could get better. Most of the problems of this book seem to stem from how it was put together, and it’s tough to really hold anyone working on this title to fault because of it. “Constantine” #2 could be a smash success, and make this issue look better by comparison. But that’s a risk you’re going to have to take on your own.
Getting excited about a DC Comic these days seems like a fool’s game at this point. You want to see the company go back to it’s glory days, the days when they were putting out quality over quantity, but those days are long gone. “Constantine” is pretty much a perfect example of this: a switched-in creative team putting out work below their talent, resulting in a mediocre first issue that’s better left on the stands than in your home. The silver lining of “Justice League Dark” is still there, but there’s no real point for you to double up on your monthly in-take of Constantine. Not with this, anyway.
Final Verdict: 3.0 – Pass
