John Constantine is always willing to do a favor for a friend… especially when that friend is someone who can do a favor for HIM in return. Your Major Spoilers review of John Constantine Hellblazer: Dead In America #2 from DC Comics awaits!

JOHN CONSTANTINE HELLBLAZER: DEAD IN AMERICA #2

Writer: Simon Spurrier
Artist: Aaron Campbell
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Editor: Chris Conroy
Publisher: DC Comics/Black Label
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: February 21, 2024

Previously in John Constantine Hellblazer: Dead In America: With the specter of mortality breathing down his neck, John heads to the Big Easy, where he enlists the skills of old friend Clarice Sackville to heal the fractured mind of Alec Holland, the Swamp Thing, and use that elemental power to kickstart his own dead heart. Perhaps she can do that–but it will require a drug-induced journey into distant realms that’ll shake John to his rotten core. And meanwhile, Nat and Noah learn the magical lengths Clarice is willing to go to in order to extend her own terrifyingly long life…

THE CUMAEAN SYBIL

Having traveled to the United States to call upon the elemental power of the Swamp Thing, Constantine has discovered to his horror that the avatar of The Green is… not himself today. In fact, he’s a scattered echo of the erl-king John once knew, forcing him to call in another favor in the hopes of helping his plant friend, so that Swamp Thing might save him. While the new god-beings of America work to get him killed, John pays a visit to an elderly wizard named Clarice, who is willing to help, but requires John’s son and friend Nat to find her a somatic component: The heart of a vampire. Once his “minions” have left, Constantine and Clarice get to work on the real solution, a psychedelic tuber-inspired journey into the realm of the noncorporeal, and the desiccated, blackening void once called The Green. On the way, they encounter the beings who have conspired against John, while Nat and Noah actually encounter a vampire. In classic Constantine fashion, he reveals a secret to Clarice, who double-crosses him and reveals that the vampire is HERS.

Of course, it’s never a good idea to try and out-bastard the Hellblazer.

WHITHER THE SWAMP THING?

While DC’s current “no continuity” attitude is present in the Black Label line as well, this issue clearly takes place in the same reality as Hellblazer Volume 1, allowing for the appearance of Morpheus, a Swamp Thing who is still Alec Holland (unlike the Prime Earth version), and callbacks to John’s entire twenty-five-plus-year history. Spurrier finds an iconic voice for Constantine, with bits of Moore, Delano, and later voices informing and older, theoretically wiser John who is nonetheless dumb enough to have gotten into another impossible, fatal situation. On the art side, Aaron Campbell’s moody renderings are classic Vertigo, especially when Clarice tells the tale of her youth, and the story that eventually ended up in the works of T.S. Eliot, but the piece de resistance is clearly the perfectly time appearance of a speeding double-decker bus in the middle of a midnight boneyard. It’s an apt metaphor for John’s adventure in America, as well as being a damn cool visual.

BOTTOM LINE: THE STORY CONSTANTINE DESERVES

In short, John Constantine Hellblazer: Dead In America #2 may have an impenetrably convoluted title, but it has a (you should excuse the expression) killer story and excellent art, as well as a number of plot elements that make every page the proverbial nail-biter, earning 5 out of 5 stars overall. It’s been more than a decade since DC made the bone-headed decision to cancel Hellblazer, but this issue proves that not only is it possible to recapture the old days, it’s well worth your five bucks.

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