Hellblazer #2 - 12/18/19
“I know a junkie when I see him...”
Hellblazer #2 - Cover by J P Leon
Issue #2 Drops Dec 18
Hello. You encounter team ‘Blazer still somewhat staggered, this week, off the back of the response to issue #1. Our deepest, smokiest, sweariest thanks for the support and kind words.
Issue #2 drops this week. On shelves 18th December. This is the second part of the GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND arc.
As before, series artist is Aaron Campbell, with colors by Jordie Bellaire, cover by J P Leon, and letters by Aditya Bidikar. Words by yours truly.
Jump down to the bottom for a fully lettered preview of the issue. We’re all particularly fond of the sign language stuff (which will become a recurring feature in future issues). Speakers of ASL will, I hope, forgive us: we’ve used BSL as standard.
By the way, if you didn’t already, it’s worth trying to track down a copy of Books Of Magic #14, which dropped last month. This is the issue I co-wrote with regular BoM scribe Kat Howard, featuring John Constantine’s first port-of-call upon his return to London (namely: a confrontation with child occultist Timothy Hunter).
I mention it here because, as well as being a really neat little story with a very cool formalist trick at its core, it features a new ally recruited by John. One who makes a reappearance in Hellblazer #2. His name is The Vestibulan.
Trade waiters need not worry — I understand BoM#14 will be collected in the first new HB trade (alongside the Sandman Universe Special which kicked-started all this stuff).
But for those of you who didn’t /won’t pick up BoM#14, and can’t wait for the trade — spoilers — the Vestibulan was once an angel. During the War In Heaven he and his mates refused to take either side (regarding it all as a lot of fuss over nothing — who, after all, would really want to command the hearts and souls of a bunch of hairless monkeys?). Once the dust settled they were punished for their apathy, condemned to spend eternity in the entrance vestibule of Hell, being stung by giant wasps.
(Lest any of that should sound like a particularly farfetched flight of nutfuckery on my part, this is all culled from the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, who seemed to have a real beef with studied neutrality and spared not one jot of sympathy for the Vestibulan and his kin, unlike all the poor misguided murderers, rapists and heretics encountered on the lower levels of the pit. So it goes, Billy Pilgrim.)
For the purposes of Books of Magic #14, Constantine recruited the Vestibulan as a judge for the sneaky test he’d prepared for Timothy Hunter. As John puts it:
“TheVestibulan’s disgusted by literally everything in creation -- ie: as close to unbiased as you can get . He’s so grateful to be set free once in a while he won’t even try and claim the summoner’s soul. Fact is, the bloody demon ain’t the biggest bastard in tonight’s little drama.”
By the end of the issue Timothy Hunter has cheated at the test and — well, there’s no easy way to put this — has locked the Vestibulan away into John’s recently-aquired cellphone.
…all of which should hopefully explain, for the uninitiated, why John spends some of Hellblazer #2 chatting to a haunted smartphone. It’s a weird, weird life.
(Hellblazer #2 is in stores Wednesday 18th December 2019.)
“...a return to form for one of comics’ greatest anti-heroes. It’s brash, weird, funny, and everything you’d expect from a comic with the name Hellblazer across its cover. This comic walks around with a knowing, wry sneer on its face, like a punk kid in a sea of jocks, returning John Constantine to the outsider status he originally flourished within.”
Meet the Vestibulan. From Books of Magic #14, art by Tom Fowler and Craig Tailleffer.
