Earlier this month, I wrote about one part of my pile—the collected editions I need to buy since I can’t get my single issues to complete a series—so now it’s time to move onto the issues I was able to get a hold of from the same series. But this one comes with a bit more of a twist since it’s resolving a five year cliff-hanger and feels like it’s single-handedly looking to revive 90s Vertigo at the same time. We’re back to Constantine with John Constantine, Hellblazer: Dead in America by Simon Spurrier, Aaron Campbell, Jordie Bellaire, and Aditya Bidikar. 

The last time we saw John Constantine, he’d been brought back to life (mostly), discovered he had a son (maybe?), and had compelled people to murder other people for him (regular). The last time we saw him was also before Covid happened (whoops). But since then, Constantine’s kind-of-life has been a lot. Him, Nat, and Noah have all had to flee London for America to avoid the murder investigation there just as John has been tasked with finding the remaining grains of sand missing from Dream of the Endless’s magic sand pouch. After reviving a recently astroturfed Swamp Thing, Constantine begins a trek across the country for said grains while looking for a way to revive himself and wipe clean the blood from his son’s hands. But then there’s the issue of American spirits that have poisoned the cultural landscape preventing him from doing so.

I mentioned earlier how this series felt like it was trying to revive some of the classic Vertigo Comics feelings and not just because it features Dream, Death, and Swamp Thing. Between the 25 issues of this series, it feels like one of those runs of the original Hellblazer series and helps to highlight the lack of long-running series with these characters that contain so much potential for story. That was one of the main things that kept me coming back to those original Vertigo series—either a single creative team and their vision or something that ran longer with a rotating team that had multiple stories and angles to explore. The latter feels like it’s missing from most publishers and that absence leads to less new teams of creators putting their ideas into a character or setting. Trusting writers and artists to create something new and compelling with the backing of a major publisher is that old feeling this series still captures.

John Constantine as a character is a catalyst for stories. He has so much to his personality and mythology that he can be slotted into anything magic-adjacent and have a plot spring forth from him. It’s why Hellblazer existed and why Dead in America continues that tradition. Sometimes all that’s needed for a great comic is a strong enough character to warp the world around them and Constantine really does do nothing but warp everything around his little finger. 

Get excited. Get revived. 

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, & 651) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.