Hellblazer: Rise and Fall

Simon Spurrier’s concluding volume of “Hellblazer” wasn’t everything I wanted from a story about John Constantine.  Neither is “Rise and Fall.”  To writer Tom Taylor and artist Darick Robertson’s credit, however, they get a lot closer to nailing the appeal of the character and why I like reading stories about him.  Even if the story they’re telling feels like an amped-up fill-in run from the character’s Vertigo days.

After you get past some setup that will be important later on, the story hook for “Rise and Fall” reveals itself:  Billionaires are dropping from the sky.  While this normally wouldn’t trouble Detective Aisha Bukhari and her partner Gary, the catch is that all of these billionaires have had feathery wings sewn onto their backs.  If this wasn’t weird enough, the appearance of her old friend John Constantine at one of the crime scenes lets her know that there’s much more going on here.  This is true, except that it involves one of John’s earliest attempts at magic, as well as the owner of said wings who would really like them back.

Squint hard enough and you’ll see the setup for an old “Hellblazer” story, “Son of Man” by Garth Ennis and John Higgins, at the root of “Rise and Fall.”  Even if Taylor did draw inspiration from that story, he throws enough new stuff into it — the billionaires with wings, Aisha, the story’s Very Special guest star — to make his vision unique.  Granted, said vision still comes off feeling a bit slight in the sense that the stakes never feel like they get too high or important.  Which is something of a problem when your climax decides to go big and involves a demon ripping through the streets of London.

No, the story feels more like an excuse for Taylor to take Constantine for a drive and show off the character’s brand of cynical humor and magical cleverness.  These are good things as the writer has a good hand on the character’s personality and it’s fun seeing him trade barbs with Aisha and the Very Special guest star.  We also get some good scenes showing how Constantine is really good with on-the-spot thinking in ways that both involve actual planning and/or a solid bluff.  This involves the climax of the story as well, which has the villain being outsmarted in a satisfying manner.

While the main character is served well by the writer, the main supporting cast is served in a mostly decent way as well.  Aisha makes a favorable impression as she’s got enough guts to not be intimidated by the magical challenges she faces, even if we’ve seen this kind of strength and sass from previous “Hellblazer” paramours.  Meanwhile, John’s long-suffering cabbie friend Chaz only gets a few scenes here, but it’s a quality-over-quantity equation here as they’re all really good at nailing the complicated bond that keeps the two together.

Then there’s the Very Special guest star.  Believe it or not, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time Constantine has actually teamed up with this specific character in his history.  Oh, he’s teamed up with versions of this character, but they’ve usually been renamed because of editorial circumstances.  Points to Taylor for actually pulling the trigger on including the actual character in this story, and more for making them an entertainingly comedic foil for the main character.  Granted, it would’ve been interesting to see the character’s malevolent side play a bigger role here, but that would’ve interfered with the generally light and brisk tone that the miniseries is going for.

This tone is something that Robertson nails quite well.  If you’ll recall, Robertson did a few Constantine-centric pages in the pages of “DCeased” about two years back.  They were pretty good, and his work in “Rise and Fall” just gives us a whole volume full of them.  Robertson is one of the best caricaturists in the comics and he does some great facial and expression work here with an impressive amount of variations on Constantine’s brand of weary cynicism and a whole host of characters who ably and enjoyably respond to all of the craziness in the story.  Very Special guest star included.  Robertson can also do action like a pro, so when the story has to deliver a scene of Chas having to out-drive a demon that’s chasing him and John, you know it’s going to look good.

I’ve spent a lot of this review talking about how “Rise and Fall” relates to “Hellblazer’s” history.  As someone who has read through the entirety of Constantine’s original series, I’ve got some very particular thoughts on what makes a good story involving the character.  This one is ultimately pretty good, but I was expecting better from a story that’s being published in the oversized Black Label format for $25.  If you haven’t read as much “Hellblazer” as me, then you’ll likely come away a bit more impressed; though, you’ll likely still wish it was cheaper too.