John Constantine: Hellblazer vol. 2 — The Best Version of You

Vol. 1 was pretty much everything that I’d hoped a Simon Spurrier-written version of “Hellblazer” would be.  Macabre horror, stories with clever twists, and John Constantine being the one bastard who could always be counted on to come out on top.  For better and for worse.  I was excited to see what the writer had in store for this second volume, even though I knew that the series had been cancelled while he was planning for its second year.  At the end of the day, that’s not the volume’s biggest problem.  “The Best Version of You” does have a lot to recommend it, even as Spurrier seems utterly determined to find a way to make its title character into a bigger bastard than he’s ever been.

Before we get to that part, though, we get some stories which feature Constantine encountering some creatures that have rarely, if ever, graced the pages of “Hellblazer.”  The two-part “Britannia Rule the Waves” starts off the volume as the magician investigates a suspiciously successful fisherman who is able to get his hands on all the best cuts despite his lack of skill.  It probably could’ve been cut down to one issue as its story of how love can make a fantastic woman fall for an awful man has been done before.  It’s still a decently-told tale, enlivened by Constantine’s romantic cynicism and Aaron Campbell’s art, which is on-point with its grittiness here.

Matias Bergara takes over for the next two issues and his softer linework gives their stories an appropriately fantastical feel to them.  In the case of “The Favourite,” there is only one fantastical thing in the story, but it’s a doozy.  It’s also about Spurrier taking a very thinly veiled swipe at the real-life Prince Andrew and his many indiscretions, as well as the Royal Family which enabled them.  The story itself plays off of the conventions of the creature at the heart of it quite well, while the story’s flashback structure also has its appeal as it expertly plays off the things it sets up.  If I’m being honest, this is the best story in the volume.

Next is “The Wake-Up Call,” which is really the setup for the volume’s two-part finale.  It starts off with Constantine getting a visit from the older version of himself that’s been causing all of the trouble for him and England in the series to date.  He’s not here for our protagonist’s soul, though.  The man just wants to have a chat with his investment so he can remind him who’s really in charge as they cruise through a dreamscape while being chased by an unknown force.  Meanwhile, in the real world, the series’ supporting cast is murdered one-by-one by an individual wearing a fox mask.

After all of the Spurrier-written comics that I’ve read, I was honestly convinced that he was cleaning house with this specific issue.  I mean, what’re the bodies of a half-dozen more friends/acquaintances to Constantine to the pile of such that he’s accumulated over the decades?  That this winds up being an elaborate fake-out isn’t the real twist with this story — which ultimately does a good job of illustrating the threat posed by Constantine’s older self.  No, the real twist is that half of the characters who are killed here would have been better off if they had died in this issue.

Which brings us to the finale, “This Sceptered Isle,” a two-part story whose two parts are so vastly dissimilar they may as well be their own stories.  The first half tells us about Rawhead, the secret villain of the series and how he went from pagan boogeyman to a fearmongering politician in the present day.  While he initially wanted revenge against Constantine for a slight that involved the magician sealing him away in a grave and then banging a woman on top of it, he now realizes that man may be his only hope.  You see, Rawhead knows what Old Man Constantine has been fostering underneath Parliament…

This is a long, rambling tale from a creature brought low and it provides an entertaining mix of the political and the supernatural.  While it might be easy to blame Britain’s xenophobia on an actual monster, Spurrier knows that would be too easy.  Which is why the monster winds up calling Constantine.  It’s because the humans have found a way to transcend fearmongering.  They’ve turned it into pride… in a rather literal and unusual form.

With all of that setup out of the way, the story’s second half is all plot and incident as Constantine has to figure out a way to stop what his older self has been planning.  His problem is that the magician is up against an older version of himself, and is therefore someone who knows all of his tricks.  Which means that if our Constantine is going to triumph, he’s going to have to pull out one that even he himself didn’t know he had.

Said trick is dark.  Even by typical “Hellblazer” standards, and especially by one of my favorite bits of Spurrier-written darkness.  (That’d be the time that Doctor Aphra mind-wiped her girlfriend to think that she’d murdered the Doctor.)  It’s also not the only bit of bleakness to find its way into this issue as it’s positively crammed with them.  Bad people die bad deaths.  Good people die bad deaths.  And Constantine?  He “lives” to magic another day by doing his worst trick:  Getting someone close to him to damn themselves for his own sake.

If this sounds like a lot to take in, it is.  You can feel Spurrier trying to cram every point he wants to make about the character into this issue while still trying to give the relevant parts enough space to breathe.  Oh, and to provide enough closure to a series that he thought he was going to have another six-to-twelve issues to write.  I think he does alright on the latter count and well enough on the former.  Campbell doesn’t offer him a whole lot of help here as while his art is still moody and atmospheric, it’s also physically dark and murky with a lot of scenes being hard to make out as a result.

In the end it all feels like Spurrier was determined to find a new way to make Constantine come off as despicable without completely alienating his fanbase.  I’m not surprised as the writer  has carved out a career in the Big Two by holding up mirrors to the characters he writes so we can see them as they really are.  The problem is that Constantine is an irredeemable bastard and creating a story which reflects that goes right past “Entertainingly Dark” and into “Entertainingly Depressing.”

Spurrier is a clever enough writer that he knows how to twist the narrative just enough that we don’t know exactly what’s coming and are spared the pain of knowing what’s going to happen before its characters do.  That’s ultimately what makes “The Best Version of You” an entertaining read in the end in spite of its flaws.  It also presents a withering, yet true look at its title character along with all the pain that entails.  I would’ve followed Spurrier to another volume of this series for all these things, even though I’m left feeling that peering further into Constantine’s soul would either result in a cataclysmically depressing reading experience at worst, or diminishing returns at best.