Warning! Spoilers Hellblazer: Rise and Fall by Tom Taylor and Darrick Robertson below!
Hellblazer is back with a gritty, mature tone that's not for the faint of heart, nor for those attempting to avoid their own guilty conscious. John Constantine has become a well established DC character both in comics and on television. The world of magic which he has embedded himself in is dark, but also extremely tantalizing. The life of a sinner: full of mistakes, traumas, debts, and most of all, guilt... who readers are still yearning to learn more about.
Constantine has always been an oddball of sorts, a kind of anti-hero. He lives on the edge of society, fearful for the fates of those who get close to him, constantly fighting against the pull of heaven and hell. Longtime fans of his character know that he has a plethora of personal issues, stemming from many quadrants of his life, that form him into the chain-smoking, sweet-talking, cynical chap that he is. What we haven't really gotten to see though, is him truly go head to head with the guilt he lets lay waste to his psyche... and his life. With the newest Hellblazer story, we may finally be getting to see his guilt play a pivotal role.
As is iconic for the Hellblazer comics, Constantine plays an additional role as a first-hand narrator to his own life story, providing us with a personal touch to his dramatic life. In the first issue of Hellblazer: Rise and Fall we immediately get an idea for what the theme of this story is going to be as Constantine starts by saying, "safe to say I know a little something about guilt." Longtime readers already know he has plenty reason to be guilty, but why is this different, why is he now addressing it so directly? Well, as the story goes, it starts with his birth, the guilt of being given life at the sacrifice of his mother's. A father who filters endless blame and hatred unto his son, a son who wants to practice magic seemingly to impress, to escape, to forget.
That path leads to his first encounter with the occult, a desire to impress his friends, and the instigator for the next notch in his belt: the loss of a friend, Billy. His desire to get away, to show off, ends in his friend drowning. Again, he's saved at the expense of another. He was born into guilt, and the guilt followed him. He may be cynical, but even cynics are human. They feel pain, fear, sadness, grief. That's how this new Hellblazer installment starts. It opens up into a world of guilt for which Constantine seems to be himself, drowning in, although it's highly doubtful he'd admit it. Clearly, this edition is shaping up to be centered around finally addressing that theme and aspect of Constantine's existence.
This concept is fortified when the comic fast forwards to the present, to the world in its current state, to Constantine now: a grown man, still smoking his wait in Silk Cut cigarettes and appearing whenever the call of the celestial or magical wreaks havoc. As a new weird and deadly phenomenon of similar style starts to unveil itself in the literal heights of Liverpool he reconnects with Aisha, the friend who saved him in his childhood, in order to investigate the current happenings.
Unfortunately for Constantine, it seems his guilty past is coming back to haunt him, and not just mentally. Billy, seemingly having not aged a day, has come to fight for all those who have lost their lives by being associated with John Constantine, and in doing so, takes the life of Aisha's partner Gary. It's only time before Constantine finds out who shot Gary and why, but one thing is for sure, his guilty conscious is about to grow a little heavier. What this means for his character and for the story arc of this edition of Hellblazer is yet to be revealed, but we can assume that the weight of his guilt will be playing a prominent role.