Review Hellblazer, Vol. 12: How To Play With Fire Depicted By Paul Jenkins Presented In Ebook

volume features the last eight issues of Paul Jenkins excellent run, and aparter by former Hellblazer writer Garth Ennis, Sean Phillips, Jenkins' penciller for the bulk of his time on the title, is replaced by Warren Pleece, who had previously done a fillin issue, and Ennis' story is illustrated by newcomer John Higgins.


Spoilers below!

In "Up the Down Staircase" Constantine joins Dani on a trip to the States to spend Thanksgiving holiday with her family, and there are some comically uncomfortable moments as he tries in vain to adjust to the culture shock.
But the real story begins subtly, as there are indications even before they get off the plane that things are off people are behaving strangely and aggressively to be perfectly honest, this weirdness isn't addressed adequately, so it's difficult to summarize.
But the point is, Dani's family has also been affected negatively by this strange malaise, and tensions are running high in the house.
While Dani goes off skiing instead of facing the problem, Constantine is left to deal with it, and once again crosses paths with the First of the Fallen.
But this time, the Devil doesn't really have much to do with it it's the media, the television, the coarsening of the culture.
Overexposure. But he's certainly having loads of fun watching it all happen,

Constantine figures out that the problem, at least for Dani's family, is originating with Dani's grandfather, and with the help of a spiritchanneling friend, delves into the mind and history of the old man.
This was a nice bit we get to see the man's full and rich life, all the key experiences that shaped him as a black man in America and the world, all the life he lived before ultimately winding up a tired, unthinking old man in front of a television.
This solves the problem somehow

Okay, As Constantine says to us, the readers, "A remarkably stupid concept, mind, But good enough for this friggin' story, "

To be fair, I was a bit drunk when I read this so there is a possibility I missed some important details.


More important than the actual story, though, is the subplot that sets up the next and last Jenkins story, While Constantine is busy in the States, back in England an acquaintance of his named Gavin is tormented by the death of his girlfriend Pam many years previous.
Through the very clever use of various false memories, Pam's ghost plants seeds of despair in Gavin's mind, until he ultimately decides Constantine must pay.
. .

At the end of "Up the Down Staircase," the Devil having the time of his life watching Constantine squirm! meets our man at the airport, and happily gives him his business card, saying, in effect, "Call me.
Trust me, you're gonna want to very soon, "

And this leads us directly into "How to Play with Fire," Jenkins grand finale,

Gavin continues to have changing memories of the events leading up to Pam's death as Pam's ghost continues to mess with his head.
Turns out the ghost isn't Pam after all, It's . the demoness Ellie. Cool, right Since she can't kill Constantine see my review of "In the Line of Fire" she's decided to take a less direct route to her revenge.
Ellie begins to work on the hearts and minds of Constantine's friends and family, turning them against him, and Constantine becomes more and more isolated from anyone who can help.


Ellie's coup de grace happens when she arranges for Dani to catch Constantine sleeping with someone else, He isn't, but hey, what else is Dani going to think when she walks in and finds her boyfriend naked in bed with another woman The woman is Ellie, of course, and Constantine is innocent, but good luck explaining that.


The demoness reveals to Gavin that he alone is responsible for Pam's death, leaving him wallowing in despair that eventually ends with suicide.
She continues to chip away at Constantine's friends' hearts, until Constantine finally does the unthinkable: instead of wheeling and dealing, instead of putting his own selfpreservation front and center as usual, he sacrifices everything for the safety of his friends.
He sells his soul to the First of the Fallen, free and clear, no scams, no tricks, It's a huge moment, and a turning point for Constantine as a human being,

Because of his deal with Constantine, the Devil can now find Ellie, who has been hiding from him for years in the farthest reaches of Hell.
In a cruel move, the Devil poses as her lost angel lover long enough to capture her and consign her to endless torment.


Remember that old man in the woods with the tarot cards from the beginning of "In the Line of Fire" Turns out it WAS God after all, or at least a manifestation of Him.
Constantine visits him again, pressures him to remove the evil darkness lingering over his friends, "God" does so, knowing that once Constantine dies, he could eventually wind up being a serious enemy in Hell,

The last few pages of "How to Play with Fire" are devastating, Constantine meets with Dani, deliberately breaks her heart and drives her away, He meets Rich in the park, long enough for Rich to inform him they can no longer be friends, because Rich as the reincarnation of King Arthur, remember! has to protect himself and his family.
Constantine doesn't argue. The last thing we see is a full page shot of John Constantine, sitting alone in the park, emotionally destroyed,

"Nobody died. Except me. "

I found this to be a tremendously moving wrap up to Jenkins run, Constantine shows real humanity, accepting his enormous loss for the good of his friends hell, the supporting cast in Jenkins stories are more than friends, really.
In Garth Ennis' run, we had a cast of friends and mates and pubpals, but what Jenkins gives us is more like a family.
You really feel Constantine's loss at the end, even though everyone survives more or less intact except poor old Gavin, Ennis' Constantine tried to be "normal", but failed Jenkins' Constantine tried to be "good", and actually succeeded, but the price he paid was equally devastating.


Warren Pleece's art grew on me over the course of these eight issues, by the way, I missed Sean Phillips at first, but Pleece was a good replacement, using much the same color scheme and layout design, and he draws a helluva First of the Fallen.


If you're reading this volume for the first time, I would strongly recommend waiting a day or two before moving on to the

Garth Ennisparter that wraps it up.
It's kinda like you're sitting there, contemplating the intense emotional roller coaster Jenkins put you through, you're having a smoke and thinking it over, feeling somewhat melancholy, and then Garth Ennis comes busting in the door naked and wielding a chainsaw and screaming dick jokes at you.
Don't get me wrong, "Son of Man" is an excellent story, but jesus, the tone change is jarring as hell,

So way back in ', Constantine was pulled against his will out of Ravenscar by the Cooper crime family of London, to bring back to life Cooper's dead son, which even in magick circles is considered impossible.
Under threat of harm to his sister and niece, Constantine instead called forth a demon to inhabit the boy's dead body, no one the wiser but it was an arrangement that would eventually come home to roost.
Now, many years later, Chas inadvertently pulls Constantine back into it, and our man has to face up to what he's done: the demon,years old but still with the body of a child, is sparking a gang war in a bid to take over London and eventually give rise to a new evil religion.


The end of the story is a bloodbath, with the demon assuming it's true form think HR Geiger Alien, but with a six foot dick and slaughtering more or less everyone.
Constantine and Chas are cornered, but Constantine pulls out an ace card by threatening to squash the skull of the demon baby the elder Cooper has just shat out.
The demon relents and vanishes, and Constantine and Chas are saved,

Ennis breaks the fourth wall frequently in this one, having Constantine talk to us, the readers, explaining this plot point or that, going on minor rants about children or hippies or what have you.
It was fun, but I'd hate it if Hellblazer was that "nod and wink" all the time,

"Son of Man" is an outrageously overthetop story, very funny in Ennis' teenage humor way and worth reading, I've said before Ennis wasn't as mature a writer as Jenkins or Delano, but that's fine, Not everything Hellblazer story has to be devastating or deep,

I'm giving this onestars, because the Ennis story was fun enough but mostly because Jenkins wrapup was tremendously moving.

At long last, it's the final Jenkins Hellblazer volume, and the Hellblazer series is finally complete other than a few oneortwoissue fillins, but who cares.
. .

Up the Down Staircase, Constantine makes another trip to America, and Jenkins does a good job of representing the country's guns, violence, and consumerism without it seeming overthetop.
The heart of this story is Dani's family, and they're great, The story of devilish corruption is a bit harder to follow, but it's as dense and thoughtful as I'd expect of Hellblazer at its best.
However, if anything the story of Gavin and Pam is more powerful, because it offers a subtly different point of view on Constantine's friends than what we usually get and it suggests a great finale on the way/

How to Play with Fire.
One thing that I always loved about Jenkins' Hellblazer was how true it was to the Ennis run that preceded it, and this is the final example, showing that together they wrote a very cohesive run of the comic that went from.


Oh, sure, we get great closure for Jenkins' run, combining together a variety of plot threads, But, we also get great closure for Ennis' run, including a major turning point for the First of the Fallen and for Eli and a meeting with God himself to mirror Constantine's past meetings with the Devil.
Overall, "How to Play with Fire" feels like a bookend for "Dangerous Habits", so many years before, And it's told very well/,

Son of Man, Ennis' return is pretty brilliant, He revisits the idea of demonic possession, and uses it to present an entirely terrifying antagonist, He also successfully mixes that with some deep history on Constantine's part that's quite interesting, Oh, there's some grossness, sure it's Ennis, But he keeps it under control and serving the story,

The problem with this arc is that it fits so poorly into what Jenkins did before him, Jenkins left Constantine friendless and down, while Ennis has him living in a happygolucky flophouse with plenty of fun neighbors, and he only recalls his older friends from Ennis' previous run.
So, this is a nice coda to what Ennis wrote, but a pretty poor coda for Jenkins' stories, It's a pity DC didn't take the opportunity to place it earlier in the chronology when they reprinted it,/.

Overall, a volume of great stories, even if the transition from Jenkins to Ennis' return is rough, Just skip this volume, Seriously, just forget about all the characters Jenkins has created for now because it doesn't matter, . . Also, the new artist Warren Pleece has a cartoonish style and likes to draw big eyes, I don't think this mixes well with gritty, occult stories, but, whatever, we're skipping it anyway,

Up the Down Staircasefor main story,/for intrusive next story setup
Okay, the volume isn't all bad.
Constantine takes a trip to America to meet Dani's family and gets involved with another of the schemes of the First of the Fallen.
Each issue begins with this guy who accidentally killed his wife, but they don't matter in this story, only the next one, which makes their appearance jarring.
The stuff really worth reading is about Dani's family and the escalation of conflicts and the fallout caused by miscommunication, I really would have preferred a threeparter, followed by a one shot of guy with dead wife, but I suppose I wouldn't feel that way if I enjoyed the next story.


How to Play with Fire/
What Wait, why John Constantine gives up, Chantielle from Ennis' run returns to drive all the characters close to Constantine away, so John takes the easy way out and gives in.
Yeah, all the character setup for a typical, endofrun character housecleaning, but without any Constantine cleverness, So, yeah, skip this volume, none of the characters end up really mattering, The only thing that I can think of is that Ennis wanted a down on his luck Constantine, and the prospect of getting a seriesdefining writer back made DC execs salivate.
If that's the case, IT WAS NOT WORTH IT,

Son of Man/
Garth Ennis thinks children are horrible things doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents.
Isn't that funny Ugh, Ennis and I do not share a sense of humor, This story beings with Constantine explaining his dislike of children to us, the reader, like all great Constantine stories, . . While this "sins of the father" idea could lead to an interesting story, Ennis decides to make it full of puerile puns and grossout gags.
The story also doesn't really have anything to do with people raising kids, Well, rasing them from the dead, but that's not what the phrase really refers to, . . Oh, and I think the big bad of this arc either escapes, is killed due to the failure of his plan somehow, or gets eaten by the panels.
Ennis doesn't care, so I really shouldn't, There is some okay Constantine/Chas stuff, hence the one star and not zero or half, but it does not make the arc worth reading.
Ugh, I'm glad I don't ahve to read another of Ennis' Hellblazer arcs, If you have agreed with me at all, in any of my prior reviews, at least skip this story,

Constanine, now with less cleverness and charm, The series is seriously running on fumes this volume, and I'm gland the famous Warren Ellis who made Tony Stark relevant again in thes is put in a place to do so.
.