Thought Train to Pusan

I told myself I would not end this year’s Cannonball read with a review of a textbook. And so, here is the second volume of Hellblazer , which I finally managed to find over a year after I read the first volume. Though I normally can pick up a series and remember most parts of what had happened previously once I get back into it, I had trouble this time, to be honest, and needed a refresher to really start enjoying the story again. Overall, my feelings towards the Hellblazer series so far are similar to my feelings regarding the Constantine tv show that the books have now spawned: it’s a pretty good read and interesting, though there isn’t really anything that makes me feel as though I need to keep going or need to know what happens next. The best thing this series has going for it is the main character, John Constantine, who is curmudgeonly and full of personal demons that all seem to want to spill out while he fights… literal demons (and I might add that the character is what I f...

(With art by John Ridgway and Alfredo Alcala) And so I have officially completed a quarter-cannonball and reached the halfway point of my goal of 26! Albeit, most of the books I have reviewed in the past few months have been Shakespeare plays and/or graphic novels, which typically don’t take all that long to read. In any case, here I am to keep that theme going with yet another graphic novel: Original Sins in the first volume of the “Hellblazer” collection, and is made up of the first nine issues of the comic series, all focusing on the character of John Constantine, as he works his way through the world of demons and dark magic. You may be familiar with the movie, Constantine , with Keanu Reeves as the demon-killing hero? Well, in the original literary source material that is these novels, Constantine is British as British can be. And also dresses just like Castiel the angel in “Supernatural”… And to be honest I really can’t see that as a coincidence, as ...