Constantine #15 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Ray Fawkes
Art By: ACO
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: June 11, 2014

Big Trouble In...... Well China

Last month in Constantine we were given a one shot ghost story that blew me away.  It was fun, supernatural and like I said in that review actually reminded me of something we would see in the TV show Supernatural.  It was just a real good time, so if you haven't picked it up yet make sure you do, because it's Constantine at his finest.  But the point of the book was pointing Constantine towards his next story arc in finding the man that caused him to cast his first spell as a child, and the price for this spell was the death of his parents.  So it's time to find out who that man was and get a little pay back.  This leads Constantine to this issue to get the answers from a mage in Hong Kong named Graceful Moon.  Let's join John Constantine and see if we can get some answers.



Explain It!:

We start the story with Constantine going to Hong Kong and finding a coin that represents luck.  So that's a good sign right off the bat.  He enters the building where Graceful Moon resides and finds that all the elevator floor buttons are devoid of the number four, apparently four is bad luck, and everything in this building is designed to ward against bad luck, and draw good luck towards it.  Constantine enters Graceful Moon's floor and finds that this place is like a entire dimension all it's own that goes on forever.  Full of red hanging silk banners, and something called pearl monkeys litter the joint.  All in all it's a big mess of a world that will clutter the page and leave you wondering what the hell is going on throughout this issue.  It's just a mess.

So Graceful Moon tells us that she knows why Constantine is there, and like him she too was lured into magic by a mysterious person.  Also like Constantine the price of the magic was also the death of her family.  So now we get to a big confusing fight over the Moon Blade that holds the soul of Mister E, the whole thing is awful and covered in the red silk banners hiding any notion that this comic will offer anything but dialogue.  What I get from this is that Graceful Moon wants the blade because Mister E is the man that got her to cast her first spell, but Constantine isn't willing to part with his sharp companion just yet.

In the end Constantine uses that lucky coin he found to somehow suck up all the luck power that Graceful Moon has for a brief time causing her dimension to crumble down around her, or something like that.  Like I said, it's hard to really tell what's going on in this issue.  Constantine survives and gets the Moon Blade back and asks Mister E if Tannarak from the Cold Flame was the man that came to him as a small child.  Well the answer is yes and I'm left wondering why we had to go to Hong Kong at all if Mister E knew the answer the whole time.  To leave us with a little cliff hanger though we see Constantine have a vision of the future where all the chains that bind reality together are breaking.  Hopefully next issue will be great and we'll be able to understand what's going on.

Bits and Pieces:

As much as I want to like Constantine's series the art is too inconsistent.  One month it's spectacular and used perfectly to tell the story, and in another month I can't tell what the hell is going on.  Sadly this is one of those months, and I walk away from this issue confused, and a little angry.  This had the potential to be a decent issue but everything that could of been conveyed in the art was lost by cluttered panels and flying red silk banners.  Hopefully Constantine can get a artist on full time so we know what we're in for each month, and it can finally be able to shine.

4/10