Art By: Jeremy Haun, The Horries
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 11, 2015
One For The Road
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
In the last issue of Constantine, we saw our Brash Brit traversing the barriers between worlds to get his Earth-2 doppelganger's family and friends to safety. It wasn't anything like we saw from the old television show Sliders though, no opening wormholes and jumping through, no John Rhys-Davies being crotchety. It was a weird trip throughout the different kingdoms of Earth, heaven and when we finally breached the gap between worlds, Darkseid's gigantic hand came out trying to pull our con-man and the Earth-2 survivors back in. As we finished that issue, Constantine was planning one final trick that he hoped could fool a god. Let's see if he survives that endeavor and goes out classy in this final issue of Constantine. Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
As we saw at the end of last issue, Constantine kind of had his hands full with.......... Well, the hand of Darkseid trying to pull him and the people he kinda cares for back to Earth-2 but after sacrificing some of the people that latched on to him as his group was trying to escape, he managed up enough power to actually fool a god and access the Rings of Dolus spell that takes all of Constantine's best moments and memories and uses them to spin a web of lies around him and broadcasting in the seven languages of the deities.............. Yeah, pretty much like I said before, just a bad ass spell that will fool a god.
After the spell is cast and Constantine gets his mind probed by the spell, Darkseid comes through and sees the universe that our pseudo hero escaped to............ and thanks to the trickster spell that was cast, Darkseid sees what he believes to be a universe he's already conquered, empty and barren. It also looks like Constantine is dead and Darkseid lets him go, to float endlessly through this lifeless void as a monument to his past conquests. Then it's back to Earth-2 to finish the job for our Lord of Apokolips. With the evil god gone, the spell disappears and Constantine is protected as he falls back to Earth to meet up with the people he's saved.
In the end, the Earth-2 John's family isn't too pleased with Constantine killing his double and sacrificing everyone else so that they could live. During a very heated argument, Constantine has had enough and vanishes leaving these immigrants of another dimension to think about life and how they will live with the fact that everyone else died so that they could live. As the issue closes, Constantine goes back to Lloyd's bar and orders up a drink so that he can tell old Lloyd what he's been up to since they last talked. A fitting end and I wouldn't have it any other way.
That's it for this pseudo final issue of Constantine, yes it will be back as Constantine: Hellblazer but this title is over and for what it was............ you know bringing Constantine in with the superheroes and having him be a part of that world, it was a good time and I will look back on this series fondly. Once again Ray Fawkes has brought us a very internal story with John Constantine and together with Jeremy Haun's art, it was a really good issue to end the series on. Where I said last month about the internal monologues that drive the story feeling a little stale do to us seeing the same inner argument playing out the issue before that, this one brought it back and made it fresh since John decided that he isn't ready to die and that he'll keep on making the hard choices because he's the only one who can. I love this character and I can't wait to have him back in June. Thanks for this run of comics DC and all the creators that put their time in because it was totally worth the read.
Bits and Pieces:
It's the end of this series but don't worry John Constantine will be back in June with a new title. Here though, we have an excellent end to John's forays into Earth-2 and really, a great end to this series. It's nothing Earth shattering or over the top but what it is, is pure John and it works great. Combined with the excellent sideburns drawing pencils of Jeremy Haun, I had a great time with this issue and with this series. Go check it out.
8/10
I wish Darkseid were always written this interesting and scary. It doesn't mesh well with the rest of World's End, but I really enjoyed seeing him doing god-level stuff instead of the usual fisticuffs.
ReplyDeleteI agree...some writers don't make him intimidating or scary enough. He is a badass!
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