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Hellblazer hasn't been any good since Jenkins finished his run. I won't get into Azzarello's poor attempt on the series, but Carey isn't faring any better. Like Azzarello, he doesn't know what to make out of John Constantine, hasn't found his voice yet and turned JC into a shadow of the witty anti-hero i came to love over the years.
Good points on his behalf: he's expanding the supporting characters and has found something useful to use them in, not just as cannon fodder; and he brought John's family back!
Unfortunately he writes a boring John/Gemma relationship, which is miles behind Ennis' convincing relationship of an uncle and niece; Gemma just comes off as a hateful little bitch instead of the naive teen who just wanted to follow his uncle's footsteps into magik; now i'm all for character evolution, but not forced 'changes' to conveniently fit the storyline.
I don't think it's necessary to mention the now gone 'horror' factor... Hellblazer hasn't been a horror title for ages; but Carey now seems interested in turning it into an action comic, complete with M-16-carrying thugs wasting magicians: the stuff i'd expect from Johns' The Possessed, or Steve Niles's work. I don't know, perhaps i'm just old-fashioned, but i long for the days of Moore's Swamp Thing, Morrison's Arkham Asylum and Gaiman's earlier The Sandman issues... they had a level of sophistication, subtle creepiness and genuine tension that modern horror comics for all their explicit gore and shotguns don't have. |
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