Each Friday, we'll be letting a different DC.com writer share what they'll be reading over the weekend and why you might want to check it out. Here's this week's suggestion for a perfect Weekend Escape!
 

Cropping up in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, the subject of a byzantine 300-issue Vertigo series, and now reluctantly ensconced as often as not within DC’s tight-knit magic community, the trenchcoated trickster known as John Constantine can be a hard man to pin down. Where can you even get started trying to get to know this man? That’s a question with many answers. But if you’re the type who would prefer a more modern, baggage-free, self-contained story that lays out everything you need to know about who Constantine is and what he’s about before you dive into the deep end, DC Black Label’s Hellblazer: Rise and Fall is Taylor-made for you.
 

THE PREMISE

Hellblazer: Rise and Fall is an origin story, of sorts. It begins with the original sin of John Constantine’s birth and takes us to an untold chapter of his childhood—his first dalliance with magic gone wrong, long before the Newcastle exorcism incident would condemn him to an asylum as a young adult. But that long-buried secret of guilt and recrimination only provides the table setting for a typical John Constantine story of dark magic mixed with social disease, as years later, billionaires with wings grafted onto their backs start to rain down from the sky. What does it mean? Who’s behind it? And why should John Constantine even care? When the only witness to a traumatic childhood event best forgotten and even Satan himself start getting involved, John can’t simply let the rich eat themselves. But rest assured that as soon as he figures out the game, he’s going to start finding ways to bend the rules.
 

LET’S TALK TALENT

While Constantine’s colorful dialogue is traditionally kept under British care, Australian Tom Taylor is no stranger to the trenchcoated hedge mage—memorably including him in some of his other out-of-continuity epics, like Injustice: Gods Among Us - Year Three and DCeased: A Good Day to Die. John’s typical flair for specific political commentary through allegorical dark magic remains intact here through Tom’s focus on John’s character, as well as a universal approach to the inequality of wealth distribution which knows no boundaries. At any rate, you can trust an Aussie to tell you when something in the UK smells rotten.

Between his work on Transmetropolitan and The Boys, artist Darick Robertson has been one of the most raw and incisive cartoonists in western comics in recent memory, bringing his filthy, lived-in sense of realism to John Constantine’s muddy world as he cavorts with friends and the devil through back alleys and deep into trouble. You couldn’t ask for a better Virgil to the deepest circles of Hellblazer.
 

REASONS TO READ

• One Charming Scouser: Rise and Fall is first and foremost a character study, presenting John Constantine in all his nasty glory—a boozer, a cheat, a swindler, an improviser and a man with a bewildering moral compass. Rule number one when it comes to John Constantine: don’t trust John Constantine. Rule number two: in the event you ignore rule one, get your affairs in order fast. You don’t have long for this world. But once you get to know the man, those rules go flying out the window as you can’t help but get swept up in his cockeyed magnetic field.
   
• Radical Socialism: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express famously explored what happens when the subject of a murder mystery is somebody who no one liked, and probably deserved it. In the takedown of our modern ruling class, Rise and Fall indulges in much of the same. The dead in this story are nearly all people who could instantly, without even noticing the cost, make life more manageable for thousands of others. They merely choose not to. Constantine here uncovers a demonic allegory for the true nature of unchecked capitalism, where the only true trickle-down effect of economics is human misery. This stark examination of the world’s true injustices is what the greatest Hellblazer stories always have to offer. If that’s not for you…maybe it should be. It’s kind of a mess out there right now. Besides, there’s a lot of swearing and violence and some pretty good jokes. If nothing else, maybe you’ll be into that.

• Outsider Art: An indelible element of the charm in almost any Hellblazer story worth its salt is its inherent Britishness. John isn’t just a tricky magician, but one who uniquely reflects upon the social ills of the British empire. For this reason, nearly all of the most iconic Hellblazer stories are by British writers, using Constantine as a cipher for their own experiences and most rebellious inclinations. If you’re part of that culture, it’s a deliciously cathartic experience. And if you’re not, it’s an eye-opening window to a different part of the world. But Tom Taylor isn’t British, which means this is by no means the most essential Hellblazer story ever written. But it does lend a more approachable atmosphere to the book, still doing its part to exist within British culture, but providing readers from around the world with an on-ramp into John Constantine’s nasty world before you’re ready for an epic takedown of Thatcherism.
   
• John Constantine Sleeps with the Devil: Sorry we buried the lede. Happy Belated Pride, y’all.
   

WHY IT’S WORTH YOUR TIME

Hellblazer: Rise and Fall is an easily readable, beautifully illustrated self-contained story that will give you a crash course on one of comics’ most storied characters. Parental relationships are unpacked. Friendships are explored. And John Constantine pulls a fast one on a terrifyingly powerful supernatural entity—a must-have component in any great Hellblazer story. Whether this is your first Constantine story or merely your first in a while, by the end you’re going to feel like you’ve crashed a hole-in-the-wall pub, cheered and jeered the latest football match (whether you’ve understood the rules or not) and sung half-remembered Elton John songs with him all the way home to the flat you’ll let him crash in, consequences be damned until the morning. Let John Constantine borrow you and you’re guaranteed a good old time. Just don’t expect you’ll come back the same.
 

Hellblazer: Rise and Fall by Tom Taylor, Darick Robertson and Diego Rodriguez is available in bookstores, comic shops, libraries and digital retailers. It can also be read in full on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Community as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.