John Constantine: Hellblazer #7 (2020) - "Britannia, Rule the Waves, Part One"

[laughing_tree]

Without a trace of arrogance (nor, screw it, false modesty), I’m going to flat-out state that the stories we’ve told possess genuine value and importance, especially in these strangest of times. They’re good, and I’m not just saying that. By any metric, up to and including the fanciest online review aggregate, which at time of writing considers our Hellblazer work to be the best-reviewed series presently on shelves, this book has been the proudest project of my career. It has felt at every stage like the one pre-existing I.P. that I was naturally best calibrated to write. -- Si Spurrier

Comments

[cricharddavies]

Oh, Simon. You are believing the hype. Never ever believe your own hype.

[tcampbell1000]

The hype is deserved: this has been the best Big Two title of the week the last four months it's come out.

[velacron]

Unless I'm severely misreading the last panel, would a tw:gore here be appropriate?

[gnarll]

Meh. Its not bad. It reads about like the average level of the original series. Thats not bad at all. The hype just oversells it, so when it falls short of the hype, it looks worse than it is.

[bruinsfan]

Yeah, most issues feel like they picked up from, say, the Jamie Delano run with no interruption, so good on the team for that. But I've been enjoying Spurrier & Evely's work on The Dreaming more, as well as the Lucifer title (which I think captures the sense of above-it-all-ness and malicious glee the title character had in Gaiman's hands far better than the Mike Carey and Holly Black series).

[gnarll]

On Lucifer, I feel that the character is not a good match for either the Carey or Gaiman takes on the character. Careys Lucifer felt a bit like "Breaking Bad", a character study as much as a serial. And Careys series was really the one that established the character for me.

On Gaimans Lucifer, it was what lauched the book really. "I do not barter for souls like a fishwife at a market"

The new book opened with him doing exactly that. Bargaining for souls, rutting with mortal witches, spawning children. A lot of the medieval take on the devil in there, seeming very unlike the established character and far less powerful.