Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.

Hellblazer (1988) #58 by Garth Ennis (writer), Steve Dillon (artist), Daniel Vozzo (colors), Gaspar (letters), Stuart Moore (editor, and Glen Fabry (cover)

I bought Hellblazer #1 when it came out all those years ago, but for some reason, I did not continue with the series. I rectified that mistake and started getting the comic monthly starting with #56. Issue #58, however is the second part of a two-part story featuring John Constantine and his favorite whipping boy, Chas. In the previous issue, Chas found his uncle dead at home, and after the funeral, both he and Jon discover grave robbers. They attack the wankers and find that they are getting paid to steal bodies for a ballistic testing facility. Naturally, instead of calling the cops, they go to the testing facility where they are quickly captured. In this issue, the administrator of the facility inform them that they will be live test subjects. While locked up, John discovers that because the souls of the dead are treated as they are at the facility, they cannot move on. This, of course, makes the souls very angry, so John unleashes their fury. You can read how it ends in the Bloodlines (v6) trade.

This is a fairly mundane Hellblazer ghost story all in all, but what makes it stand out is the sociopathic antagonist (and what happens to him in this issue) and Chas’s surprising violent turn. Still, a good second Hellblazer story for me.

Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.

Hellblazer (1988) #113 by Paul Jenkins (w), Sean Phillips (a), James Sinclair (c), and Clem Robbins (l)

Having just perused this issue after not having read it for 16 years, I really want to read this five-part story (“Last Man Standing”) again, especially the next and last part in part because I do not remember how this ends. That last panel showing John shrugging off the big bad’s threat to kill John’s current love or the unborn child of a friend was a tad chilling.

Sean Phillips is a great Hellblazer artist. The art is moody and dark, and there’s a two-page dream sequence where the panels are a bit wobbly on the page and don’t take up the whole page, adding to the effect. Paul Jenkins uses a lot of internal monologue in this issue, and while I usually have an issue with that (the use of this device tends toward too much telling and not enough showing), here’s it’s put to good use considering the inner turmoil that John s going through, not to mention the needed exposition to get the story moving forward.