Red Sepulchre

Everybody is after the Red Sepulchre. Acquaintances and strangers, friends and future foes of John Constantine have ostensibly merged their magical and mystical might in the pursuit of this enigmatic entity. The stakes are raised even higher when John's niece Gemma is manipulated to force him to enter the game, but on whose side. And that decision may cause yet another player, the mysterious Map, to ante up against him. Are all of their goals and motivations the same, and can anyone be trusted? We do eventually learn of the divergent interests of these varied factions, with one person wanting to use the Sepulchre to open the doors to the unknown for his own cryptic purposes, and the other half fearing this potentially powerful and evil force and thus wanting to prevent its' appearance from ever occurring. So just what is the Red Sepulchre? By amazing coincidence, a forebear of Constantine's had a gruesome encounter with it years previously, so he knows about its' history and lore. With that information he is able to discern its' location and method of quickly dispatching it. While this somewhat ineffectual and trite ending was admittedly a bit too pat, it did serve its' purpose of closing the current chapter while also setting the stage for another. This tale is the latter part of the trade. It opens with John's return to England from America in an intriguing short story of macabre addiction involving the illicit pleasure of enjoying other people's memories, specifically the sordid ones of tainted tarts, through slivers of their flesh, which directly segues into the main story involving the Sepulchre. This compilation was the debut of writer Mike Carey on this title, and kudos to him for successfully continuing the legacy of high quality that was established by the impressive list of distinguished writers that had preceded him.

Mike Carey, John Constantine, Hellblazer: Red Sepulchre (Vertigo, 2003) Red Sepulchre is the first book in what ended up being a three-book miniseries focusing on Constantine and Angie Spatchcock, neophyte wizard. We're introduced to Angie here, as Constantine meets her while looking for his missing niece, Gemma, and the two of them try to figure out what on Earth's going on with the building where Gemma's parents live. We also get the first bits of information about the Shadow Dog, which we'll meet later on, in another volume. Carey (Lucifer) was a good choice to bring into the Hellblazer universe; he's lower-key than Garth Ennis, but not so laid-back as Warren Ellis, and his books tend to strike the best balance of the various aspects of Constantine's character. Whether or not that's a good thing I'll leave to the reader to decide but I find them quite enjoyable. *** ½

100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello's run on Hellblazer had it's share of up's and down's, so when Lucifer scribe Mike Carey took over the writing duties, many hailed this first storyarc as a triumphant return to form for the comic. Collecting the first six issues of Carey's current run on the title, Red Sepulchre finds black magic mage John Constantine returning to his native England and looking to pick up the pieces of the life he left behind. Soon enough though, John ends up smack in the middle of someone's super natural power trip, narrowingly escaping in the process. The second story is the focuspoint of this graphic novel, as John's niece Gemma Masters has disappeared. She herself has become tangled in a plot to find the Red Sepulchre, and John plays his most dangerous game in order to save his beloved niece as well as his own skin. From the first story on, Carey has returned Hellblazer to the gothic and cerebral horror story that Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis before him had made it, taking the series back to it's roots rather than taking a departure the way Azzarello did before him. Preacher artist Steve Dillon provides the pencils of the first story, while series stalwart Marcelo Frusin provides the art of the second story, which for the most part is solid. All in all, Red Sepulchre marks a fine return to form for Hellblazer, and this collection is definitely one of the best graphic novel collections of the entire series.