Hell In A Bucket

Simon Oliver & Moritat “The Hellblazer, Volume 1: The Poison Truth” (DC Comics, 2017)

John Constantine was a character that seems to have been hard done by DC comics. There’s some real irony in the fact that they messed up so many characters by forcing them into dark places, and yet this real bastard gets cleaned up and presented as some kind of a hero.

John Constantine is not a hero.  Sure, he’s the protagonist of his book. But he’s not a hero. That’s part of what works about him. Whenever there are monologuing demons, the stuff they say about him is invariably true.  I think the phrase is “a right bastard”. 

So with Rebirth, this is a great opportunity to fix things.

And it feels like a huge step in the right direction. This first volume is concerned with cleaning house, and getting things in position for upcoming stories. That feels like a common situation with these first volumes post Rebirth.

Buy John is back in London! Keeping him in America is like casting Keanu Reeves to play the character. Absolutely ridiculous.

John’s back. Chas is back. John is a jerk. I’m interested.

Thanks to DC Comics and Netgalley for a review copy.

Nothing a Giant Robot Won't Cure

Sylvain Neuvel “Waking Gods” (Del Rey, 2017)

I think that it’s important to note up front that I have not read Sleeping Giants, the first book in the series. I think that my reactions would potentially be very different if I had. 

Waking Gods is set some time after the events in the first book. There’s no real catch up here, at least that I can see. Right off the bat, another giant robot shows up.  And things get real.

Neuvel chooses to tell the story through interview transcripts, news reports and other mediated texts. It’s an interesting choice, but it has a couple of effects.  First, in a story with a lot of action, the action feels more remote than in a story told more traditionally. Second, it eliminates the internal lives of characters. We only know them through their words and actions.

I never really felt like I caught up in this novel. I went into it knowing that I hadn’t read the first one, but 99% of the time I can enjoy the novel without any problem.  This was the exception. And the fact that stylistic choices were made seemed to make it more difficult for me to really immerse myself in this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Del Rey for the review copy.