Hellblazer #185 (August 2003)

This is the first Hellblazer I've ever read. It has a promising cover, and I'd heard they are making a movie of the comic called Constantine. Other than that, I know nothing of the series.

I was immediately drawn in by the unique setting, clear but concise storytelling and classic-but-unique artwork. Some dude – Constantine I suppose – gets driven with a hot chick named Angela deep into the Iranian desert. They end up at a settlement near the edge of the Garden of Eden, where a mysterious tribe awaits the reprieve that will allow them back into paradise.

A wrinkly old lady and her embittered but sexy daughter force Constantine to undergo a trial to see if he stole an ancient scroll from the tribe. Meanwhile, Angela buries a lock of Constantine's hair at the edge of the Garden, which is guarded by a Seraph with a flaming sword.

Constantine passes the trial (putting his hand into boiling water) and escapes with Angela, only to reveal that his hand really is burned. At the end, a cactus man tells Constantine something that I couldn't exactly make sense of, this being my first issue.

I would definitely look into reading more of these, preferably from the very beginning in one of those expensive compendium editions. It has all the elements of comics that I find intriguing: exotic settings, supernatural elements based on broad cultural mythology, and cactus men. There's even a joke about how the cactus men have sex: "tubers."

Constantine is a little hard-boiled for my taste, but he's also a magician. And he's apparently slept with every sexily-drawn woman in the book. Both pluses to me.

Speaking of which, Angela is inked as such a caricature of a hot girl that there's literally a frame in which her crazy-proportioned figure is all in shadow, except for her ridiculously bulbous ass. It's so huge, it's more mom-ass than J.Lo-ass.

That's the one thing about comics these days I find most baffling … they almost manage to render the girls juicy hot, but add some strange element to the imagery that's totally off-putting – like Oprah's ass on this Angela character, or the rippling muscles on so many superheroines.

It's like they want adolescent guys to get all hornified looking at the pictures … but not too hornified. Or maybe the artists donÍt want to come across like they are themselves hornified horndogs getting off on their own work. Or maybe guys these days are into women's bodybuilding and massive asses.

Regardless, thanks to this interesting and well-written episode, I think Hellblazer has caught my attention. Now if only they'd do a cactus man spinoff, I'd really be happy.

Review by Crimedog