Hellblazer: Rise and Fall
Writer: Tom Taylor
Artist: Darick Robertson
Publisher: DC Comics
DC titles often reside on the darker, more serious side of comics, their vast quantity of Bat-titles being the number one culprit.
This would be fine, except for that DC titles must also be created so that they can be consumed by younger audiences. From a creative perspective, this can be a can be a recipe for incongruous disaster. How do you produce comics with mature themes, violent acts, and grim outcomes, which also appeal to people who still have homework?
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DC’s Black Label (and Vertigo before it) has often been the publisher’s solution to this, allowing creators to include comics that feature swearing, nudity (Batman’s dick!), intensely graphic violence, and generally more adult themes and behaviour.
And though it’s dubious that these titles seem to almost always garner an automatic price mark-up regardless of their quality, in 2021 alone DC Black Label delivered ‘Rorschach’, ‘The Nice House on the Lake’, ‘Batman: White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn’, ‘Sweet Tooth: The Return’, ‘American Vampire 1976’, ‘Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity’, ‘Batman: Reptilian’, ‘Superman vs. Lobo’, and a host of other well received titles that would have suffered if they were forced to adhere to a relative PG rating.
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‘Hellblazer - Rise and Fall’ was the best of the bunch for Black Label, offering a fantastic conclusion to the run it began in late 2020. John Constantine is one of DC/Vertigo’s best characters, full of desperate self-loathing and remorse, but willing to get out of bed each day to fight the worst the Underworld has to offer. Relying on his wits rather than gadgets or superhuman abilities, he never shies from getting his hands dirty.
Between ‘Rise and Fall’ and the character’s appearances in ‘DCeased: Dead Planet’ (2020), it’s clear that Tom Taylor gets what makes Constantine work. Darick Robertson’s art is a perfect pairing, keen is his ability to deliver darkness with clarity, ensuring a well-paced offering. Released in April 2021, the 200 page collection of ‘Hellblazer - Rise and Fall’ is a fantastic pick-up for longtime comic readers, particularly those who have dipped out of reading DC’s mainline titles due to waning appeal.
Want more of 2021’s greatest comics? Visit Amazon to purchase the full length ‘Best Comic Books of 2021’ book or eBook. It contains 45 detailed essays reviewing the year's best comic book titles.
After more comic book news and reviews? The Sea Shell mobile app is available worldwide as a free download on the App Store and the Play Store. Download it today.