Constantine's business regarding his time in locl-up is finally resolved when he track's down Luck'y wife and discovers that she is the real reason why Lucky agreed to kill himself and frame Constantine. But the story doesn't end there. After taking out a group of American Nazis (actually quite melo-dramatic for Constantine) he discovers who it is who paid Lucky to frame him. It turns out that the guy in question (S. W.) is an old lover of Constantine's (WTF I know) who felt scorned by him and wanted to get revenge. The rest of the story is basically just a whole lot of whining from this guy (because Constantine has died like he wanted, and now that he's gone he misses him) and police drama trying to find S.W. Overall it was a good read, but I'm still not sure what the point was. And is Constantine really dead this time? He's sure acting like it, but it's Constantine, and he never really dies! ( )

As the other reviewer noted, this one gets panned pretty heavily on Amazon. I'll come right out and say it -- I think a lot of that bile is because of John's bisexual behavior in this one. That's a pretty narrow-minded reason to hate this, particularly since it doesn't seem terribly out of character and I think there are even hints of that in earlier writers' runs. Anyway, we can give some credit to Azzarello because I'm sure he knew he'd get some hate.

Nonetheless, I didn't really give this volume a high mark, nor Azzarello's run in general. There are definitely some decent stories, but while John's sexuality might not be out of character, some other aspects of his behavior seems to be. Firstly, there are a couple instances where John is waving around a gun, which is totally not in keeping with earlier portrayals. Secondly, he's just too much of a bad-ass here, in a kind of Hollywood anti-hero way. He's far too cool and on top of things. Earlier incarnations of John would only appear that way on the surface, but it would often be clear to the reader that it was a facade and that he was scared out of his mind.

On top of that, I just couldn't really dig the neo-Nazi storyline and I thought the last couple issues here made a somewhat confusing and unsatisfying ending to the run. To be fair though, while this might be bad for Hellblazer, it is good enough on an objective scale against all other comics. ( )

If you go by the Amazon.com reviews, this collection seems to be fairly universally disliked. I can kind of see why; Azarello does some very difficult things with the character, particularly in the final story arc in this collection, and I feel like I'm going to have to re-read this a couple of times to really grasp what he's up to. I don't, however, think it's nearly as bad as the reviews I read suggest; in fact, I think it's quite good and quite daring. I described it to a friend as "deeply weird," which is probably appropriate. ( )