Graphic Novel Review - Jamie Delano - Hellblazer - Pandemonium

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Spoiler alerts – Vertigo Books – 2010 John Constantine, the Hellblazer, wants a quiet normal life, sex, cigarettes and beer. Unfortunately he keeps getting dragged into battles with dark supernatural and Satanic forces. Fortunately, he is a powerful magician. In this politically charged story he is drawn from the usual urban British streets to be sent against his will on a military mission in war torn Iraq. His fate begins with an affair with an apparent Iraqi dissident, but she is trapping him on behalf of a questionable MI5 team. They need him as a terrorist suspect in Iraq has been causing his interrogators to go insane. Constantine is sent to find out why, and makes it clear all along that he would rather not go. On route, Constantine sees a number of allied atrocities being committed against innocent Iraqi citizens before he is sent into a cell with the really dangerous suspect, and realizes that the allies have captured an ancient Persian demon from the Arabian Night, a Djinn, or Genie. He helps subdue the creature but allows it to get into the minds of the MI5 people who made him undertake the mission first. A very good way to put a superhero story into the heart of real World social-political reality and criticize the way our World is governed too. Arthur Chappell