Readers of The Lost Art

Writers: Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Jimmy Palmiotti, Dave McKean.
Artists: Various
Reviewer: Louise

¦lt;br /> Produced as a tie-in to the frankly awful movie of the Hellblazer series starring Keanu Reeves, the first half of this book is the novelisation of the movie, and the second half a collection of various John Constantine stories, including the beginning first ever Hellblazer story, a self-contained story, “Hold Me”, and the first part of the famous “Dangerous Habits” lung-cancer arc.

It’s hard to know what to make of this book. The novelisation is okay as these things go, with reasonably competant artwork. The stories are a slightly confusing choice. “Hold Me” works well as an introduction and a moving stand-alone story. However, whilst the intention with the other stories may have been to pique the reader’s interest, by only presenting the first parts of these stories, they’re more likely to infuriate you. The colouring of the first story suffers in comparison to the novelisation and the other two stories, and is likely to put off new readers rather than enticing them. All in all, you’d do better to pick up the proper Hellblazer graphic novels, and read the entire stories, not this rather muddled collection.

Paperback: 168 pages
Publisher: Titan Books Ltd (25 Feb 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 1840239794

(First published 17/01/2007.)