
New York City is John's base in the series, but he must return to England to seek Georgiana's help. And there is a deliberate demonic connection to the band that was not part of the history before. John's love interest and band-mate Veronica Delacroix is a new creation, as is a respectable studied magician named Georgiana Snow.

In the course of portraying those early days the creators do some retro-conning. The problem stems from his early days with the punk band Mucous Membrane, when he was just beginning to dabble in magic. The ghost of his old friend Gary Lester (Gaz) informs him that something is killing his ghostly entourage-all of the unfortunate friends and acquaintances who died due to magical misadventure-who have been haunting him all these years. The first five issues form a single arc (although they are not titled that way) which explicitly revisits Constantine's magician origins. So John is back to being a bastard whose involvement in magic tends to hurt his friends but he also utilizes explicit magic and magical objects to an extent he never did during the moody original run.

The portrayal justifies the Hellblazer tag: Constantine's character includes strong elements from the long-running Vertigo series, as well as parts of the New 52 version. Rogue mage John Constantine gets another DC series, this time with "the Hellblazer" back in the title.

Ming Doyle, James Tynion IV, writers Riley Rossmo & others, artists Ivan Plascencia, colors Constantine: The Hellblazer Volume 1: Going Down
