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I'm Not Mister Mxypltk said:
Did they ever reveal what the hell happened to John Constantine in Newscastle? They kept referring to that as early as in Moore's Swampy, in the first issues of Hellblazer, and in the first and only annual (where a young John comes out of a mental house after "what happened in Newscastle").



Taken from a review of the newest Hellblazer TPB at aintitcoolnews...

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HELLBLAZER: RARE CUTS TPB
Writers: Jamie Delano, Grant Morrison & Garth Ennis
Artists: David Lloyd, Sean Phillips, Richard Piers Rayner & Mark Buckingham
Publisher: DC Comics/Vertigo
Reviewed by Dave Farabee
This isn’t what you’d call an essential collection, but it is a welcome one. HELLBLAZER readers already know that, despite the many HELLBLAZER trades, the series is far from being completely collected. Hey, any book that runs two hundred issues is gonna have some lulls! What RARE CUTS collects is a sampling of the bright spots from those periods, single issues and two-parters by three notable luminaries: series’ founder Jamie Delano, odd-man-out Grant Morrison, and a single story by fan-fave Garth Ennis.

If I was dropping a letter grade, I’d give this one a solid B. Honest truth is that there’s a reason these stories haven’t been collected before, but if you’re a fan of bastard conjurer John Constantine or you just want to stave off fears of Keanu’s upcoming bastardization of the character, here’s what you’ll get:

“Newcastle: A Taste of Things to Come” – This is such a quintessential chapter in John Constantine’s life that I’m honestly shocked it hasn’t been collected before. It’s the story that the entire first year of HELLBLAZER was building up to in the late ‘80s: the much-whispered tale of John Constantine’s earliest, greatest failure. The story itself is set in the late ‘70s and follows John Constantine and his troupe of counter-culture punkers and magicians in a horribly botched exorcism set to haunt them forever. Literally.

Looking back on the issue, it retains its power to unnerve, and still has one of the grossest concepts ever to make its way into a comic: the “Norfulthing,” a Burroughs-esque monster evoked by a sexually abused girl. It’s barely glimpsed, but the description from the girl will stick with you: “Partly it’s a giant dog and partly it’s a monkey with a purple bum, like at the zoo. But worser than that, it’s all insidey-out…” If there’s a weakness to the outing, it’s the art, almost too literalist and photo-referenced. Not big on the coloring, either, a garish transitional point between ‘80s superhero coloring and the not-yet-established Vertigo palette. Still and all, a seminally bleak outing for Constantine. Piss and vinegar youth meets grim reality.


Thing is- I can’t spell or type. I spell so badly my spell check doesn’t even know what I was trying to spell. And I have five Eisners HAHAHAHHA!! -Brian Michael Bendis