John Constantine, Hellblazer: Tainted Love [Paperback]

Garth Ennis (Author)

Book Description

From the breakup of the romance he hoped would redeem his soul, John Constantine joins the ranks of London's homeless, meeting a vicious vampire cult and revisiting the scene of one of his earliest encounters with dark magic.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Vertigo (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563894564
• ISBN-13: 978-1563894565
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.4 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Garth's Stand-Alones are the Best, January 3, 2003

By 

Sean Whitmore (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Constantine, Hellblazer: Tainted Love (Paperback)

I'm not sure why everyone's so disappointed with this collection. I think it ranks right up there with DANGEROUS HABITS, Ennis' first collection. The mutli-part epic Hellblazer stories are always good, but you cannot beat Garth Ennis for small, personal stories, which TAINTED LOVE has in spades.

"Down all the Days" and "Rough Trade" are from issues #68 and #69 and feature the King of the Vampires (first introduced in #50). Forget Buffy for a second, Garth's take on vampires is fantastic and truly original (as fans of PREACHER already know). The King is as great a vampiric character as any ever created.

"Tainted Love" was a short story from VERTIGO JAM #1. A great little horror story from John's past featuring a demonic adversary familiar to Constantine fans.

"Heartland" is from #70, and focuses on Kit's return to Ireland. It's a testament to Garth's writing that a story about the main character's girlfriend is every bit as good as any regular issue. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't read a comic about Spider-Man's wife.

"Finest Hour", from #71, is another all-time favorite story of mine. And again, John is barely in it (only a coincidence, it's not like I don't like him or something). John falls asleep near the grave of a fighter pilot and relives the last few moments of his life.

"Confessional" is from the one-shot HELLBLAZER SPECIAL. It features a teenage John, an insane pederast preacher, and the First of the Fallen, and leads into the story arc "Rake at the Gates of Hell" from #78-83 (never collected, unfortunately).

So yeah, John is drunk and homeless the entire time, there are no big demons or magic tricks, and no cons pulled. But these are still some damn good stories for fans of horror, drama, comedy and...well, just entertainment in general.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of "Hellblazer," served in all temperatures., February 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: John Constantine, Hellblazer: Tainted Love (Paperback)

These stories are a revelation, both into the startling talents of Ennis and Dillon and for pointing the way towards a more emotionally mature mainstream comic industry.

Sure, there's plenty of "Preacher"-style over the top stuff here: If Constantine isn't bleeding, he's vomitting or urinating, often on a humiliated enemy. But we also get emotional depths DC/Vertigo books are all alleged to have, but rarely do.

In particular, the absolute finest "Hellblazer" story ever, "Heartland," doesn't ever feature John in the story directly, but his absence haunts Kit, his ex-girlfriend, as she flees home to Dublin. It's a story that conveys the bittersweet feeling of loving someone not good for you, and making that wise move of staying away from them, even through the pain.

This is smart, funny, touching, scary and, yes, horrific stuff. Absolutely brilliant fiction.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A constant state of being for Constaintine, November 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: John Constantine, Hellblazer: Tainted Love (Paperback)

I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of this book and while I can't say I was dissappointed, I was certainly not impressed. The events in the previous trade paperback, " Fear and Loathing" , lead directly into this one and showed the charecter of John Constantine at his best, in terms of viability, as he struggled to maintain a pesonal life outside of his lurid "professional" one. Naturally, he fails. However in "tainted Love", we get only small glimpses of what make Constaintine the man he is. The supporting cast is far more interesting to read than the tiltle charecter, who is portrayed as ( in words similar to his own) " a sad bastard" who has no longer has the will to even complain about his fate. Which is probably what Garth Ennis (author) intended him to be... When read along with the rest of the series, " Tainted Love" excells at it attention to charecter development and, as with most Vertigo titles, it's sense of realism. However, on it's own the compilation will most likely find new readers not really caring about the self-styled "rake at the gates of hell", John Constantine. Well....at least not until the last chapter anyway... ; )