Hellblazer: Roots of Coincidence by Andy Diggle

Hellblazer: Roots of Coincidence Reviews

• 
  Anne

  4.5 stars
  
  I have no idea if this was a great conclusion to the story arc, but I really enjoyed it!
  And I almost didn't read it.
  Because when I got it, the first thing I did was thumb through the pages to check out the art.
  Ick.
  Not my taste at all.
  So I set it down, and promptly forgot all about it till I got a reminder from my library that it was due back soon.
  So I picked it up again.
  Yep...it's still got ugly art.
  Buuuut...it looks short.
  Ok. I'll read it.
  
  Whoa! I couldn't put it down!
  Sometimes you go into a book not knowing anything that previously happened, you feel a bit lost, and you can't decide whether or not you want to continue trying to make sense out of the plot.
  Or.
  Sometimes it's so good that it just makes you want go back and read all the stuff that you missed.
  Roots of Coincidence definitely had the latter effect on me.
  
  Magic, action, gore, iffy priests, demons, evil politicians, and a semi/sorta dead twin!
  Really, what more could I ask for?
  Nothing.
  It. Was. Awesome.
  Now I just have to find the rest of these books...
  
  
• 
  Derek

  Constantine finally gets even. this volume ties together all the loose ends from like two prior volumes. Remarkable end but jeez, is Constantine a bastard doing his twin like that.
• 
  Quentin Wallace

  This volume was both awesome, and also a little, well, silly.
  
  For the awesome part, we see a really cool two parter where Constantine has to acquire a special book from the special black library of the Vatican. Really cool ideas and plot in this one.
  
  Then we lead into the main story of the volume. I'm not a big fan of retconning, and in a way this story seemed like heavy retconning as we learn Constantine has been manipulated almost since the first time we saw him. The story itself is cool, and I won't say who's been manipulating him, but overall I didn't really like that part.
  
  The art was fitting, as has been the case with almost every Hellblazer volume.
  
  Good volume, and Hellblazer fans should read just to see how they feel about the big revelation.
• 
  Justin

  Touche, Mr. Diggle. Touche, indeed.
  
  With "Roots of Coincidence," writer Andy Diggle's run on HELLBLAZER comes to its inevitable end, as does the mystery regarding where in the world Diggle meant to take us, John Constantine, and the title itself along the way...and perhaps akin to the sort of bait & switch subterfuge that Diggle cut his teeth with on THE LOSERS, "Roots of Coincidence" is a fine (and final) treat from the exiting writer.
  
  Don't misunderstand: Reviews of Diggle's previous work on HELLBLAZER won't be recanted now that the 'big reveal' has made itself apparent. Along the way, Diggle could have managed to pepper his narratives with a little more chum to keep the sharks returning to the Pond. Readers have to assume this late in HELLBLAZER's legacy that the stories will become more and more involved and that most pedestrian readers will find it difficult to simply jump onboard the title without any prior knowledge of Constantine.
  
  Think about the plethora of plot points that some of the subsequent writers have made use of (some of those points more than 100 issues old) and you can glimpse that writing HELLBLAZER isn't an easy task, despite the fact that the concept itself seems so remarkably simple: that of the anti-heroic mage who seems to destroy everything that he knows except for himself (with some exceptions, as some of the later writers have started to demonstrate...sort of makes readers wonder if Cosntantine might be on his last legs). So readers should forgive any of the shortcomings to Diggle's run by virtue of the fact that an assigned run on this title demands research.
  
  And Diggle did it, though we didn't see it coming.
  
  "Roots of Coincidence" actually bleeds backward into the first stories Diggle wrote for the series, including what appeared to be Constantine's rebirth after Ravenscar. At the time, readers were prompted to imagine that Diggle was simply rebuilding Constantine from the torture that he'd endured at the hands of writer Mike Carey (and Paul Jenkins and Brian Azzarello and Garth Ennis and all of them before him).
  
  But this particular volume is more challenging than that. Diggle not only mustered the bravery to divorce Constantine from his past (a bit hurriedly, this critic wrote), but also to move forward from it completely. So what once appeared like a rushed reincarnation of Constantine actually turns into a complete rebirth for the character in this particular volume.
  
  For better or for worse, Diggle doesn't conclude his run with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge tongue-in-cheek reference to the mythology itself. Diggle doesn't write Constantine addressing the reader in some heavy-handed manner. Diggle offers no philosophy about the nature of storytelling or the oddity that John and his stories continue to be enjoyed after more than 15 years. Rather, he allows Constantine to simply complete this chapter of his life...and he completes it, to be certain...and that is that.
  
  Some readers might even hypothesize what Diggle could have done with the series had he stayed on for more than a year. What else did Diggle have up his sleeve? Was "Roots," in fact, the conclusion he intended and the note upon which he wanted to exit the book? Readers may never know, but despite some of the criticism that Diggle's run provoked, most readers will have to admit that were the final chapter of this volume the final, absolute last story ever published about the life of John Constantine, the readers would be pretty well satisfied.
  
  The only downside to "Roots" is that it meanders, like the rest of Diggle's run, periodically. At the conclusion of "The Laughing Magician," readers were led to believe that a true showdown was on the horizon, a la THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, but Diggle instead busied readers with a two-parter about the Vatican, illustrated beautifully by Giuseppe Camuncoli, that kept readers from reaching the conclusion of Diggle's run too soon. This two-parter was very entertaining indeed, perhaps one of the best continuity-free stories of the entire series, but it seems off-putting at the least that Diggle chose to take this brief respite before returning to the story of Mako and how Constantine would survive.
  
  Meanwhile, Manco's artwork is pitch-perfect here, and it has something to do with the inking and the coloring. It reaks of Mark Texeira's artwork for Marvel and it's absolutely brilliant, worth the price alone for the volume. A number of full-page spreads will become the envy of collectors from this collection alone, and they'll be sought after for Manco alone, not for the pathos of the story.
  
  In the end, "Roots" proved a very worthwhile run for Diggle and HELLBLAZER, but some readers will be forced to imagine how many more great writers the series can entrap and how many stories can be written that will continue to entrance readers, in the future.
  
  Coming down the pike is Peter Milligan, most noted for his Vertigo epic, SHADE, THE CHANGING MAN, and that ended, by all accounts, rather poorly as series go. Hopefully, Milligan's appointment doesn't spell doom for HELLBLAZER itself.
  
  Who knows? Like with Diggle, readers might suddenly find themselves tricked into understanding the genius of Milligan, when they'd doubted it along.
  
  This critic, for one, is certain that other writers for this series were placed in similarly daunting positions (just as they placed Constantine himself in rather daunting positions), only to emerge at the other end victorious.
  
  Isn't that a coincidence?
• 
  Drizztl

  7/10
• 
  Xavi

  Le sobra el epílogo para mi gusto, sino le caerían casi 5 estrellas a la etapa de Diggle. A ver como lo retoma Milligan.
• 
  Jaimie

  Well that was a quick resolution to the problem with Mako; I was fully expecting it to get drawn out over at least three volumes, so I feel a bit cheated. Make quite conveniently constructed his own downfall by creating a self-contained universe for his ally and underestimating Constantine's power. Even against a mage who had harnessed so much magic, all John had to do was to wait until he was inside the soul-world and sever the connection to his body. Slightly convenient, but sometimes the simplest solutions are those overlooked by the powerful - and taken advantage of by an opportunist like Constantine.
  
  What is really surprising is John's confrontation with the soul (?) of his twin. Apparently the fated "Laughing Magician" has been keeping residence inside a corner of John's mind, pulling the strings to push John down some very bad paths, and waiting until he was weak enough to take over. Of course, John, being the hell-be-damned upstart that he is, used his own power to get rid of the interloper once and for all. If this twin was the real reason why John has taken so many wrong turns in the past it should be interesting to see whether his absense will reveal a "better" Constantine.
• 
  Matthew

  I haven't read Hellblazer in 2-3 years, but I picked this up on a whim when I saw it at my library. Some titles are just constant in what you expect from them and with a series like Hellblazer that's often a good thing. Your typical Hellblazer story is this:
  
  1. A demon and/or a human is playing with dark magic that will really mess things up.
  
  2. Constantine finds out about it.
  
  3. Constantine might get beat up a bit, but in the end he does something really, really clever to take the bad guys down.
  
  4. At least one thing, and possibly more, will happen to highlight how much life in general sucks for Constantine.
  
  Diggle really follows the formula, but it's a good formula and he handles is really well. The plots are fun and have some nice, even unexpected, twists. And the dagger in Constantine's soul at the end is quite powerful and really shows him off as a character. Good stuff.
• 
  Darrell

  Everything Andy Diggle has been building up to comes to an end in this volume and Constantine is finally back on his game. First he steals a rare book from the Vatican library with the help of a succubus, then he exhumes the remains of Saint Nicholas (that's right, Santa Claus) and smuggles them back to England in order to finally deal with Mako and Lord Burnham. We then finally learn why Constantine hasn't been as effective as he usually is.
  
  This volume omits the "Newcastle Calling" story-line in which a documentary film crew from America tries to track down John Constantine for a piece about his 1970's punk rock band Mucous Membrane. As these two issues were mostly pointless gross out moments, it's just as well they left it out. However, I did get a kick out of Diggle's homage to New York Dolls bassist Auther "Killer" Kane, in which he reveals that Mucous Membrane's drummer Benjamin "Beano" Digby has converted to Mormonism.
• 
  William Thomas

  With Hellblazer running into the 100's now in it's series, I thought the book would become stale, despite the myriad possibilities inherent in the basic plot. This was true of a few writers' work on the book, but leave it to Andy Diggle to complety turn me back onto Constantine. Quick stories here which contain as much
  Myth, wit and magic as u could ask for. Both stories read as if they were a part of a Ray Bradbury story collection, with Diggle's knack for dialogue and scripting. The artwork is fabulous in it's style more than in it's execution, but
  It harkena back to an earlier Vertigo era as well as bringing the exact style the book calls for inthw modern era.
• 
  Devowasright

  been reading this in issue format. some interesting ideas, and andy seems to have found his stride.
• 
  Dr. Barrett Dylan Brown, Phd

  The first story was good, yet predictable, and the rest was crap.
• 
  David Agranoff

  I was super into this tradition Constantine story until the anit-climax in the final chapter. Still happy I read it as always. I'll check Diggle's other Hellblazer titles for sure.
• 
  Patrick Hurley

  John Constantine is usually a fun and easy read, and this volume was no exception. Classic John Constantine here, using his wits and a bit of magic to mess with those who would mess with others.
• 
  Shannon Appelcline

  A solid end to Diggle's Hellblazer, nicely bookending the series and showing Constantine at his best.
  
• 
  Dony Grayman

  Tomo 3 de 3 en edición española.
• 
  Art

  This was a very good ending by Andy Diggle.
  
  
• 
  Joe Young

  3/5