Warning: Spoilers for John Constantine, Hellblazer: Dead in America #7

Summary

• John Constantine takes an unexpected ride into hell, manipulating his way through danger creatively.
• To be a Hellblazer means finding fiery and novel routes to hell — unlike Ghost Rider.
• Constantine's street smarts and ingenuity lead him to dark places, using a bit of rope for his hellish ride.

Not unlike Marvel's John Constantine has always been bound for hell. One way or another, as the demons keep telling him, they will get his soul. In the meantime, Constantine keeps flirting with visits to the land of the tortured dead. Only, in his latest misadventure, Constantine takes an unexpected ride into hell that might make even the fiery biker Ghost Rider jealous.

In John Constantine, Hellblazer: Dead in America, the celebrated team of Simon Spurrier and Aaron Campbell have returned to follow Constantine as he goes across the pond to grapple with his own imminent death. After a climactic moment of hearing the horrific tale of his ghost companion, Constantine takes the matter into his own hands in issue #7 - by killing the shade and literally riding his soul straight into hell.

With a quick spell and by knotting the very rope Constantine choked the ghost with, he holds on for dear life as the s blur downward into a fast-paced, descending arc, ending up in just the place Constantine is avoiding but needs to go to find some answers.

John Constantine Is the Lord of Loopholes as He Rides a Soul into Hell

Variant Cover by Martin Simmonds

John Constantine is nothing if not creative in how he skirts around danger. As a kind-of conman and deception expert, he often misdirects others and comes out with the information he needs. In this issue, he manipulates his way into "earning" the death of the ghost and the ghost's sad metamorphosis into a sort of sleigh. But even when he doesn't have the help of a guardian angel, Constantine has been conning the denizens of hell, too.

To be a Hellblazer is to be bound for hell via your own fiery and novel route.

In the late '80s, the Hellblazer featured Jamie Delano's version of Constantine taking on demons that had taken on the form of financiers, and he outsmarted them enough to devalue the "hell dollar." This resurgence in Constantine's creativity and even absurdity is a welcome return to his original trickster-like characterization. Especially for a loophole's sake, how else is a living man going to get to hell but by cheating death? After all, it's in the name: to be a Hellblazer is to be bound for hell via your own fiery and novel route.

Ghost Rider Is All Skull, No Brains

Johnny Blaze on His Signature Hellbike

The well-known superhero-comic example of a hell-rider is none other than Ghost Rider himself. Initially an interesting concept, there actually isn't any ingenuity to Johnny Blaze, whose powers come from hell. The trail he blazes is behind him, while John Constantine blazes forward, right to the last place on Earth he wants to be. By this method, Constantine raised the stakes of what was possible by riding a human being like a vehicle, proving him the darkest occultist in comics history.

He may be the opposite kind of hero as Superman, but what Constantine has is his street smarts. It's that ingenuity that gets him places. His new ride may not be as sleek as Ghost Rider's, but it's certainly more hellish than the Spirit of Vengeance's. Constantine doesn't need a leather jacket or a flaming skull — just a bit of rope to bobsled down into the pits of despair.

John Constantine, Hellblazer: Dead in America #7 is available now from DC Comics.