Sadly, I could only take this on for a year or so because I had a lot of other work commitments but what a buzz!  The series was illustrated throughout by Leonard Manco, man of genius, gentleman and all round good guy.

The series was inspired by near death experiences. I always wondered about the tunnel of warm light and the welcoming friends: what if it was a trap? No one ever comes back from the light, no one ever gets there and then comes alive again, it’s always a journey. What if something sinister lay behind the panel of white light? What if Heaven and Hell weren’t all there was?

Empathy is the Enemy

John Constantine is drinking in a pub in London when a suicidal man wearing a Wreckless Eric T Shirt approaches him and asks for his help. If John can’t help him he’s scheduled to kill himself that evening.  Chris Cole is crippled with empathy. After using a spell a bird told him at a party he finds that he has set off a series of events that lead to the death of a young family in a house fire. Bad enough, but now he’s feeling their emotions as they died in the fire and it’s snowballing, getting more intense. He feels their familys’ grief, the desolation of their young nephew. He can’t stand it any more. Steve Evans sent him to John.

But here’s the conundrum: Evans is a magus too, he could cure Cole with a flick of his wrist, so why send him all the way to London to see John? Why draw John’s attention North like that?

John finds he has caught the empathy virus and begins to feel the emotions of the people around him. Uncomfortable for an old war horse but intoxicating as well, comforting.

After finding a murdered woman in Cole’s hotel room they head North to Glasgow and Steve Evans, even though John knows, as much as he knows anything, that he is heading towards his own death.

The Red Right Hand

Judgement day has come to Glasgow. Nuff said.