John Constantine: Hellblazer- The Gift by Mike Carey and Leonardo Manco

John Constantine is one of the world's foremost magicians. But he's lived most of his life as a monumental fuck-up. Recently, the daughter of the Demon Nergal sought revenge on John for causing her father's downfall by sending him into three increasingly bad fantasies where he fathered three children on her, two boys and a girl. She also had a demon inhabit John's friend Chas, and afterwards, he beat his wife bloody, causing her to leave him. And in the process, John's sister Cheryl was killed by her husband, who'd become something of a raving fundamentalist, and her soul was sucked down to Hell.

But John is going to try and make it better, and he's teamed up with none other than Nergal himself to go into Hell and retrieve Cheryl's soul. Not only for himself, or his niece Angie, who has inherited something of the Constantine magical powers, but for Cheryl herself, who deserved better than him as a brother.

The problem is that John himself is very well-known in Hell, and he is not liked at all. John has tricked the powers of Hell too many times for them to look kindly on him if he is caught there. But he has to try. But can he hold off Nergal and Nergal's daughter long enough to get revenge on his half-demon children, and convince Cheryl to come home with him? And once he's done that, how will he deal with Chas, and Chas' quite understandable beef with him? Can Constantine give up magic for good, or is he still addicted to it, and deluding himself that he can ever just put it down and walk away, never to return?

An amazing graphic novel that takes us on a first-hand journey to Hell, and shows us the damned souls and those who supposedly rule them. John has plenty of reasons to not want to go there, but he'll do anything to get his sister's soul back and keep her from being tortured eternally when she's essentially a pure soul. Only he's mistaken in who is responsible for her death.

John Constantine screws up all the time, and he knows it. His career as a magician is littered with the souls of people whose deaths he's caused, directly or indirectly. And we get to see all of them, as they follow him around in a crowd wherever he goes. We aren't told if they are actual ghosts or simply memories he carries with him, but I am betting the first, letting him know the cost of the people he sold out to save his own life, or died for him when he made a mistake with his magic.

And the toll keeps rising with every book. He's never had one relationship he didn't somehow screw up, one friend who hasn't paid the cost for being his friend. But where does it end? When does he finally say "enough"? Every time he's tried to make amends, he's only ended up screwing the pooch even worse than before.

It's like a traffic accident. Horrible, but you can't look away. Because even though he tries to do the right thing, he often ends up making things a good deal worse than they would have been without his interference in the first place. I can't look away, and I can't stop reading. Where will it end for him? Who knows, but I'll be reading until that point.