If Mike Carey’s first volume on this title, Red Sepulchre, was an exercise in constructing a strong story, building up mysteries and character relationships, and reaching a satisfying conclusion, Black Flowers shows that Mike Carey is attempting this exercise on a wider scale. Red Sepulchre was a solidly constructed single story, but, in Black Flowers, Carey reveals that he’s taking his knack for strong plotting to build up a 
mystery and a threat for John to confront that spans volumes. This volume comprises three shorter stories, each building on the threat that revealed itself in Red Sepulchre and is lurking on the fringes here. But these three stories are also brimming with a vibrancy that Carey was only touching on in his first volume. As the mysteries deepen, Carey is getting a stronger handle on John, the pace of his adventures, his connection to people around him, and how to bring excitement and danger into this book.
The first of these stories, “The Game of Cat and Mouse,” is a single-issue story drawn by Jock. It’s a chase story, in which three demons called Lukhavim are after John for killing Fredricks in the previous volume. Jock’s design for the creatures is great – they look hulking and imposing, but also sit quite naturally in panels with human characters. The issue itself has a great balance. It’s a very typical John Constantine encounter, with the magician walking the demons into traps and calmly gloating as they wither away. But, at the same time, danger lurks around the proceedings. Enough cryptic warnings are provided by the demons that it is obvious their pursuit of John is tied to a bigger problem. Their first attack on him is jarring, in that it actually hurts him. This puts John on edge through the rest of the story. For as calm and cool as he remains, he knows they mean business and can hurt him, and it shows. The pace of this story hits just the right balance as well. I also like that Clarice, the rich old woman from the previous story, is being used as John’s advisor on all things Hell. A fun ride, and there’s a lot happening here.
Lee Bermejo pencils the two-part “Black Flowers” next, and it is a treat to see his interior artwork. The human characters have a strong realism to their faces and the inhuman characters are so commanding on page that they truly feel like they are intruding in our world, which is the point of the story. The art is dark, but not overly so, with shadows being used to accentuate the locations. The story involves Angie getting John to help her with an outbreak of madness in the town where her brother is a psychiatric patient. This alls ties into the wider plot Carey is working with. 
Namely, that “there is a disturbance at the border” – something nasty from the otherworldly realms is creeping into ours. These spirits have turned the town mad, and three murderous shepherds from that realm have come here to set things right. The story does a great job digging into Angie’s character. Carey wisely places a lengthy scene between her and her jerk boyfriend early on, to give us more insight into her regular life before plunging her into this. She’s on edge for the rest of the story, struggling to accept John’s world but equally angry towards her brother. Carey also tells the story really well. The cutting of scenes between John discovering something is amiss as Angie gets deeper into it is expertly done, building up tension effectively. The climatic moments also work nicely, aided by Bermejo’s designs for the shepherds. And, as well as this works as a standalone tale to build up John and Angie’s relationship, Carey swings things on the final page to remind us how this otherworldly invasion seems to be part of a bigger danger John is facing. The tension is effectively built, allowing this story to fit into a larger whole.
Marcelo Frusin is back to pencil the final three issues, the “Third Worlds” story. John takes Angie across the world with him, first to South America to get Swamp Thing’s help and figure out what may be coming from another realm, then to Iran to find the followers of Cain, and finally to New Zealand for more information. This doesn’t feel like wacky globe-trotting, mainly because it is all tied together so nicely by the threat of the otherworldly invaders and the strong narration from John and Angie.
The Swamp Thing chapter contains some card game shenanigans that are a bit off-course, but the visit with Swamp Thing is perfect. Carey gets their antagonistic dynamic, and John brings a lot of humour to the situation. Frusin, an artist grounded in darkly cartoony Vertigo books, creates a 
captivating vision of Swamp Thing, growing out of a giant old tree. The visit to Iran is another fun chapter, as John must answer for an old theft and Angie comes into to her own as an adventuress. There are hints that the evil John seeks goes back to the Garden of Eden and also an old-school trial by ordeal with humorous results. Very strong stuff, and Frusin’s depiction of arid desert life is great. The Tasmania chapter swings things into the deeply personal category. John learned from Swamp Thing that the evil he seeks also escaped from Tasmania two centuries ago, and journeys back in time to colonial slavery to learn about it. At the same time, Angie must ward of Aboriginal spirits and relays the story of her brother’s mental illness to them. These two story threads, coupled together, create an incredibly compelling narrative of pain felt throughout the years. Carey doesn’t downplay the years of pain felt by the Aboriginals when their land was taken over, but it’s a very poignant moment to have one of the spirits acknowledge that Angie’s family has also faced great suffering. The issue gives Angie remarkable depth. Just the fact that she stands up to the spirits shows a strength she didn’t have when we first met her, and a growth since accompanying John on the road.
I think what I like just as much is that Carey keeps the ominous threat feeling both sharply drawn and very vague. The point of the Tasmania story is for John to get information from the natives in the past. He gets it, but the scene cuts away as that conversation starts. At the end of the issue, he relays that he learned what he needed too, but we still don’t know what it is. Throughout this volume, the vague threat of something breaking through the wall between realms and entering ours is pervasive. But the terms are never laid out in stone, the threat is never delineated, and the dangers don’t have to be spelt out. Something bad will happen, and John is trying to learn more to prevent it. The danger feels real, partly because it is so vaguely sketched. In presenting it that way, Carey is allowing these individual stories to live and breathe as standalone tales and leaving ample space for character interaction. But it always feels like these pieces are building towards something, even if we don’t have a clear picture of what yet. It’s incredibly strong story structuring, and, aided by three strong artists, a sharp and effective package.
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