john constantine

In the final day of our fantasy draft, our writers pick a spy, a magician, a feminist icon, and another Green Lantern, and they move away from Marvel and DC to pick some great heroes from beyond the Big Two to round out their teams.

John Constantine has fought many a monster. He's faced everyone, from the First of the Fallen to renegade demons causing football riots and beyond. But of all the villains he's fought, probably my favorite is one who only ever appeared in three stories: the King of the Vampires.

Everyone loves comic book trivia, but with decades of comics behind, there’s always some new obscure fact to learn. That’s why ComicsAlliance is going deep into the minutiae of your favorite names in comics in our continuing video series. You think you know comics? Well, here’s a few things you might not know! This week we're looking at DC/Vertigo's most famous urban wizard, John Constantine, Hellblazer!

It's like the late '80s all over again: John Constantine and Swamp Thing are lurking in the dark corner of the DC Universe, rather than a walled-off Vertigo, and the two of them are all wrapped up in each other's lives. That's where we find ourselves in The Hellblazer #2, written by Simon Oliver with art by Moritat.

Brooklyn-based comics convention Flame Con hosted some of the industry's most prominent and prolific creators this year, such as comics writer James Tynion IV. In just over four years, he's written on Batman, Constantine: The Hellblazer, Talon, and several series at Boom Studios. He currently writes Detective Comics, The Woods, and his new queer-inclusive Boom series The Backstagers with Rian Sygh. In the first of a series of interviews from Flame Con, Comics Alliance got the chance to sit down with Tynion to talk about queer comics, Boom Studios, and... world domination?

It’s not a radical idea to say that superhero comics should be for children, but it seems an increasingly radical idea in a time where a Marvel comic recently had Hawkeye shoot Bruce Banner through the eyeball. All-ages comics at the Big Two are the exception, not the rule. Are the demands of continuity the reason why? Does "everything should fit together" inevitably create, for lack of a better term, "tone bleed"?

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics. This week, for absolutely no reason at all whatsoever in particular, we are counting down the five best ghost punchers, witch hunters, and monster wrestlers in comics. The occult detective has been a popular character trope since the 19th century, and heroic figures fighting monsters has been common in mainstream comics since the revision of the Comics Code Authority in the 1970s. This video takes a look at five different characters who ain't afraid of no ghosts and take it upon themselves to stand as guardians between the worlds of the living and the dead.

John Constantine's transition back into the DC Universe has been a bit of a rocky road over the past six years, but recently a balance has been struck and the cheeky and charming conjurer now feels at home once again among the likes of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. This month Constantine returns in a brand new ongoing series The Hellblazer by Simon Oliver and Moritat, launching with The Hellblazer: Rebirth #1. The new series sees John return to Great Britain and come face to face with literal demons from his past. ComicsAlliance chatted with the creative team about their plans for Constantine's return home, and Oliver's enduring hatred of the man the character is based on.

Welcome to Cast Party, the feature that imagines a world with even more live action comic book adaptations than we currently have, and comes up with arguably the best casting suggestions you’re ever going to find for the movies and shows we wish could exist. In the second of our guest editions for Pride Week, Tara Marie wants to see a fresh take on a TV adaptation of Hellblazer, completely divorced from the cancelled 2014 Constantine TV show. This version would take its lead not just from the recently wrapped Constantine: The Hellblazer comic series by James Tynion IV, Ming Doyle, Riley Rossmo, and Ivan Plascencia, but from the Vertigo Hellblazer years and related series like Swamp Thing and Sandman.

There was a time not so long ago when one could count off all the LGBTQ superheroes at Marvel and DC on the fingers of one hand. We’ve seen an increasing number of queer heroes make their debuts in recent years, and a few established heroes have come out as LGBTQ, but the number of queer superheroes at the Big Two in any given month is still sometimes small enough to count on one hand. To celebrate Pride, and the many LGBTQ heroes that have appeared at Marvel and DC over the years, we’ve assembled a panel of ComicsAlliance contributors to hold a fantasy draft. Our writers will take turns building up seven-member dream teams of LGBTQ superheroes from the ranks of both publishers.