John Constantine

Born in Liverpool, John Constantine is a working-class occultist, petty magician, and world-class con man who drifts through the darker corners of the DC Universe. His sharp tongue and ruthless cunning—honed through stints with the punk band Mucous Membrane and the ill-fated Newcastle Crew—prove deadlier than any spell.

Few characters have crawled out of the Bronze Age and burrowed so deeply into DC's DNA as John Constantine, who made his unforgettable entrance in The Saga of Swamp Thing #37 in 1985 and hasn't stopped haunting the publisher's darker corridors since. Over four decades of continuous publishing — with two catalog appearances earning key-issue recognition — he's become one of comics' most enduring presences, turning up most frequently in Justice League Dark and Detective Comics, where he keeps genuinely rarefied company: Batman, Green Lantern, Deadman, and Boston Brand among them. That kind of crossover reach, rubbing shoulders with DC's heaviest hitters across 137 catalogued appearances, speaks to a character who transcends his occult-tinged origins to feel utterly essential to the wider universe. If you've been sleeping on Constantine, forty years of comics history suggests it's well past time to wake up.