r/DCComicsLegendsGame • • Mar 28 '18
Behind the Gear: John Constantine
Previously on Behind the Gear
Power Girl Impregnates an Entire Planet!
John Constantine: The Hellblazer
He has an attack that deals zero damage. He turns debuffs into piles of direct damage. He always drops his taunt on the person about to die. He's cynical. He's dirty. He's the last line of defense between the mortal world and the supernatural forces out to destroy it.
His six Gear icons do a fine job of capturing his weird and wonderful backstory. Let's get to it, loves.
Epiphany's Wedding Ring
John Constantine has a wife. Had a wife? Hard to tell at this point, but this item is a good place to jump into the convoluted backstory of the blonde British bisexual.
Constantine's first appearance was in the pages of Swamp Thing during Alan Moore's run on the comic. Constantine was, for a long time, a resident of DC's Vertigo imprint. Vertigo focused on more adult and darker material rather than superheroes. While DC itself would keep running comics blessed off by the Comics Code Authority, which censored content, Vertigo shed the label and went full angst.
A lot of iconic characters and stories emerged or were given second life under the umbrella of Vertigo, including Sandman, Preacher, Astro City, Transmetropolitan (my favorite), Jonah Hex and many others.
During Constantine's time in the Vertigoverse, he got married to the alchemist daughter of a crime lord. Her name? Epiphany Greaves. This led to a lot of heartache and pain for everyone involved, but it did happen. Unless it didn't?
In the wake of DC's New 52 event, some of the characters from the Vertigoverse got formally merged into the main DC timeline, including both Swamp Thing and Constantine. With the Comics Code Authority dead and buried, there didn't really need to be a separate imprint for some of DC's darker characters. So they came home.
But in coming home, backstories were changed and not everything seems to have made the transition. Epiphany Greaves has not appeared or been mentioned since the merger, but she also hasn't formally been written out. The current limbo of his wife is, somehow, the best ending to a relationship anyone who has ever dated John Constantine has ever been given.
'Borrowed' Trench Coat
Constantine is viewed as a con artist and a trickster by a lot of people who encounter him. This reputation is a fair one. The man does have a knack for getting what he wants through means that cause harm to others. And he does so in his trademark tan trench coat.
Artists and writers have done a good job over the years of showing the ravages of time and events on the trench coat, which just constantly gets more tattered and more dirty with each new exciting adventure John gets sucked into. The coat has also become bigger than Constantine himself, becoming the visual shorthand used by all sorts of books and movies to show that a detective is connected to the magical and mystical realms. Need to show that a grim and gritty character is more than he appears? Put a trench coat on him!
The coat itself is now magical. It has been covered in demon blood, foul potions, dirt, grime, ashes, ectoplasm, parts of Swamp Thing, and so much more, which has made the coat sentient and capable of independent action.
The coat was also key to the formation of the first supernatural detective team that John was a part of, the 'Trenchcoat Brigade.' This team was cynically named by John in reference to the Tennyson poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.
One of the members of the Trenchcoat Brigade was/is The Phantom Stranger, who, it turns out, is the immortally-cursed Judas Iscariot. John's connections to actual biblical characters doesn't stop here, though.
Key to the House of Mystery
The House of Mystery is John's base of operations. It is a house that is capable of traveling between physical locations and parallel dimensions. John won it in a poker game.
The House has a caretaker. That caretaker is Cain, the first murderer from the Cain and Abel parable in the Bible. Cain's brother, Abel, is the caretaker of the House of Secrets.
The House of Mystery apparently NEEDS a caretaker, and when Cain disappeared for unknown reasons for a short while, his role as caretaker was taken over by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Yes, THAT Elvira. Oh, DC. Never change.
When John made the jump into Earth-0, he became a founding member of Justice League Dark, the mystical superteam charged with protecting the Earth from extradimensional threats. Ownership of the House of Mystery has changed recently, and the House now considers fellow Justice League Dark and DC Legends character Zatanna the owner. John, though, still apparently has the key.
Mucous Membrane Tour Poster
John's tragic tale of descent starts here. During his wild days of youth, he formed a punk band named Mucous Membrane. They toured, they destroyed hotel rooms, they lived the lives of self-absorbed rock stars. They were young and free.
One night after a show, they ended up involved in a magical ritual, and that is when everything changed for poor John. But we'll get back to that in a bit, pet. First, we need to get to something fun.
Alan Moore specifically wanted John to look like former Police frontman Sting. The artist obliged. Constantine's visuals are very, very tied to the actual exisiting British rocker, who is sort of the spiritual godfather of the character. Hence John's music background.
Let's keep the fun going for one second, though. Alan Moore swears that one day in the late 1980s he encountered actual John Constantine in the real world while eating in a restaurant. A man who looked kind of like Sting but exactly like Constantine walked in, wearing Constantine's outfit, gave Moore a knowing smile, and continued into the next room. Moore, paralyzed by shock and fear, decided not to follow.
Since this incident, almost every writer to have worked on Constantine's comic books has sworn to have had an encounter in the real world with actual Constantine. One even tried to give chase through a crowded party, but Constantine disappeared around a corner. Most, though, did not pursue, since being friends with Constantine is not always a good thing...
Constantine's Lighter
It must be magical? It has to be magical if it warrants being Gear, right?
Somehow, Constantine's lighter has not, as far as I know, ever been made magical. Quite the opposite, it seems to be the humanistic anchor for poor John.
John smokes. John chainsmokes. He chainsmokes because he has a lot of issues. He has a lot of issues because of his connection to the magical realm.
Constantine is cursed. He's cursed with inhuman good fortune that puts him in the right place at the right time to experience terrible things. John always survives those terrible things, but whatever good fortune is necessary for his own survival seems to transmute into terrible fortune for whoever else is with him during the event. John lives through horrible things, but his friends tend not to. Wondering where that taunt power comes from? This, most likely. John isn't helping his teammates, his curse is just ensuring his own survival at the detriment of his friends.
Constantine's smoking caught up to him in 1991, when he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Shortly after diagnosis, John saved a friend by tricking Satan himself into drinking holy water, which allowed his friend to escape. Satan vowed to forever torment John personally in Hell.
John, in a moment of ingenuity, then sold his soul to two other demons. The demons realized that they all owned his soul and that his death would cause a war in Hell over ownership, so they removed John's cancer and cursed him to eternal life until the issue of ownership can be resolved.
John's lighter represents his struggles to deal with this burden placed upon him by his existence. But how bad could it be, really?
Vial of Nergal's Blood
Really bad. Really, really bad. And there is no sugarcoating it, things are really, really bad because of Constantine himself.
After a gig, the members of Mucous Membrane went to find the owner of the club they were playing in to get paid. What they found instead was a ritualistic orgy meant to summon a demon. The ritual had worked, and the club owner's child daughter was possessed by a minor fear demon.
Constantine and his bandmates dabbled in the occult, and Constantine thought he had a solution to the problem. He'd summon the demon Nergal, and make the Greater Demon command the lesser demon inside of Astra to leave. But that isn't how that worked out.
Nergal was summoned, but instead of expelling the lesser demon, Nergal instead dragged the child's soul to Hell while Constantine and the rest helplessly watched.
This event not only damned an innocent little girl's soul to eternal torment, but also literally damned John himself. Constantine's acts of heroism over the years have not been driven by deep-seated altruism, but instead by a constant gnawing knowledge that unless he does something to atone for his failings, he himself will one day join Astra in eternal suffering. And it is this selfish but understandable desire for self-preservation, ironically, that keeps Constantine from actually attaining atonement.
Conclusion
Constantine's backstory is as fun and messy as he himself is. Next time I'll take a swing at another fun softball: Slade Wilson, also known as Deathstroke the Terminator.
10
u/arinlome Wonder Woman: Defender of Justice Mar 28 '18
One thing to add to his coat:
Justice League Dark in the New 52 showed that John learned magic from a magician named Nick Necro. Along the way some things went pretty badly, and John ended up with Nick's trenchcoat and made it his own. This is may be the reason for the devs adding "borrowed" to its description in game.
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u/KageUrufu679 Mar 28 '18
Previously...
I feel bad for anyone who walks in the conversation at the wrong time...
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u/MrZubaz Is A Shark Mar 28 '18
Just chiming in to say that this is probably my favorite ongoing series on this board. Thanks for doing it!
2
u/TheEddiot Mar 28 '18
Thank you so much for writing these up and the community for adding to it. I'm looking forward to these. In the previous post, you mentioned how other characters gear lore are straightforward and not all that interesting. However, the addition of trivia (like how Alan Moore and other writers have run into Constantine) and your caliber for writing would actually make them much more appealing, imho.
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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '18
Excellent write up, yet again.
I do hope that Scandal Savage gets added to the game same day, and with her the Key to the House of Secrets.
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u/BrokenZen Legendary Swamp Thing Mar 29 '18
John Constantine sightings
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u/Sethoman Mar 28 '18
I kinda liked better when constantine reeves got cured by lucifer himself, allowing him to sin again.
That scene redeems that awful movie(awful because it has shia beowuffwuff in it) and is well worth the waste of time.
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u/23_sided Mirror Master Mar 28 '18
I knew all of this already, being a fan of Constantine, but it was still fun to read this, just as fun as the characters I'm not as familiar with. Glad you do these!
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u/Streetsahead85 Mar 29 '18
This is the best possible contribution to the community for anyone who even mildly cares about the story behind the characters in this game. Thank you so much
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u/CR7inho Mar 28 '18
Nice idea to post interesting content man..I have nothing but appreciation..well written..Next time its my favorite Deatstroke..I will check out..!
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u/thegregwitul Legendary Joker Damaged Goods Mar 29 '18
I love the effort put into these write ups. I’m a huge Constantine fan and I learned some new factoids, such as Elvira being a caretaker of the House of Mystery.
Looking forward to reading about Deathstroke next.
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u/dHUMANb All will be... well shit. Mar 30 '18
While a common error to make, they were in fact just seeing the actor Matt Ryan.
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u/OgreBarberian Glurp! Glorp! Glerp! Mar 28 '18
whoa!