John Constantine’s Top 5 Biggest Failures Across DC Media

This article covers John Constantine’s 5 biggest failures in DC. It is accompanied by a podcast version.

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John Constantine has garnered quite the reputation for messing up. Whether it’s a spell, a job, or a relationship, it’s almost always doomed from the start if Constantine is involved. The occult detective is just unlucky and takes way too many unnecessary risks. Sure, he helps save the world now and again, but he’s also put the world at risk plenty of times. Just flip through any DC Comics, especially Hellblazer, or binge Constantine and Legends of Tomorrow, or even watch Constantine (2005). You’ll see the havoc and the heartbreak that revolve around him.

But what are John Constantine’s absolute biggest failures? A lot of them are personal. All of them are irreversible, with equally irrevocable consequences. So let’s air out this antihero’s dirty laundry by counting down the top 5 worst Constantine failures in DC media below.

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5. Messed Up a Spell with Veronica Delacroix

Like a typical Liverpool punk, John Constantine forms a band. Mucous Membrane consists of three members: John, Veronica Delacroix, and Gaz Lester. The three are rockstars as well as magicians. It was at this time that John also starts getting really serious with his magic, expanding the potential and powers he’d unlocked and tucked away in his youth. Here’s where things turn sour. A spell they’re performing goes horribly wrong, and Veronica incrementally loses her connection to the mortal world.

Eventually, Veronica loses her physical body altogether. She goes hunting for a magic solution — something, anything, to tether herself back to what she lost. She finds a “healing” spell that turns her into a monstrous, spirit-killing ghost. Later in his career, Constantine has to face and defeat her. Talk about a killer ex.

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4. Sent Desmond to Hell

In the Arrowverse television series Legends of Tomorrow, John Constantine meets and falls in love with a New Orleans bartender named Desmond. During this arc, John does his best to avoid getting too attached to the other man. After all, John knows he’s a danger to anyone who gets close to him. He’s got that whole “I’ll stay alone to protect the ones I care about” trope on lock. Despite his attempts to spurn Desmond, John eventually ends up dating him.

…That is, until the demon Neron possesses Desmond. John has no choice (or at least, doesn’t have the skill to separate the pair) but to send them both to Hell, devastating John and closing off his heart even more than before. Worse yet, Neron returns later to torment the magician by using Desmond’s body to hurt the Legends team members.

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3. Left Dream’s Sand Pouch with Rachel

The Hellblazer makes a brief but extremely important cameo in The Sandman comics and audio drama. After Morpheus, AKA Dream of the Endless, escapes his prison in the mortal realm, he seeks out his lost badges of office. One of these tools is a pouch full of sand. John Constantine claims to have bought the artifact at a garage sale, but he could never open the drawstring to see or use its contents. Since John is no longer in possession of it, they trace it to his ex-girlfriend Rachel.

Unfortunately, Rachel did manage to open the pouch. She is totally consumed by the sand. Addicted to its intoxicating powers — letting you into the Dreaming, creating a fictional ideal life, and so forth — she allows her physical body to wither and decay while stuck in her head. She starves and lingers on the precipice of Death. Rachel also accidentally kills her dad in her stupor, stretching his skin across her apartment walls. It’s a grisly fate, and one only lessened by Dream granting her a peaceful death (to pass in her sleep).

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2. Sacrificed His Parents for Power

This concept isn’t exactly explored in the Constantine movie starring Keanu Reeves. However, as Constantine’s original comic backstory, we can assume it’s tied to every iteration of the character. Plus, the Constantine film deals a lot with John’s past — and how it’s catching up to him fast as he gets closer to Hell. From his suicide attempts to his alcoholism and chain smoking (and subsequent cancer), he’s really got a lot going on. But the metaphorical demons such as substance abuse whicih haunt John Constantine make a lot of sense when you dig into his tragic youth.

John was born in Liverpool, England. He became fascinated by magic early on, and would often recklessly experiment with spells. One day, he performed a spell that had been taught to him as a sure way to become an extremely powerful magician. Unbeknownst to John, the spell required a major sacrifice. As a result, his home burned down. His mother and father were also killed in that fire, and their deaths gave him his powers.

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1. Damned Astra Logue

Astra (also sometimes referred to as Astrid) Logue is undoubtedly John Constantine’s greatest failure. He’s haunted by this terrible deed in every story he appears in because it’s just that bad. It all starts at a Newcastle bar called the Casanova Club where his band performs. The owner, Alex Logue, is a third-rate magician who deals in drugs and sex and abuses his preteen daughter. To protect herself, Astra summons the demon Norfulthing.

Norfulthing slaughters Alex and his cronies. Constantine realizes a demon has come and summons another demon, Nergal, to defeat Norfulthing. However, John fails to properly name, and thus bind, Nergal. Because John so royally botches the exorcism, Nergal is able to take Astra back with him to Hell. This particular failure scars Constantine so thoroughly and deeply that he spends time recovering from insanity in Ravenscar Secure Facility. The guilt never leaves him.

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