Hellblazer/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • We really have a number of examples, but one that sticks out in my head is during the arc "Dangerous Habits," John Constantine convinces the First of the Fallen, who has come for the soul of one of his friends, to drink a beer from a pool under the friend's house. The First finds it to be perfectly good, in fact the perfect brew, until Constantine points out what it's made of - holy water. Set to revert to holy water should the candles near it be disturbed. John proceeds to kick the table with said candles over, burning the First from the inside, then shoves him into the pool, disrupting his physical body long enough for the deal his friend had made to expire.
    • Two from Dangerous Habits, actually. The aforementioned one, then much later, after tricking the Second and Third of the Fallen into both buying his soul, forcing all three to cure his terminal lung cancer, as his soul going to hell would force all three into a war that none of them could win, and at the very least would leave them open to decimation from heaven. Needless to say, all three are understandably upset. This is compounded when, after having his entire body rebuilt from scratch, John turns around and gives his famous "Up yours".
      • Mitigated slightly by all three forgetting that "alive" does not equal "healthy" or even "having all limbs and various manly parts". Just chalk it up to the Rule Of Cool.
      • Ah, but here be the rub: he forces the demons' hands by slashing his wrists... and he makes it quite clear that he will kill himself repeatedly until he gets what he wants. It Crosses the Line Twice, but still quite awesome.
  • This troper's personal favourite is from an early Jamie Delano issue, in which Constantine saves his girlfriend from a four-headed, eight-armed monster which a demon created by fusing four football (=soccer) hooligans together. How does John do it? Seven words: "What do you do on Saturdays, lads?" Whereupon both pairs of heads shout their team's respective names and pummel each other to death.
  • Also, peeing on the king of the vampires.
  • Are we forgetting the entire economy that John singlehandedly destroyed in the first few issues? The entire economy of hell?
  • In the original Books of Magic run, Timothy is taken to a party packed wall-to-wall with any number of beings from John's own Rogues Gallery who have just discovered who Timothy is, putting him in no insignificant danger. John arrives, opens the front door, calmly lights a cigarette and says "I think you all know who I am" and walks out with Timothy without another word.
    • Even better is that he also rescued Zattana, who it is pointed out is much more powerful than John, but that's not the point. Because they're not afraid of Zattana.
  • Chas, John Constantine's most faithful friend, gets one after Kit dumps him in Fear And Loathing. Chas picks up a drunk and disorderly John and even gets punched in the face for his trouble, but John's inner asshole comes to the fore when discussing his problems with Chas and he tells Chas to piss off while insulting Chas's wife. Chas proceeds to BEAT THE LIVING SHIT out of John and dumps his head in the toilet. And the clincher is that John can't do shit about it, since deep down he knows he was wrong and he knows all the shit Chas has to put up with to be his friend.