You know what sounds like a hard sell to a Hollywood studio? A chain smoking antihero with a bad attitude and terminal lung cancer whom God himself doesn’t like. Dipping in and out of actual Hell. Where, by the way, Satan can’t wait to torture him for eternity. Oh, and it’s a large-ish budget superhero movie based on a DC/Vertigo comic. It’s a road that would include lawsuits, a music video director, a comic book creator who would rather leave free money on the table than be involved, and the MPAA gumming up the works. But where there’s a Keanu Reeves….there’s a way. This is what happened to Constantine.

The origins of Constantine began in June of 1986 when famed comic creator Alan Moore introduced him in The Saga of Swamp Thing #37. The occult investigator from England was on the hunt for information...