The British bad boy John Constantine seems to make enemies wherever he goes. He is a grifter, a conman, a charismatic know-it-all, but most importantly, he is one of the most impressive occultists in the DC Universe. But for as bad as he is, Constantine remains one of those who works to keep the world from getting any worse than it already is, and many of his enemies over the years have been made for all the right reasons.
He has clashed with government officials and street gangs, angered angels, gods, and demons, and though he might act cool, these villains are the stuff of nightmares. Constantine has barely survived these encounters, and he spends his life haunted by the evil horrors he encountered when facing off against these villains early in his career.
10 Nergal
Before he became the living legend, Constantine was just a young angsty punk into the magic scene. When he was in the band Mucous Membrane, he performed in Newcastle, where he and a group of other occultists first encountered the demon Nergal. They tried to fight off Nergal and failed colossally.
An innocent girl was seized by Nergal and dragged off to Hell. In the aftermath of the incident, Constantine went mad and was confined in the Ravenscar mental asylum, where he was tortured by the staff. But Nergal would return again and again to haunt him throughout the years.
9 Brujeria & Invulche
Before appearing in his own Hellblazer series, John Constantine debuted in Alan Moore's run of Saga of the Swamp Thing, where he helped train the plant elemental in how best to use his powers. Soon, the two found themselves embattled against a group of a powerful group of male witches called the Brujeria.
They wore the clothes made from the flayed skin and fat of their victims and worked with a powerful demon, the Invulche, who stalked and murdered Constantine's friends...and the survivors of the Newcastle incident.
8 The First of the Fallen
When Lucifer first fell to Hell, there was already another devil waiting. The First of the Fallen was the first being createdーand the first to be cast into the Pit.
When Constantine was dying of cancer, he was approached by the First of the Fallen, who insisted he would claim the magician's soul the moment cancer finished him off. After tricking the devil (and two others) into curing his cancer, the First of the Fallen committed himself wholly to destroying Constantine and everyone he loved.
7 The British Royal Family
Not all of Constantine's enemies are devils of monsters. Some are mere mortals, though, in the case of British Royalty, "mere" is perhaps selling their power short. The Royals were part of an elite group of the nobility who indulged in every vice imaginable, known as the Caligula Club.
When members of the Caligula Club summoned a demonーthe same demon who had once possessed Jack the Ripperーthe demon took hold of one of the princes. But interestingly, it was the other prince who Constantine made into a bitter enemy when he tricked the spoiled royal into sniffing the ashes of a dead relative from an urn.
6 The Freemasons
Another group of powerful humans that Constantine got on the wrong side of was the Freemasons. During the story "The Fear Machine," he stumbled upon a plot by the powerful organization to use Britain's leylines in a magical ritual involving fear and human sacrifice to destroy the modern world.
Constantine challenged them, talking truth to power, and assembling allies to oppose them. Almost all of these allies were killed, but in an act of ritual sex magic, he and two ex-lovers of his, Zed and Marj, channeled their energy through ecstatic rites into a spell that countered the workings of the Freemasons.
5 The King of the Vampires
Of all the various immortals that Constantine has met, none has taken interest in him quite the way the King of the Vampires did. The King respected him as a magic worker, even related to and respected him. To summon Constantine, he left a message written in blood in his bathroom sink.
John accepted the invite, and met the King in a cemetery, where they were surrounded by all manner of undead, the vassals of the King. Constantine refused the offer to serve the King of the Vampires, and made an enemy who haunted his nights with a cruel unyielding malice.
4 Drummond
Drummond might have begun life as a man, but he was a monster even then. An abusive cop who misused until he was forced into retirement, Drummond acquired a grimoire full of magical rites to transfer his mind into another body. He tried to possess another human, but couldn't, so instead entered the body of a massive bulldog.
In this body, Drummond forced a human boy to fetch him victims, eating whoever the boy fetched for him, and forcing the boy to cannibalize the scraps. He also assembled an army of dogs to take on humanity, until Constantine bested him and proved to be the alpha of the pack.
3 Papa Midnite
The American Voodoo practitioner Papa Midnite debuted in the very first Hellblazer story, where he helped Constantine to banish a hunger demon that had been set free by an old friend of Constantine's.
However, Midnite returned later and cast a spell that made Constantine's life quite hellish (literally). In return, Constantine forced Papa Midnite to leap off of one of New York's skyscrapers, but not even death could keep this voodoo priest from causing trouble.
2 The Family Man
The serial killer known as the Family Man earned his moniker for finding happy families and murdering them all. He was an ex-cop and used his contacts to track down information about people.
When the Family Man met Constantine by chance, he decided to learn all he could about the younger man, and eventually tracked down Constantine's father and killed him. In response, John acquired a gun and shot the Family Man, putting the serial killer down for good, but staining his soul with his first murder in the process.
1 The Golden Boy
All his life, John Constantine felt like a failure. His father blamed him for his mother dying in childbirth. But there was another possibility of how things could have been, for John had a twinーone he killed in the whom. He was too young to know what he was doing, but in killing his brother, he killed his better half.
The Golden Boy is all Constantine could have been, the shining bright hero of light, rather than the stained, morally compromised vagabond. But there has always been magic in the family's veins, and the Golden Boy returned to exact vengeance and reassert himself against John. But in another reality, the Golden Boy was the one who survived, and in that dimension, he reached his full potential and lived in a better world. Just knowing this fact is perhaps the greatest mark of Constantine's failures. No one can hurt you like family, after all.