WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Hellblazer: Rise and Fall #1, by Tom Taylor, Darick Robertson, Diego Rodriguez, and Deron Bennett, on sale now.
Something as seemingly innocuous as just crossing paths with John Constantine tends to come with a shortened life expectancy, usually resulting in supernatural death and dismemberment from an association with one of the DC Universe's most prominent occultists. The new DC Black Label miniseries Hellblazer: Rise and Fall wastes no time in showing the mortal toll John has inflicted upon those around him, opening with a flashback of his birth and childhood in Liverpool, with the first two people to die because of John revealed, long before the hard-drinking magician even hit adulthood.
The miniseries has John provide a quick recap of his birth, unusually silent and calm for a newborn baby, with his mother Mary passing away from unseen complications stemming from the procedure. As a result, John's father descended into alcoholism and regularly abused his young son in his grief, though an adult John reflects that his old man would've likely hated him even if his mother had survived childbirth. The death of Mary Constantine from giving birth to John is part of virtually every incarnation of the character's origin, including Legends of Tomorrow's take on the character, providing a grim foreshadowing to John's close association with death and tragedy all his life.
The second death is a little more explicitly caused by John, or at least one he actively helped facilitate. As a child, John and his friends attempted a ritual to open a portal to Hell on a dark and stormy night by the River Alt that runs through Liverpool. Among the trio is Billy Henderson, a young classmate of John's who Constantine particularly enjoys giving a hard time due to his more affluent upbringing and willingness to do whatever John tells him.
While the ceremony itself is an apparent failure, the thunderstorm causing the river to unexpectedly surge forth and wash all three schoolchildren as they huddle together on the riverbank. John manages to survive but Billy is discovered days later, washed down the river dead, with a nasty head wound from the sudden flood.
Years later, the sins of the past have come to haunt John Constantine once again, as the magician stumbles across a murder mystery as an adult. Prominent, wealthy figures in British society have been steadily been falling to their deaths, stripped naked and with a pair of angel's wings sewn into their backs. As John investigates the serial killings, a police detective also on the case that John had befriended the night before comes across Billy, still appearing as a young boy but visibly undead. Before he can escape, the cop is brutally murdered by Billy, with the boy taunting him his death is just a consequence of having met Constantine.
John has always been haunted by his past and the mounting body count of those that enter his orbit over the years, drowning out his deep guilt and self-loathing with a steady supply of booze, cigarettes and sex. But with one of Constantine's earliest victims now back on Earth and in the apparent service of Hell with an ax to grind for his childhood friend, one of the many skeletons hiding in John's closet has reemerged, eager for a chance to repay his old buddy and anyone that has the misfortune of getting in his way.