May 10th, 2004. Mary-Anne Constantine, struggling with a strenuous labour compounded by complications from a previous abortion, passes away while giving birth to John Constantine and his stillborn twin brother. Thomas Constantine, father and suddenly widower, would not forgive the mewling infant for the death of his wife, or the stillbirth of his other son. John would not come to understand this animosity from his only remaining guardian for twelve years; but his older sister, Cheryl Constantine, would pick up on it the same night that Thomas returned home with John. She would spend her days from that point forwards protecting John from the father that had spurned him, pouring into him the love he was otherwise denied.

By the time of his teen years, the bond between Cheryl and John had created an impenetrable barrier against Thomas' drunkenly-hurled abuse and persecution, and was only stronger for the addition of Gary Lester and Francis Kramer to their cabal of found-family. The four of them formed a strong union of friendship, each guarded and guided by the others. They would pursue their interests both independently and as a unit, exploring the new and old of the world around them. The darker aspects of art would become the glue that cemented them together, a deep interest in Punk and Emo, as well as Horror and the Occult, binding them with a common pursuit. Cheryl, oldest of the group, would often guide the four in practice rituals and pretend spells, filling the younger boys' minds with fantasies of weaved magic and sorcery that would fix their fragmented lives and grant them all their teenaged minds could dare to imagine.

When John was seventeen, he would participate in another such ritual lead by Cheryl, one she treated with hitherto unknown gravitas. This one was different, they could all feel it; Cheryl radiated a solemnity that was undeniable, bringing promises of magical power and great fortune that the four boys were compelled to believe in.

The ritual was no fantasy - no pig-english nonsense garbled for cheap thrills, words catching in throats from schoolboy fright - no pound-shop tealights, extinguished accidentally when you waved your arm too enthusiastically. This was the real deal: components scavenged and crafted, specific chants and intonations to be uttered at specific intervals. Words and runes were drawn carefully, positions selected with forethought, and when the hour finally came, all was conjured as it was meant to be - but what the ritual achieved was not what Cheryl had been lead to believe.

Unbeknownst to Cheryl, John, Thomas, or even the departed Mary-Anne, the Constantine's bloodline was one of powerful magic and a specific title passed down through ancestry from one Constantine to the next: the Laughing Magician, a wizard unlike any other, who bent the world to their will through the secret power of synchronicity. It was John's stillborn twin, Jacob, that had been the next to inherit this power - but with Jacob's death, powerful wheels had been set it motion to re-right this broken prophecy. Cheryl's previous rituals had been no mere games - they were in fact practice runs, as Cheryl had secretly uncovered her own witchcraft, granted through her bloodline. The ancestral ghosts of Constantine mages had felt this, and spun lies around Cheryl, tricking her into casting a very special spell.

The ritual, rather than granting power and fortune, instead opened a terrible gateway to the Astral Plane, through which flooded the warped spirits of long-dead Laughing Magicians. They tormented the attendees, lashing them with psychological scars, and abducted Cheryl wholly into their ethereal, limbo-like plane. When the tear closed, Cheryl was gone, and John was left only with the memory of her screaming, pleading face, surrounded by hundred of hideous spectres.

Each in attendance left traumatised, and each experienced their own fallout. Gary turned to drink and drugs, pushing his mind into oblivion rather than live with the memories. Francis fled to London, reinventing himself as 'Chas', a man who'd never experienced such terror. John, for his part, found his psyche fracturing completely, reeling from the loss of Cheryl, and ended up committed and incarcerated at Ravenscar Asylum.

Now, two years later and only nineteen years old, John has been remanded from Ravenscar to a temporary residency in a halfway-house for recent releases. Cheryl is still gone, and John remains haunted by her absence; his father refuses to reveal his whereabouts to his only remaining family; and his only friends have scattered to the winds in the intervening years. When fresh hauntings from John's past begin tormenting him anew will he lose what little fragile mind he has left? Or strive to finally put old ghosts to rest?

With this John, I'm looking to revise and tighten up a previous origin-story rewrite that paints John a little younger, a little less knowledgeable, but ultimately just as traumatised and, more importantly, cunning. The well-known initial incident with Nergal and Astra - John's defining failue in canon - has been replaced with a more personal catastrophe, tearing apart John's mind as well as the only family he had. With Cheryl abducted to the aether and his friends cast to the wind, John is left to pick up the pieces of his life and find his way back to a sense of normalcy - though of course, Constantine's 'normal' is far removed from your average, everyday 'normal'.

With this John and his story, I want to retell how the 'Laughing Magician' won his noteriety in a way that makes this interpretation of the character identifiably 'mine', and from there, build on that foundation to expand his adventures and establish my John in a wider alternative DC 'canon'.