Will Pickering

Another example of hard vs. soft:

 

A Study in Scarlet is largely set in 1882, after Dr Watson returns from Afghanistan, although it was actually written and published a few years later. With the exception of Gloria Scott and The Musgrave Ritual, all the other Sherlock Holmes stories are set after 1886. So from '82 to '86 you've got a soft lacuna in which Holmes and Watson are living and working together, investigating cases Conan Doyle never recorded.

 

By contrast, Holmes is missing presumed dead between 1891 and 1894, while Watson is married and practising medicine in Paddington. That's a hard lacuna - it's not impossible that Watson took on the occasional criminal investigation during the period to keep his hand in, but if he did it would have been without Holmes.

 

There is a place for hard lacunae in fictional lives, but they need to be used sparingly. In general, soft ones are more fun. One of the things fans love about Doyle is his propensity to litter the Holmes stories with throwaway references to other cases - The Canary Trainer, The Colossal Schemes of Baron Maupertuis and the Netherland-Sumatra Trading Company, etc - and leave the reader to imagine the details. I've often thought that was something that would translate well to Hellblazer, but then I'm old enough to remember when "the exorcism at Newcastle" filled much the same role.

I kind of agree up to a point: there should be gaps in John's chronology where we don't know what he's getting up to, at least not until Jo McWriter needs to introduce an "old friend from way back" ten years later. But it's the distinction I was trying to make between hard and soft lacunae.

 

Put it this way...

 

A hard lacuna is like the gap between the end The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: obviously there are a few decades of Middle-earth history there, and we know Bilbo writes his book and perhaps visits Rivendell a couple of times, just as we assume Gandalf wanders back and forth through the affairs of the world doing whatever it is wizards do. But we don't know, or need to know, much more than that -- because it's abundantly clear that if there had been a whole other saga of Baggins vs. Monsters of Old between the death of Smaug and the War of the Ring, somebody in LOTR would have mentioned it.

 

A soft lacuna is more like the gaps between Die Hard movies. Two Christmases running, John McClaine has the misfortune to get caught up in major terrorist incidents; a few years later, he is specifically targeted for a revenge attack on a similar scale. We know almost nothing else about his life, except that his marriage is an on-again/off-again thing -- but McClaine is also a cop, so it's a perfectly safe assumption that he has to confront other dangerous situations from time to time, even if we never hear about them because a bog-standard liquor-store heist doesn't have the epic son-et-lumiere potential to form the basis of a major action movie.

 

I suppose I see Constantine as more like Bruce Willis than Ian Holm.

Hi all, thanks for the feedback.

 

I knew some of my dating decisions would be... let's say heterodox, since I was broadly going with what made dramatic sense rather than slavishly following publication date, and from what I've seen, the official version takes the opposite approach.

 

In examining the back alleys of Constantinuity, I was interested to see what contradictions popped up, and was surprised how few there were and how easy most of them were to reconcile. Bizarrely, the most obvious howlers - like the date of Constantine's birthday, or the sequence of events surrounding Header's army discharge - turned out to be instances of individual writers contradicting themselves, rather than each other!

 

What did emerge clearly is that Hellblazer, although tied to real time, doesn't proceed in lockstep with it, 52-style. Instead, what we get are examinations of particular periods in Constantine's life, interspersed with lacunae where six or eighteen months pass between issues. But these lacunae are important in themselves, because they give future writers scope to invent backstory that isn't tied to the same overexposed six months in 1977 we've been getting flashbacks to for twenty years now. So it's short-sighted when a new writer blithely asserts - as Garth Ennis and Denise Mina both did - that Nothing interesting has happened to John since last issue: if that's the case, then I want that gap to have lasted weeks or months, not years.

 

In the specific case of the Carey/Mina transition, I put #175-215 all together in one six-month period because that's how the story reads, and chose 2002 as the year on the assumption that "High on Life" was published shortly after it was set rather than a good deal beforehand. I accept there's some textual evidence - I believe I mentioned the real Park Circus fire - that Empathy and Red Left Hand were set in 2006, almost contemporary with publication, but that then gives us a hard lacuna (in which no future flashbacks can happen) of over three years, which is crazy. What was John doing all that time? If he wasn't doing magic, did he have a job? Or was he on the dole, having somehow persuaded the authorities that he wasn't dead after all? And how old is Gemma supposed to be now? I still think shunting Denise's stories back to early 2003 is the best solution all round, not least because it opens up a soft lacuna between then and now when Bad Seed and All His Engines can have happened without John being "in Hell" or "not doing magic" at the same time.

 

But it's only a comic, after all.

 

I was particularly gratified that Andy Diggle stopped by to have a look at this thread: Hi Andy. Having reread Bad Seed while doing the timeline (and, I have to say, enjoyed it a great deal more second time round for some reason), I'm looking forward to your issues with glee, even though I gather there's a new Sargon the Sorcerer title coming out, so we're probably not going to see Constantine waving the Ruby of Life around after all :icon_cry:

 

(Oh come on, I'm kidding! ...Sorta. You have to admit, it would have been pretty cool, in a mad sort of way for six months or something...)

I really must get round to reading ...Engines now it's out in paperback. If it says autumn '04 in the text, though, I'd be minded to take that at face value.

Thanks.

 

The way I read it, John's rant at the Tate Club is a final "fuck yeez all" from a guy who's had all he can take and then some, not a dish served cold for a respected enemy.

 

The John we see in Empathy... is still reeling from the aftereffects of the whole Carey rollercoaster, which was tough for everybody involved, and he still has the thousand-yard stare of a man who's literally been to hell and back twice inside of six months. Then, Chris Cole's story begins at New Year and escalates not rapidly, but certainly faster than the average nervous breakdown – it could be as much as six months until he meets John in the pub, but remember he's secretly working for Evans all along, so I'd say sooner rather than later. Setting Denise's run in February-March also allows us the luxury of imagining John's fiftieth birthday as more like the closing pages of "Shot to Hell" than the opening ones.

 

Strangely enough, there really was a major fire on Park Circus as Evans described, but not until summer this year, after the story had presumably been written:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgo...est/5075708.stm

 

Last-minute script change, or Weegie neo-shamanism in a Grant Morrison stylee? You decide!

There are several Hellblazer timelines on the Web, but the ones I’ve seen rely too much on cover dates rather than clues in the actual stories. A timeline that, for example, relocates the 1987 General Election to the following year, just for the sake of maintaining publication sequence, is unlikely to be trustworthy as regards events where the date is less obvious from the text.

 

The following chronology is based on known dates as given in the actual comics, including additional information from the relevant issues of Swamp Thing, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and so on. It’s incomplete because I haven’t read some spinoffs such as the Books of Magic or the Trenchcoat Brigade, and I got bored with both Paul Jenkins’ and Brian Azzarello’s approaches to the title, bailing halfway through each and only returning when a new writer came aboard, so comments and addition are welcome. My own speculations are clearly labelled as such.

 

(EDIT: Oh yeah, and it may of course contain horrible spoilers, so newbies look away now!!!)

 

So let’s begin.

 

1953–1969:

John Constantine is born in Liverpool on the 10th May 1953. Various disturbing and/or supernatural events are scattered through his childhood, resulting in a fascination with magic.

 

1969–1977:

In October '69, John leaves Liverpool for London (Hellblazer Special #1), to share a flat with his pal Gary Lester. Over the next few years, his living arrangements change frequently, as befits a young man settling in a new city. He works for a while as a croupier in a dodgy casino (#120), and lives for a year with Frank “Chas” Chandler (#84). This period of John’s life has been relatively unexplored, although we know he travelled widely and made a lot of contacts while building his reputation – among them Ray Monde, Brendan Finn, Header, Rick “the Vic” Nilsen, Willoughby Kipling, Frank North, Judith, the Coxes, Clarice Sackville, and possibly even the Phantom Stranger and other big name DC mystics (although his fling with Zatanna probably belongs in 1982 or 1983 by post-Crisis reckoning).

 

1977–78:

John’s punk year, which has been more extensively mined for backstory than any other comparable period of his life. Inspired by the Sex Pistols, he and Gary Lester form Mucous Membrane and play regular underground gigs in London, meeting Rich, Muppet and other stalwarts of Paul Jenkins’ run along the way. It’s unrecorded whether Constantine met other punk rock magicians such as Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke or Genesis P Orridge of Throbbing Gristle during this time; more likely he is the Earth-1 equivalent of either or both. At any rate, the band splits up after...

 

The Newcastle Incident, 1978 (#11)

No need to summarise these well-known events here, except to point out that the Casanova was only the Membrane’s first gig outside London, rather than their debut performance. An anomaly, though, concerns Ben Cox, listed in this issue as a “spooky 12-year-old genius”, which would have made him only 17 in 1985. But the Ben Cox of American Gothic, published first, seems to be a socially-inadequate child-man in his 20s or 30s, rather than a nervous teenager: perhaps he is one of the many DC characters made younger by the Crisis on Infinite Earths?

 

Ravenscar, 1978–82

John is institutionalised intermittently throughout this period, and at some point meets a fellow inmate named Una (#25–26). As per normal psychiatric practice, his incarceration is periodically reviewed and, if not considered dangerous to himself or others, he’s released under supervision. In 1979, during one of these periods of “care in the community”, he dates a girl called Mandy (#142). As is not unusual for psych patients, however, he often ends up back in hospital – probably because he’s stopped taking his drugs and freaked out, although in John’s case it’s equally possible he’s gotten into some kind of magical trouble while wandering the streets of York or Middlesbrough, as happens in 1980 when his girlfriend Karen gets “hooked on whore magic” (#75). In late 1981, John is possibly involved in the apprehension of possessed child murderer Clive Peters (#60) – he certainly cultivates him as an informant later.

 

April 1982:

John leaves Ravenscar for the last time on the eve of the Falklands War (Hellblazer Annual #1). Ray Monde’s lover, Sergeant Bill, is killed during the fighting (#6) – it’s never been stated, but he may well have known Header, who was also a member of the British Taskforce (#78). Following the sale of the Venus of the Hardsell video to a satellite music channel (Annual #1), John sets about reestablishing himself in the occult underworld. He engages in trick seances (#142) and faith healing scams (#120), and adopts a flashy, power-dressed image in line with the fashion of the time.

 

May 1982:

After an unsuccessful atempt to return to Ravenscar, John is coerced into doing a favour for underworld boss Harry Cooper; sixteen years later (#129–133), he will remember these events as happening in June, but Header is already back from the Falklands by May 29, when he and Rick the Vic watch the Home Championship football match on Jerry the Dealer’s telly (#76).

 

June 1982:

John returns to America to acquire the Ace of Winchesters for Jehosaphat P. O’Flynn, a.k.a. “Jerry the Dealer”(#72/76) – with him are Carlotti, Brendan Finn, Scurve the Elephant Handler, and the unfortunate Tommy Cox (who may or may not be related to Ben from the Newcastle team).

 

1982–85:

John continues to build his reputation, although few of his actual adventures from this period are recorded, except that in 1983 he visits the island of Gruinard with the sorcerer Ghant and a local policeman called Bentham (##187–188), and in ‘83 or ‘84 he somehow deals with a ghost which is haunting his former bandmate Beano’s house (#77). Amongst his romantic liaisons are a lively Dundonian named Helen and a Manhattan-based artist named Emma. In December 1984, he botches an attempt to cover up the birth of an angel/demon hybrid, and in early 1985 begins laying plans to confront the Brujeria, making contact with the Swamp Thing (ST #37) and former superhero Steve “Mento” Dayton (Crisis on Infinite Earths #4) amongst others.

 

American Gothic, 1985–86:

John manipulates the Swamp Thing into situations where it can explore its hitherto-unsuspected elemental powers (ST #37–45), in preparation for the conflict to come. As the Crisis hits Earth-1 and time collapses in on itself, they visit the Monitor’s satellite (ST #46) and speak to the Phantom Stranger (who doesn’t realise it’s been a good seven years since the exorcism at Newcastle) and Alexander Luthor of Earth-3 before splitting up again to prepare for their assault on the Brujeria’s Central Committee. When this is unsuccessful (ST #48–49), John improvises a contingency plan involving a seance in Washington DC (ST #50).

 

Autumn 1986:

John returns to London haunted by the friends he has lost in the course of recent events, only to find that Gary Lester has resurfaced and come looking for his help (Hellblazer #1–2). These events are roughly contemporary with the Swamp Thing’s rampage in Gotham City (ST #52–53) and subsequent disappearance.

 

Late 1986:

John attends a memorial service for the Swamp Thing in Gotham City (ST #55).

 

1987:

The Conservatives hold power in the General Election, 11 June (Hellblazer #3). During the summer, John dates a girl called Mary with “a right hook that’d make Muhammad Ali shit himself”(#142). John and Zed’s first date, also that summer, is interrupted by news of his 10-year-old niece Gemma’s disappearance (#4). Returning to America in August to investigate the Swamp Thing’s return from space (ST #65-68), he stops off at a town which is experiencing collective Vietnam flashbacks (#5). Later, back in London, he dances with a girl called Tess at an Acid House club in Soho (#142).

 

Early 1988:

The Resurrection Crusade and Damnation Army wage a covert war to create rival messiahs (#6–10); meanwhile a new Earth Elemental – the “Sprout” – seeks a host body (ST #69–78). After spending his 35th birthday feeling sorry for himself (#9), John pulls the various plots together at the Summer Solstice, then returns to London only to find his Paddington flat is now a murder scene.

NB: The overwhelming majority of details in the text set this story in winter, but #9 throws a spanner in the works – it’s possible Jamie Delano intended John’s birthday to be in December but forgot to tell the artists, or that his bender in Gotham is some sort of premonitory fugue, but if Abby Holland was pregnant by Christmas ‘87, then Tefe would be born in September ‘88, while John is still in hiding (see below) – so it fits better here, despite the snow.

 

Summer 1988:

Ten years on, John revisits Newcastle (#11) and summons the electronic spirit of his old friend Richie Simpson in a scheme to get the demon Nergal out of his life (#12). While hiding out at the seaside for the next couple of months (#13–14), he has a string of casual affairs: one of his conquests, Keeley, will later move to London and marry into the aristocracy (#142).

 

The Fear Machine, late 1988 (#14–22)

On September 23, John is identified in the press as the prime suspect in the Paddington murders, and goes on the run. He meets the Freedom Mob, and spends a few weeks travelling with them before returning to London incognito to look for his girlfriend Marj’s kidnapped daughter. After being sidetracked for a few days by Morpheus, Lord of Dreams (Sandman #3), and confirming that he is not wanted by the police after all, his investigations eventually lead to his being lost at sea off the coast of Scotland – based on subsequent dates, this is probably around the Winter Solstice. More or less contemporaneously, an alliance of alien races attempts to take over the Earth (Invasion! miniseries) – though the effects of this are far-reaching, they impinge on John only through his connections to the Swamp Thing, who is dislocated in time by a Dominator interference beam (ST #80).

 

January 1989:

Three weeks after being fished out of the sea, John visits Jerry O’Flynn just as the Dealer’s past is catching up with him (#23). A week later (#24), still living in Jerry’s house, he inadvertently helps a serial killer called “The Family Man” select his next set of victims, only realising the truth when he reads his old friend’s diaries – these run to December, placing this story in January although it begins with what reads like a flashback to the previous summer.

NB: Artist Ron Tiner’s decision to put Constantine back in his familiar beige trenchcoat for these issues is problematic – his own clothes were left behind with the Freedom Mob during the previous storyline, and various cameo appearances and crossovers published in 1989/90 feature him wearing variations of his Fear Machine “disguise”, which in turn was abandoned on a Scottish beach back in December. The shabby clothes he is wearing here have clearly either been given to him or purchased in a charity shop somewhere.

 

February 1989:

John returns to London and comforts a lonely ghost (#27), a year after the death of his old friend Ray Monde (who was murdered in #7).

 

March 1989:

Nine months after his machinations to house the Sprout in human form, John, wearing a black coat and cable-knit poloneck of unknown origin, visits Austria to free the Swamp Thing’s spirit from a mystical artefact called the Claw of Aelkhund, just in time for the elemental to be present at the birth of its intended successor, Tefe Holland (ST #90).

 

April 1989:

Three months after their first encounter, and back in his second-hand clothes, John finally engages the Family Man in a battle of wits (#28–30) before attending the funeral of his father, Thomas Constantine (#31).

 

Summer 1989 – Spring 1990:

John and his old friend Una investigate the revival of the Thursdyke festival (#25–26). He also deals with a possessed dog (#32) and contracts what could be a mild case of heatstroke or food poisoning (#33). In the autumn, again wearing his chunky poloneck, he bumps into Oliver Queen in a country pub (Green Arrow #26). His first encounters with the likes of Red Nigel Archer, the Ridley brothers, Mange the Magic Rabbit and so on probably take place during this period, as may the unrecorded adventure in which Ken Ondaatie declines to become King of the Magicians and instead becomes Map, protector of the London Underground.

 

1990–1991:

Over a year after losing touch with the Freedom Mob, John bumps into Erroll the Bollocks at the Poll Tax riot on 1 April 1990. Erroll tells him where to find his ex-girlfriend Marj and her daughter Mercury, and John spends a few months trying to fit back into their lifestyle; but it just isn’t him (#34–40). Back in London later in the year, he dates a girl called Isabel (#134–139).

 

Dangerous Habits, April–May 1991 (#41–46):

John is diagnosed with lung cancer – in the course of seeking a cure, he witnesses the death of his old friend Brendan Finn, begins a relationship with Brendan’s ex-girlfriend Kit, and makes a lifelong enemy of the First of the Fallen.

 

June–December 1991:

Having moved in with Kit, John is making an effort to keep out of trouble – apart from events connected to the Northampton Arms fire (#47–48), he is broadly successful. On Christmas Eve, he meets the wandering and marginalised spirit of pagan yuletide (#49).

 

Early 1992:

John meets the King of the Vampires (#50), visits a laundrette (#51), investigates a Royal scandal (#52-55) and encounters a man cursed by a demoness (#56).

 

Summer 1992:

John and Chas investigate a bodysnatching operation (#57–58). Ellie, the demoness who loved an angel back in 1984, flees the First of the Fallen’s advances and seeks John’s help in going to ground (#59–61).

 

Late 1992, around either Gemma’s birthday or Christmas:

John and Kit visit Liverpool, where John puts the frighteners on Gemma’s boyfriend Robbie Brooks (#62).

 

May 1993:

The spirit of yuletide arranges a party for John’s fortieth birthday (#63). Soon after, John and Ellie punish the Archangel Gabriel for associating with neo-Nazis (#64–67). Kit leaves John – she is back in Belfast by July (#70).

 

Summer 1993 to early 1994:

On the rebound from Kit, John briefly dates “a very healthy girl” called Annabel (#142), but soon finds himself living on the street and sinking into alcoholism. In December, he is attacked by the King of the Vampires, but prevails in spite of himself (#68–69). Shortly after the New Year, he rediscovers his will to live (#71) and sets off for New York, where he is recognised and poisoned by an old enemy (#72–75). Returning to England by way of a layover in Dublin (#76), he looks up Chas (#77) and starts putting his life back together; but a chance encounter with someone he met back in 1969 reminds him that he’s living on borrowed time (Hellblazer Special #1).

 

Rake at the Gates of Hell, Summer 1994 (#78–83):

In the course of three tumultuous days, several of Constantine’s friends and adversaries are killed while London’s east end is consumed in a race riot.

 

Zero Hour, Summer 1994:

The post-Crisis universe winks out of existence (Zero Hour #1) after former Green Lantern Hal Jordan travels to the dawn of time in an attempt to recreate the Multiverse; though apparently foiled by other superhumans, it is later revealed that he has opened up a new dimension called Hypertime, in which individuals’ personal histories interact in unpredictable and sometimes contradictory ways and time does not flow at a constant rate (The Kingdom #1–2). Though Constantine is not recorded as having experienced these events directly, they may affect his relationships with others e.g. Zatanna, for whom the events of 1986 are now much more recent.

 

Late 1994:

John visits Haiti for some reason, returning to London just as Chas’ 16-year-old daughter Geraldine is bringing her new baby home (#84). Not long afterwards, he circumnavigates the world, encountering the ghosts of Sir Francis Dashwood and Benjamin Franklin and the Rainbow Serpent of Australian mythology (#85–90).

 

1995–1998:

John renews contact with some friends from his punk days, and learns that the First of the Fallen is still alive, yawn (#91–128).

 

Late 1998:

John gets embroiled in a gangland turf war (#129–133). Tipped the wink by his police contact, Watford, he investigates the murder of one of his old girlfriends, and apprehends the magician Josh Wright (#134–139); a month later, he helps Watford arrest a serial killer in a psychically-tainted bedsit, then tells the policeman never to call him again (#140). It would be appropriate if his investigation of a legendary magic artefact in New York took place around Christmas (#141).

 

1999:

A poorly-documented year, in the course of which Constantine encounters the ghost of an old Japanese man (#142) and an overly-inquisitive writer (#143) – but not, nosirree indeed not, lalala we’re not listening signed the Editors, an epidemic of school shootings in America (the cancelled #141). In November, he encounters a young Bosnian with healing powers (#144–145).

 

2000–2001:

Blaming himself for the death of a conman called Lucky, John allows himself to be convicted of murder, but ends up provoking a prison riot (#146–150). Set loose by FBI Special Agent Frank Turro for reasons of the G-man’s own, he visits Lucky’s brothers – who appear to be able to swap their features – in the remote town of Doglick; it turns out that one of them is married to a woman John once met in his punk days (#151–156). Come winter, John finds himself trapped in a snowbound restaurant in the middle of nowhere (#158–161). He spends a few more months doing odd jobs for Agent Turro and is ultimately reported dead (#157, 164–174).

 

The Apocalyptic Autumn of 2002:

“Eighteen bloody months” after being declared dead, John returns to England. He’s in Liverpool for barely 24 hours (#175–176) before heading south to look for Gemma, whose parents think she’s working in France – in fact, she’s been co-opted by the White Zimbabwean magician, Domine Fredericks, into helping him search for a magic weapon called the Red Sepulchre amongst the looted inventory of a murdered antique dealer. John infiltrates Fredericks’ cabal, which also includes Ghant and Josh Wright, and sparks a violent turf war between them and Clarice Sackville’s Tate Club which comes to a head over the weekend of the 10th & 11th of August (#177–180). Three days later, on Wednesday 14th, John is chased across London by three Lukhavim, the last of which warns him of dire events about to unfold (#181). Not long afterwards, a town in Cornwall is invaded by the spirits of the dead (#182–183); in the week or so following, John and his new sidekick Angie Spatchcock visit the British Library, the Vatican, Brazil (#184), Iran (#185) and Tasmania (#186) looking for more information about the threat. While they are travelling, Ghant tracks down Gemma and takes her to Gruinard in an attempt to finish the job he started there twenty years before (#187), but ends up falling into the sea when his divinatory instrument – the Bone Abacus – is destroyed (#188). By mid-October (“a couple of months” after #180), John has come up with a plan to deal with the Beast Not Named By Adam, and invites a disparate group of mystics to an abandoned hotel near King’s Cross for what turns into another of his patented disastrous seances (#189–90); as the survivors scatter, cursing him for a feckless amateur, John and his inner circle – Chas, Gemma, Angie and the Swamp Thing – are driven to desperate measures to confront the real enemy (#191–193). Afterwards, suffering from amnesia and framed for murder by a demoness (#194), John flees London. By November, he is living rough in a South coast holiday resort, where he meets the Chandler family but does not even recognise them (#195–196). With more blood on his hands, and still harassed by the demoness, he returns to London, only to fall into the hands of a prophetic cult led by the now possessed Ghant (#197–199). To escape and recover his memory, he agrees to spend a single day in the demoness’ service, during which she forces him to sire three half-demon children(#200) as part of a power struggle in Hell (#202– 212). Following Gemma’s parents’ funerals (#213), he gives an unexpectedly vicious guest speech at the Tate Club, torches his collection of mystical artefacts and memorabilia, and turns his back on magic forever (#214–215).

NB: This epic storyline took more than three years to serialise. Writer Mike Carey attempts to recompress the timeline by setting the Tate Club’s bicentenary dinner on Wednesday 21st December, a date that won’t come round again until 2005 (the 2002 Winter Solstice fell on a weekend, the Wednesdays on either side being the 19th and Christmas day), but the gormless adept Etheridge would not be the first person to print the wrong date on an invitation.

 

Late Winter / Early Spring 2003:

Only a couple of months after swearing off magic for good, John is lured to Glasgow by magus Steve Evans as part of a complicated hundred-year scheme to bring about world peace which, of course, goes horribly wrong (#216–222); two weeks later, with the population committing mass suicide and the city under quarantine, Angie, Chas and Gemma run the blockade to try to sort things out (#224–229).

 

10th May 2003:

John turns fifty.

 

Later in 2003, or possibly early 2004:

Sargon the Sorcerer lures Tefe Holland to the Black Forest in an attempt to set her against the Swamp Thing and seize the elementals’ powers for himself; in circumventing his plans, John acquires Sargon’s Ruby of Life (ST Vol.III #s 1–6).

NB: I wonder if Andy Diggle remembers that last bit...

 

2004–2006:

Little about this period has yet been detailed, but on 11 July 2005 John and Map prevent a second bombing on the London Underground (#213).

If it's just down to the title being cancelled for commercial reasons, then Constantine walks off into the sunset. That way he can always come back - for one last fatal adventure, or as the housebound leader of Night Force 2020 or whatever - but it gets to wait until somebody has a good enough idea for it.

 

On the other hand, theoretically John could die any time. We'd all miss him, and it would be a wasted opprtunity if the only real-time series in American comics didn't follow its protagonist into old age; but if a septuagenarian Constantine gets his head kicked in by some cultists in mid storyline, I'll probably keep reading Trish Chandler Hellblazer as long as it's written and drawn well.