Year 2: Alan Moore and the Green

ST205 Constantine, Magic and the Occult

The working-class magician who walked into Swamp Thing and out again with his own comic: how Constantine works as a character and a device, what magic is in Moore's run (and in #50's answer to the Darkness), and how the writer who invented him declared himself a magician eight years later. Occult tradition, comics, and the ethics of the man who knows.

6 lessons 6 units 2 assignments

Introduction

John Constantine appears without a name in #25, with one in #37 (June 1985), and by January 1988 he had his own title, Hellblazer, which ran for three hundred issues. Bissette and Totleben asked for a character who looked like Sting; Moore gave them a magician from Liverpool who lied to his friends for their own good and got them killed anyway. He is the most durable thing to come out of the run, and the least like it: a horror comic about a creature that cannot lie acquired a human who does nothing else.

This module reads Constantine three ways. As a device: the character who knows, who moves the plot by withholding, whose function ST203 began to describe. As a character: the working-class occultist, the trench coat, the guilt, the Britishness that an American comic turned into a style. And as a door into the subject he carries: magic, in the run (the summoning of #49, the debate of #50), in the occult tradition Moore drew on, and in Moore's own life, since the writer declared himself a magician on his fortieth birthday in 1993 and spent the next three decades making comics about it.

The module includes the first issue of Hellblazer, the first pages of Moore's Promethea, and the book of magic Moore and Steve Moore spent decades on, published in 2024. Assignments ask for a close reading of #49 to #50 and a research essay on what magic is for in Moore's work.

Learning objectives

  • Analyse John Constantine as a narrative device and as a character across Swamp Thing and Hellblazer #1.
  • Explain what magic is and does in Moore's Swamp Thing, with #49 and #50 as the core texts.
  • Describe the occult traditions Moore drew on, with accurate and verified attributions only.
  • Read #50's answer to the Darkness as a philosophical and magical statement.
  • Trace Moore's turn to magic in his own work after Swamp Thing, using Promethea and The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.
  • Write a research essay on magic in comics using scholarship on Moore.

Lessons

Unit 1: Week 1: The man who knows

Constantine as a device.

  1. Constantine as a deviceWhat the character does to a story: withholding, steering, and the cost to everyone else.120 min

Unit 2: Week 2: Hellblazer

The character outside the run.

  1. Hellblazer and the working-class magicianHellblazer #1 (January 1988), Jamie Delano, and what Constantine became when he had to carry a comic.120 min

Unit 3: Week 3: The summoning

Magic as practice and its price: #49.

  1. The Summoning: magic as practiceThe seance of #49, what it shows magic to be, and who pays for it.120 min

Unit 4: Week 4: The end

#50 and the theology of humus.

  1. The answer to the Darkness: #50The debate with the Darkness, the creature's answer, and the yin and yang: what the run believes about evil.150 min Sample

Unit 5: Week 5: The magician

Moore's own turn to magic.

  1. Moore the magicianThe 1993 declaration, Promethea, and The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic: what the writer of Swamp Thing came to think magic was.150 min

Unit 6: Week 6: What magic is for

Synthesis and the essay.

  1. What magic is forConstantine, the seance, the Darkness, the magician: the module's argument and the research essay.120 min

Core texts

Secondary reading

Assessment

Two assessed pieces. The first is a close reading of #49 and #50 as a work of magic and philosophy. The second is a research essay on what magic is for in Alan Moore's work, from Constantine to Promethea, requiring at least four secondary sources.

ST205-A1: Close reading: "The Summoning" and "The End"

Read The Saga of the Swamp Thing #49 and #50 as a single work about what magic and evil are. Reconstruct the debate with the Darkness, assess the creature's answer, analyse the seance as a depiction of magical practice and its price, and read the final two-page spread as visual argument.

Length
2000 words (1800 to 2200)
Sources
Primary source plus optional secondary research. Primary source plus optional secondary reading. No unsourced claims about occult tradition.

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ST205-A2: Essay: what is magic for in Alan Moore's work?

From Constantine and the seance of #49, through #50's answer to the Darkness, to Promethea and The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic: what is magic for in Alan Moore's work? Argue a position using at least four secondary sources, including at least one scholarly book or chapter on Moore, and using only verified claims about occult tradition and about Moore's own beliefs.

Length
2500 words (2250 to 2750)
Sources
Research assignment, minimum 4 secondary sources. Research assignment. At least four credible secondary sources including one scholarly book or chapter on Moore; MHRA with page numbers; verified claims only.

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Source requirements

Assignment 1 is primary source plus optional secondary reading. Assignment 2 is a research assignment: at least four credible secondary sources, including at least one scholarly book or chapter on Moore. Occult claims must be attributed to a verified source or not made.