John Constantine began life as a supporting character in Alan Moore's successful and groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing.  The story goes that Moore created the character at the behest of the book's artists, who wanted to draw a character that looked like the musician Sting.  Constantine was envisioned as a streetwise master of magic, foregoing the wooden dialogue and cheesy mysticism of Marvel's Dr. Strange in favor of a much more contemporary, urban sensibility.  The character proved so popular that DC soon spun him off into his own series, Hellblazer, which became one of the founding titles of the progressive Vertigo line (along with Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Grant Morrison's Animal Man and Doom Patrol) and is the only one to have enjoyed an uninterrupted publishing run to this day.

This week's pick: Justice League of America #11, written by Brad Meltzer, illustrated by Gene Ha, lettering by Rob Leigh and color by Art Lyon.

Welcome to the first of what will hopefully be a weekly review of my top pick of the week's new comic releases.  This week's pick is Countdown #42, written by Paul Dini, Sean McKeever and Tony Bedard, pencils by Carlos Magno, inks by Mark McKenna and Jay Leisten, color by Rod Reis.