John Constantine is a DC superhero that specializes in the supernatural. Constantine is known as the master of mystic arts and one of the greatest magicians in DC history. Due to his questionable moral compass, he is often overlooked by his superhero peers such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. John is a relatively newer hero who was introduced in 1985 and has not had many years like his other hero counterparts to marinate his popularity with comic fans. Though, lately, DC Comics has been providing a good push for this character as the value of this hero has been rising to new heights.
John Constantine - Not Your Typical Superhero
John Constantine made his first cameo appearance in Swamp Thing (Saga Of The) # 25 and eventually made his first full appearance in Swamp Thing (Saga Of The) #37. He is not your typical hero as he never had strong moral codes as compared to Superman. He started his career as a con man in England and eventually changed his ways as an occult detective. Eventually, he would train and become of the greatest magicians in DC history.
Justice League
The Justice League is one of the greatest superhero teams in comics history. The team consists of heroes such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Cyborg, The Flash, Aquaman, and many other notable characters. The league has a compilation of the world's best heroes, but even they cannot handle all the evil threats in the world. With that, the formation of The Justice League Dark came into the fold with John Constantine as one of their leaders. This team deals with evil, supernatural, and magical threats that the Justice League team cannot handle head-on. With the recent failure of the live-action Justice League movie, DC Comics has been giving more exposure to the Justice League Dark team with animated movies in 2017 and 2020 as Constantine as their leading man.
In addition, the character has also received media exposure in the form of the big and small screen. Matt Ryan starred as the character in the television series in 2014 for one season and has reprised his role in the current team-up show, DC's Legends of Tomorrow on the CW network. Back in 2005, popular actor, Keanu Reeves starred as Constantine in the solo film in the movie theatres. According to movieweb.com, there are talks that Reeves has been contemplating a return for a sequel after all these years. To sum up, this type of media exposure has exploded the value of his first appearance.
So I pulled data from a 6-month (February 2020 to August 2020) timeframe of sales for Swamp Thing (Saga Of The) #37. In every CGC grade on Gocollect.com, there is a positive correlation in sales for this issue. For example, CGC 9.8 grades started at about $700 in March and recently have been averaging $900 in the last three recent sales. During that timeframe, it is showing a 42.8% positive increase. CGC 9.6 grades have nearly doubled in price for this issue. Starting in February 2020, the issue was averaging about $200, and recently as in July and August, the price has doubled! The data has shown that fans and collectors believe in this character and that big things are coming his way in the upcoming future.
Grade 9.8 $850 last sale 07-29-20 returns positive +42.8%
Grade 9.6 $380 last sale 08-14-20 returns positive +37.2%
It may just be time to get your hands on these issues!
