Comic book characters have captured the imaginations of fans and creators for almost a century now, although one, John Constantine, seems to have made the leap beyond the pages of DC Comics and into the real world. Created in 1985 by Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben, John Constantine is a dramatically different character from most DC Comics heroes. Modeled after Sting, the singer of the Police, Constantine is instantly recognizable for his trench coat, cigarette, and general air of mischief. Working as an occult detective and sometime member of the Justice League Dark, Constantine concerns himself with the darkest parts of reality that go unnoticed by society.
A unique part about Constantine's character is that he has purportedly been seen by one of his creators and several writers of Hellblazer, his long-running series that features the likes of Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, Brian Azzarello, Garth Ennis, and Paul Jenkins. Many of his writers have reported coming into contact with Constantine, but chose not to interact with him, for fear of what might happen if they did.
This particular reputation for the character began in 1993, when Alan Moore revealed to Wizard magazine that he had seen Constantine in real life:
"... I was in Westminster in London... and I was sitting at a sandwich bar. All of a sudden, up the stairs came John Constantine. It wasn't Sting, it was John Constantine. He was wearing the trench coat, a short cut–he looked–no, he didn't even look exactly like Sting. He looked exactly like John Constantine. He looked at me, stared me straight in the eyes, smiled, nodded almost conspiratorially, and then just walked off around the corner to the other part of the snack bar. I sat there and thought, should I go around that corner and see if he is really there, or should I just eat my sandwich and leave? I opted for the latter; I thought it was the safest. I'm not making any claims to anything, I'm just saying that it happened. Strange little story."
While this could be dismissed as an odd occurrence, Moore isn't the only writer who has come across the character. Since then, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, and Brian Azzarello have all reported seeing Constantine in real life, according to an article from Vulture. In all cases, none of the writers spoke to the character, but still acknowledged that it was, in fact, him.
These writers' experiences with Constantine all reflect a distinctly Hellblazer-like idea of the ambiguity between reality and the imaginary. While there are other characters in comics who occupy a much larger spot in the cultural collective consciousness, they have never crossed over into reality like Constantine seemingly has. In a way, it makes perfect sense for Hellblazer writers to have seen Constantine in real life, because there is no other character in comics who is as focused on experiencing a sense of hyperrealism through the supernatural than John Constantine.