Ernie Altbacker Interview: Constantine - The House of Mystery
The fight against Darkseid might be at a close, but John Constantine's troubles are far from over going into Constantine — The House of Mystery.
Set after the events of Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, the animated short finds the titular sorcerer trapped in the eponymous location being killed on a loop by demonic versions of his friends, requiring him to search for the truth behind his eternal torment.
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In honor of the short film's release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with writer Ernie Altbacker to discuss Constantine — The House of Mystery, developing the coda to Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, thoughts on continuing the story and more.
Screen Rant: Constantine is one of my favorite DC Comics characters, so The House of Mystery was quite a thrill ride. It wraps up Apokolips War, but when you were developing that movie, was this on your mind at that time?
Ernie Altbacker: No, this came after the fact. They were doing a new set of shorts. Probably two-and-a-half or three years after I wrote Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, they had to animate it and that takes a while, but the writer gets off that first. I think it was a year after that we might have started writing and they wanted to do a House of Mystery. John Constantine, that's my favorite character to write, so that one fell to me. Then they had this idea of, «Hey, we could actually make it as kind of a coda to the 16-movie continuity that James Tucker oversaw,» and I was like, «Great, let's do that.»
You have written a handful of shorts in the past, including the Phantom Stranger for DC, but what were some of the challenges in exploring this coda in a shortened form in comparison to a
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