John Black is a fictional character from Days of Our Lives, an American soap opera on the NBC network. He has been played by actor Drake Hogestyn since 1986, with a break in between from January 2009 to September 2011. John was created by script writers Sheri Anderson, Thom Racina and Leah Laiman as The Pawn in 1985 and introduced by executive producers Betty Corday and Al Rabin. John becomes one of the series' most popular characters when he is revealed to be the presumed dead Roman Brady (Wayne Northrop) with plastic surgery and amnesia. However, Northrop's return in 1991 led to Hogestyn's Roman being retconned into the entirely separate character of John Black, which also establishes the supercouple pairing of John and Marlena, due to John's affair with Roman's wife, Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall). Hogestyn was attributed with helping the series out of its ratings slump in the 1980s. He was often featured in soap opera magazines such as Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly.