The Son of Satan
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Face Front, True Believer! It’s Christmas time children, so here comes Satan ‘cuz we’re a pack of heathens, obviously! Daimon Hellstrom is coming at’cha straight outta 1973 ahead of the Satanic Panic of the early 1980s! The brother of Satana debuted in Ghost Rider #1 before appearing in another 7 issues of that title plus 13 solo appearances in Marvel Spotlight and 8 issues of his first eponymous series! Not only do we discuss the early career of the future Hellstorm, but we also consider Satanism in general, the AMC Preacher series, and compare and contrast with other demonic characters with endless spoilers thrown about! We finally settle in on the ultimate issue of Son of Satan, one of the most sensational inventory stories of all time, with such scintillating art by Russ Heath it required we bother to post a gallery! Excelsior!
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I was walking down the street listening to this episode when I stopped abruptly and started to crack up. The reason? Mac’s line: “The first line of your autobiography has to be ‘I feel like I missed the boat on the whole Satanism thing’.”
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Son of Satan really is a character that, though there is some potential, never really found its niche. I agree that if Marvel had gone the prestige format, full on sex and violence route in the 70s the character might have caught on better. Trying to make him a pseudo-satanic superhero, especially in a pair of red tights and a generic Party City devil costume cape is just too goofy for words. This was never more apparent than when Marvel brought him temporarily out of retirement in West Coast Avengers, complete with a masked costume and the first use of the rather uninspired Hellstorm code name.
The over use of characters like Spawn, the Midnight Sons Ghost Rider, and their various dirivitives (including Daimons own self titled series) in the 90s has now made the trope of the dark supernatural anti-hero almost a joke. I agree that one way to make Hellstrom viable would be to double down on his dark nature and reboot him as a full on villain. Marvel tried this in the early 00s with the Hellcat miniseries, but the effort came across as contrived and was eventually retconned away. Given that Son of Satan was an attempt to capitalize on movies like the Omen, I always thought it would be interesting to reimagine Daimon by loosely patterning him off of Sam Neal’s character from Omen 3, a billionaire who appears decent on the surface but is secretly trying to seduce ( literally and figuratively) various superheroes to evil, and tie him more Lovecraftian themes, like Shuma-Gorath or the Many Angled Ones.
Like you said, the idea of a satanic character doesn’t really work in the Marvel universe because the supernatural doesn’t strictly exist in mainstream Marvel, where gods and demons are just powerful other dimensional beings and magic is just science we don’t understand. Any use of Judeo-Christian mythology in a Marvel title comes across as being outside of continuity. Hellstrom would really come across much better if transplanted to DC, where the supernatural is much more of a thing, and they have firmly established analogs of heaven and hell.
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‘Daemon’ isn’t the English spelling of ‘demon’, it’s the pretentious toss version… sorry, ‘literary’.
I love Daimon’s superhero look, the Namor similarity never struck me, he’s just a sexy, sexy man. Mind, I can’t say the smell of sulphur is any more enticing than the smell of fish.
Didd you see Daimon’s most recent appearance, in the Power Man/Iron Fist Sweet Christmas special the other week? They put him in a certain outfit and missed the most obvious joke – too obvious? Never. I made it in my review so it’s obviously acceptable.
http://dangermart.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/power-man-and-iron-fist-sweet-christmas.html
Yeah, I’m shameless, Muriel.
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Oh, and while I’d always found the similarity between ‘Zatanna’ and ‘Satana’ vaguely amusing, I’d never made the connection about backwards-speak = Satanist. Blimey!
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(Why is this calling me Anonymous, I signed on with Google+?)
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You triggered a memory! You know when I was talking about those big JUMBO books with very random translated comics in black and white, well Son of Satan was definitely among those stories. Next to the reprinted Thors, FFs and Flashes, there was a LOT of 70s fare that probably mystified me at the time because those books were nowhere to be seen on the English-language racks: Shang-Chi, Warlock, Champions… and FILS DE SATAN!
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