Saturday, September 09, 2006
Comic Art
One of the "tricks" in comics is to take the battle between
good and evil from the plot and put it squarely into one of the characters. Do you think that might be the idea behind a hero called, at least sometimes "Son of Satan"? This guy has had more names than Carters has pills. His "real" name is Daimon Hellstrom, and recently he has dropped the whole "Son of..." thing and just goes by Hellstrom. Anyway, he is one more character for us to look at as we work our way through the less recognizable names from The Defenders.It's a simple story really, demon that fancies himself the real evil one, so he takes the name "Satan," impregnates mere mortal woman and produces demi-demon who grows up to perform heroic acts as a means of claiming his humanity and purging the evil demon influence from his soul.
The perfect character for the heavily mystic near-team called the Defenders, and perhaps my least favorite hero in all of comicdom. There are a couple of overwhelming reasons I could not like this character.First of all, the whole idea is just kind of, well....chicken. It's not the "real" Satan, just your run of the mill demon that likes the name and thinks he is more powerfully evil than the average demon. The "Marvel Universe" is somewhat littered with these near-miss devils. The writers and artists wanted to borrow traditional names, images, and symbols, but not trample on the underlying, heavily religious legends, so they "chickened out" - "it's the devil, but it's not your devil, you small minded Christians actually silly enough to believe in such things. "
But it's the symbology involved with this character that really bothers me. Hellstrom first appeared in the title of one of the better demonic heros - Ghost Rider (modern version). Johnny Blaze is a human fused with a demon, and like Hellstrom, fighting to be good despite an evil half. Blaze; however, looks cool, that firey skull and the motorcycle made of hellfire. Evil looking indeed, but not the traditional symbols of evil and the occult like the pentagram emblazoned on Hellstroms chest. You want Blaze's good side to win because his evil look is just cool enough to make root for him.Hellstrom looks like the devil with white skin. The pentagram, psuedo-horns, and pitchfork looked so like the devil of legend that I never could buy the character as having a good side. The battle between halves never has seemed authentic in the character. It always struck me that if he was struggling to be good, he would work to obliterate the evil symbols about him, and yet, he always sought to somehow redeem them. I was never interested in having the devil's pitchfork redeemed, only condemned.
It's time to look at some of the more fun characters from the Defenders in the next few weeks.
Related Tags: comics, comic books, comic art, Hellstrom, Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Satan
