The early 1970s were, to put it mildly, a pretty strange time--not least because that was when a coalition of bright sparks down at Marvel Comics decided it was a good idea to try and make the Antichrist into a super-hero. The result? Daimon Hellstrom: Son of Satan!

First introduced by Gary Friedrich in GHOST RIDER #1, Daimon broke out on his own in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #12, where his origin was established: He was (oddly enough) the firstborn child of a mortal woman, Victoria Wingate, and the Devil--though this last part would later be ret-conned several times over, eventually revealing Daimon's firey Dad to be less Lucifer himself than "a" demon ruling "a" Hell-like dimension: Maybe the oddly-named Marduk Kurios, maybe Satannish, son of Doctor Strange supervillain the Dread Dormammu...or whatever.

I personally put this desperate, if not too efficient, stab at semi-mainstream palatability down to the time-shift between Just After THE OMEN, when Satanism seemed semi-normal and/or weirdly cool--just another "alternate" religion/cult/psychotherapy option, like Wicca, Hare Krishna or EST--and Just After Reagan, when ridiculously mild hair-metal tracks like "Shout at the Devil" seemed suspect, and blasphemous content might actually get you censored. (Recently, ESSENTIAL MARVEL HORROR #1 reprinted the original page 12 from SON OF SATAN #8, which was rejected by the Comics Code Authority for an hallucinatory sequence in which Daimon sees a version of himself acting out Christ's martyrdom, complete with scourging, mockery and crucifixion.)

Alas, by the time their second child was born, the love--or at least the vague attempt at some surface show of deception--had obviously gone out of the "Hellstrom" marriage; one day, Victoria walked in on hubby and little sis Satana, Daughter of the Devil ("It's an...ethnic name, honey! Runs in my family!"), performing an animal sacrifice, and went bugfuck insane. As so often happens in broken mixed marriages, Daimon and Satana were raised separately--Daimon in a Jesuit-run orphanage, growing up so clueless about his own heritage that he later attempted to enter the priesthood, and Satana in Hell, from which she emerged as a full-grown succubus in fur-fringed go-go boots, capable of extracting a man's entire soul out through his mouth with one fierce kiss.

(Satana never really got her own comic, though she made superbly fetishistic guest appearances in all of SON OF SATAN's 1970s incarnations, VAMPIRE TALES, HAUNT OF HORROR, MARVEL PREMIERE and MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, where she eventually died while fighting alongside Spiderman to exorcize a demon who'd turned Doctor Strange into a werewolf. Which was a sad blow for black magic feminism, certainly--but it should be noted that she and her big bro weren't exactly affectionate, although they did share a possibly genetic affinity for outfits designed to show off maximum navel cleavage.)

By adulthood, Daimon Hellstrom had finally given up on becoming a Jesuit himself, probably because of that whole finding-a-portal-to-Hell-in-my-Mom's-basement-and-meeting-my-Dad-who-is-Satan thing. Instead, he took a "day job" as an anthropology professor/resident demonology expert at St. Louis University, and spent his nights battling the forces of darkness as a freelance exorcist--though his propensity to suddenly morph into a fanged "darksoul" version of himself wearing a scarlet opera cloak, wielding a flaming trident made of pure "netheranium" (a metal which allows one to fight the Devil, conveniently mined in Hell) and displaying an inverted pentacle tattooed on his rippling chest often led to some understandable conflicts with authority.

For me, the definitive early SON OF SATAN moment comes at the end of "Ice and Hellfire", the first story Steve Gerber wrote after taking the title over from Friedrich. Daimon's been invited to SLU by parapsychologist Dr Katherine Reynolds, who'll play the creepily obsessed girlfriend role for the rest of his tenure there...she wants him to check out a "haunting" on campus, which he soon discovers is being caused by ice demons. Various shenanigans ensue, culminating in a throw-down Daimon essentially wins by lying out his ass to the head ice demon, Ikthalon, who's using Katherine as a human shield.

"Very well...I yield. [Now] DIE, demon! I consign you now to the eternal blackness of OBLIVION!" Daimon says, blasting Ikthalion with his patented soulfire. Ikthalon: "B-but...you gave your WORD! You gave--your word..." Daimon: "I LIED, Ikthalon--as is the PRIVILEGE of the DECEIVER's son!" Then he helps Katherine up, asks he if she's all right--and immediately pastes her one across the face (WHAP!). "You broke your VOW to me--and by doing so, almost DOOMED the entire human race! You are beneath CONTEMPT, my good doctor!"

The next panel is a Roy Lichtenstein painting from Hell (literally). "I'll see you on the MORN, Reynolds, to discuss my FEE!" Daimon yells, as he mounts his trident and rockets away, looking somewhat like he's riding the world's largest lit fart; in the foreground, Katherine holds her bruised face, eyes dripping tears, thinking: "Who...IS he? Why does he fascinate--and FRIGHTEN me so? I must know! Somehow...I MUST KNOW!"

Well, gee, doc...his first name practically rhymes with "Damien"; his last name has "Hell" in it; even when he's dressed in his civvies, he still has two little pieces of hair that stick up in front like a pair of horns; he just fought black magic with more black magic right in front of you, while loudly acknowledging that he is, in fact, THE SON OF SATAN. You're a parapsychologist (supposedly). Now, you go on ahead and do that math...

...that's okay. I'll wait.

So: Funny as this all, undeniably, was--and continues to be--Son of Satan managed to blunder on through several subsequent incarnations while consistently remaining a bit of a non-starter as a character. Daimon fought a Wild West ghost with the Thing, joined the Avengers, married the phenomenally unlucky Patsy Walker (possibly just because her crime-fighting sorbiquet was "Hellcat"), gave her Hell-powers, then drove her crazy just like dear old Dad did to dear old Mom; he conquered and ruled his Dad's Hell-dimension, was revised as a truly weak-looking emo Goth with pink hair and multiple facial piercings, became an undercover agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., etc. But it wasn't until horror author Alexander Irvine (whose brilliant first novel, A SCATTERING OF JADES, crossbreeds GANGS OF NEW YORK with the Aztec patheon to truly Apocalyptic effect) undertook a HELLSTORM: SON OF SATAN miniseries for Max Comics that, in my opinion, Daimon finally hit his stride--and that was in 2007.

In "Equinox". Irvine sends Daimon to a post-Katrina New Orleans, where he once more finds himself reluctantly about his father's business: The Egyptian God Osiris is about to be reincarnated, finally assembled from all the various pieces his brother Set tore his corpse into, much to the delight of his wife, Isis, and son, Horus. Turns out, this also suit Satan just fine, since when Osiris is hanging around in Hell, he's a real pain in the butt--as a combination of what Irvine calls "the God Who Dies" (Baldur, Tammuz, Kulkulkan, Christ, etc.) and pretender God of the Underworld, Osiris resents that Satan claims rulership of what was once HIS realm, so he keeps trying to lead rebellions which can't help but distract Satan from all the rest of his normal temptation/corruption/soul-collection duties.

Since Daimon has a genuine foot in both worlds, he's the perfect person to mediate between Hell and the residual Egyptian pantheon--which leads to Irvine yoinking the best aspects of old-school SON OF SATAN, creating some marvellously hallucinatory sequences full of literal soul-searching, psychodramatic battles played out half in reality, half on the astral plane. While his Daimon Hellstrom may well be the same a guy who once paraded around looking like a Chippendale's dancer on Hallowe'en, he's now considerably older and at least a little wiser; like a slightly less cynical version of Garth Ennis' bastard magician John Constantine, he's seen all relevant sides of the equation, and understands that daddy issues really are just daddy issues, whether your father's name is Osiris or...whoever.

Plus, Irvine gives him a cellphone--Hell-phone, if you will--which plays a different Devil-related ring-tone every time Dad wants to get in touch, ranging from the predictable ("Please allow me to introduce myself...") to the considerably less- ("...and all the things that you try to hide/Will be revealed on the other side.") Between that, the free and glorious quotation from the Book of the Dead and the near-constant stream of dick jokes (because Osiris' final missing piece is invariably his penis, which Isis used to conceive Horus after Osiris' original murder), there's nothing not to like here; it's like SUPERNATURAL, except with far more swearing, and no non-demon-blood-having brother.

Which, whether or not a sequel to this particular Son of Satan ever does pop up--and I really would love if it did, if only so someone can pair Irvine's scriptwriting with a slightly less pedestrian artist--hopefully makes for a fine, funny and (at last!) fairly relevant "note" to end our retrospective tour of the whole "Antichrist Superman" concept on. So sleep tight, True Believers, and remember: Don't pick up any dudes with horn-head!

THE END