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In 1993, Marvel Comics brought Daimon Hellstrom back in his own series once again, but it wouldn't be called Son of Satan. Instead, the editors chose the name: Hellstorm! For no good reason, other than the fact that transposing two letters in Daimon's name makes for some cheap excitement. Written by Rafael Nieves and drawn by Michael Bair, it threw out as much of the superhero trappings as possible-a more Vertigo-ized version. The cape and the boots were gone, as well as the metallic trident (he summoned an energy-based version instead) and the demon drawn chariot. But it did preserve one tradition, in that the first issue was a confusing mess involving a doppelganger, while the second issue retold Daimon's origin and recent history. We learned that Daimon had been separated from his Darksoul at the conclusion of his adventures with the Defenders.
In issue #2, we learned that this wasn't your friendly neighborhood Son of Satan. Something's different right off the bat, when Doctor Strange pays a visit and finds Daimon picking up Satanic-floozies in a bar. Daimon is still married to Patsy Walker, but she's insane and spends all her days in bed chanting Satanic verses. A flashback in issue #3 tells us how this happened. Daimon was dying as a result of being separated from the Darksoul. Patsy uses incantations found in a Satanic book to summon the Devil, who instills the Darksoul back into Daimon's body. It doesn't come without a price, as the transformation snaps Patsy's mental hold on reality. After that, the writers didn't really seem to know how to handle Patsy, so they killed her off, but she made her way out of Hell in Thunderbolts Annual 2000.
Len Kaminsky took over as the writer around issue 4, tying up plots that Nieves had started. A lot of these stories involved Daimon fighting demons and blasting away at them with hellfire blasts. My favorite issue by Kaminsky, and possibly the best single story that I enjoyed in this Son of Satan review, is Hellstorm #11. Daimon has fallen down to Hell after trying to break into Heaven. He is greeted by a man who says, "That must have been some fall. I could see you from miles away." Daimon asks who he is, and the man replies: "Simon Garth, at your service."
Since I am the biggest (and maybe only) Tales of the Zombie fan on the planet, I recognized this name immediately. I enjoyed Kaminsky's little nod back to Marvel's black and white magazine era. Garth takes Daimon on a tour of Hell, where we get a nice departure from the typical people-burning-in-caves motif. Some areas resemble various wars throughout history, while another one looks like a terribly industrial city, and my favorite area is a big shopping mall with a store called Nostalgia. "It's not the Devil who judges mankind. Not God who damns them for Eternity. It's themselves." After Daimon sees his mother being tortured, he realizes this isn't Simon Garth at all-it's his father, the Devil.
Hellstorm 11 concluded with father and son meeting face to face, while Hellstorm 12 picks up some time later with a new writer, Warren Ellis. Ellis would reveal a few issues later that Daimon actually killed his father during the confrontation that ensued, and that Daimon was now the ruler of Hell. Furthermore, Ellis proposed that Daimon's mother wasn't the sweet naïve little country girl we all thought. She was the daughter of a satanic cult who prepared her to give birth to Satan-spawn. Daimon's father wasn't really Satan but a Sumerian demon called Marduk Kurios who assumed control of Hell. Despite these revelations, Hellstorm wasn't a good series at all. Too much meandering around, attempts to genre up the horror-satanic angle with X-Files/Millenium overtones, and sub-plots with Satana and Gabriel the Devil-Hunter which went nowhere.
To my amazement, Daimon appeared in various Marvel titles after this series was cancelled. In the four issue run of Druid (also written by Ellis), he kills the titular character in the last issue. He appears in Fantastic Four Annual 1999 by Claremont and Ladronn, where he appears in his original costume. He also appeared in Thunderbolts Annual 2000 when Patsy Walker escaped from Hell, and in the Hellcat mini-series later in 2000. During the latter story, written by Steve Englehart, Daimon's parentage takes an even stranger twist when his father is revealed to the Satannish as the grandson of Mephisto.
All these events, in my opinion, left the Son of Satan character in pretty bad shape--almost as bad as Hawkman once was over at DC. Perhaps at some future date, Daimon Hellstrom will be revived again. In the meantime, if you take a vacation in Fire Lake, watch out for mysterious underground passageways, they might just lead you to Hell. Nuff said.
See also:
Part I: Daimon Hellstrom, The Son of Satan!
Part II: Dealing with Darksouls
Part III: Teaming Up With the Marvel Universe
External Links:
Hellstorm Son of Satan
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