Here comes Sonny Boo!-BOO!: a review of Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1.
Ever since I purchased it on Sunday, 2 October 2011 until I finally finished it on Sunday, 28 October 2012, I've been reading Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (NY: Marvel Publishing, Inc. [a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, Inc.], 2006; ISBN: 978-0-7851-2196-X; 648 pps.), a b&w "phone book" omnibus reprinting various color and black & white comic book stories (and a few prose stories and text features) featuring two of Marvel Comics' horror anti-heroes cum superheroes, the brother and sister act of Daimon Hellstrom, the one-time "Son of Satan," and his younger sister, Satana Hellstrom. The front cover, shown below, is a tweak of the cover to the first issue of his eponymous series (cover dated Dec. 1975), as penciled by Gil Kane and inked by Mike Esposito.
In the early 1970s, in the wake of the Comics Code Authority's relaxation of their proscription against the mere mention, never mind the depiction, of vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and other supernatural creatures (the case for zombies is a bit more complicated) that were the mainstays of horror movies in the 1930s and 1940s, and were revived in the offerings of England's Hammer Studios from the mid-1950s onwards, Marvel Comics, following DC (National Comics), started color horror anthology titles and, with the October 1971 issue of Amazing Spider-Man, began introducing horror-type characters (in the person of Morbius, the Living Vampire) into their superhero titles.
Due to the warm welcome that fandom accorded Morbius, Marvel started creating more horror-themed characters that were initially kept isolated from their mainstream superheroes. One of these anti-heroes was the motorcycle-riding, flaming skull-headed Ghost Rider known to the world at large as Johnny Blaze (the second Marvel character to bear this name; the first was a Western hero introduced in 1967 that was subsequently renamed Night Rider and then Phantom Rider), who debuted in the tryout comic Marvel Spotlight (first series); after Ghost Rider graduated to his eponymous title (cover dated August 1973), an uneasy ally -- a self-styled exorcist named Daimon Hellstrom -- was introduced (though obscured by shadows and funky angles) in the first two issues of Ghost Rider, before graduating to his own feature in the recently vacated Marvel Spotlight (Vol. 1, No. 12 [Oct. 1973]), where he was first billed as "Son of Satan"; although, since Marvel Spotlight #12 wrapped up a Ghost Rider arc that began in #9, it can be argued that Daimon Hellstrom's own series didn't begin in earnest until Marvel Spotlight #13 (cover dated Jan. 1974).
While Marvel wasn't shy about throwing the name of Satan around in the early '70s, in recent years they've backed away from explicitly using Judeo-Christian mythology (unlike their rivals at DC); as a consequence, they've retconned the provenance of Daimon and Satana Hellstrom, stating that their father was actually a minor demon named Marduk Kurios, who pretended that he was Satan to both the Hellstrom children and the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider (who derived his powers from "Satan"). Writer Gary Friedrich, who co-created the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider, also co-created Daimon Hellstrom, specifically so that Marvel could (hopefully) cash in on the widespread popularity of film version of The Exorcist; given the cheesy, American International-inflected tone of his work on Ghost Rider, it was probably for the best that Friedrich left the scripting of Hellstrom's own strip after Marvel Spotlight #13, and was replaced by Marvel's most consistently whacked-out writer, Steve Gerber, who co-created Howard the Duck and is the definitive writer of Man-Thing and the superhero "non-team," the Defenders. Gerber would write the Son of Satan strip from Marvel Spotlight #14 to #23 (he shared the scripting chores on #23 with Mike Friedrich [no relation to Gary Friedrich]), although he also wrote the character when he incorporated him into The Defenders for the conclusion of the Sons of the Serpent arc (Defenders Vol. 1, #24-25 [June-July 1975]; it should be mentioned that Daimon Hellstrom's first association with the Defenders was in the pages of Giant-Size Defenders #2 [Oct. 1974], which was written by Len Wein; neither of these early appearances with the Defenders are collected in Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1, since they are more straightforward superhero tales rather than horror stories). Chris Claremont, then only in his second month co-writing (with Len Wein) the relaunched X-Men title, finished Daimon Hellstrom's run in Marvel Spotlight with #24 (Oct. 1975), which had the first meeting as adults between Daimon and his more disreputable sister Satana; Daimon would have his own title, Son of Satan, for a mere eight issues (cover dates from Dec. 1975 through Feb. 1977) before it was canceled.
The author of the first seven issues of Son of Satan was John Warner, a relatively low profile comic book writer who is perhaps best remembered for having co-created the third tier Marvel hero Ulysses Bloodstone (father of the comic relief character Elsa Bloodstone, who was utilized by Warren Ellis in his Nextwave series; Ellis, incidentally, wrote Daimon's second series, Hellstorm: Prince of Lies [the title deliberately changed the spelling of Daimon's last name], from #12 [Mar. 1994] until its cancellation with #21 [Dec. 1994]); though he never mentioned Warner by name, it is my belief that Gerry Conway, when asked about his brief tenure as Marvel's editor-in-chief in the mid-1970s on an episode of the podcast Comic Geek Speak, was referring to Warner when he told an anecdote about firing a writer, when he was briefly Marvel's editor-in-chief, who tried to explain missing a deadline by saying that his coven had a big ceremonial event to perform. The eighth and final issue of Son of Satan was written by one of Marvel's second tier writers, Bill Mantlo (who had respectable runs on Marvel Team-Up, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, but who is perhaps most fondly remembered for two of Marvel's titles featuring licensed characters based on toys in the late '70s / early-to mid-'80s, Micronauts and Rom); however, given that a page of the story was rejected by the Comics Code Authority for blasphemous content (the spiked page is reprinted here, possibly for the first time) and replaced by an emergency fix-up page written by editor Archie Goodwin and penciled by Marvel's then art director John Romita, one suspects that Mantlo was working off of an uncredited plot of Warner's: this issue, meant to wrap up most of the dangling plot threads of Daimon Hellstrom's series, has more seriously horrific elements than the series previously enjoyed, not entirely due to Russ Heath's stellar artwork. Whatever else one may say of Mantlo's work, it was never noted for its cutting edge weirdness or for being theologically provocative -- unlike, say, the work of Gerber or, to a lesser extent, Warner.
Cover to the infamous last issue of Son of Satan (cover dated Feb. 1977); the art looks to me like the work of Gil Kane and Ernie Chan
Daimon Hellstrom's origin, as related in Marvel Spotlight #13, is that "Satan," desirous of an heir, adopted a human guise (in which he bears a startling resemblance to Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner), wooed and wed a shy New England woman, and had a couple of kids by her. In a cheesy / laughable fashion especially typical of most of Marvel's early '70s horror titles, this devout Christian woman was as happy as a lark and never suspected that anything was amiss -- despite the fact that her husband insisted that they name their daughter Satana? -- until she discovered her daughter sacrificing the family cat in a satanic ritual, with her husband looking approvingly on. At this point, her husband assumed his demonic form and told her that she was the bride of Satan, which understandably caused her to have a freakout that resulted in her being placed into a mental institution and her children being placed into foster care (although it was later established that Satana was taken to "Hell" and trained in both physical combat and the black arts, including those particularly associated with being a succubus). Daimon's mother gave him a necklace of ankhs, which she told him was the only thing that would protect him from his father; naturally, daddy dearest has no difficulty in bedazzling Daimon into removing his necklace and trekking to "Hell" via the basement of the gothic mansion that "Satan" whipped up before goin' a'courtin'. After "Satan" gives Daimon the "Someday all this will be yours" speech, Daimon has a suspiciously easy time of surviving a duel (conducted with energy blasts fired from their hands) with his old man and nicking his "sacred" trident of netheranium, which supposedly even "Satan" himself cannot withstand. The trident lets Daimon focus his own energies better (giving him, for example, limited flight capability, as well as enhanced exorcism abilities); it also lets him summon his father's airborne chariot, pulled by a trio of demonic horses, which he also absconds with.
Steve Gerber, with Marvel Spotlight #14, took Daimon from his generic New England environs to a small (fictional) university in Missouri (where Gerber hailed from), at first to perform an exorcism, and then as a sort of visiting professor at the university's psychology (read: parapsychology) department, working with Dr. Katherine Reynolds. Daimon encounters an apparently pre-Christian demon / extra-dimensional entity named Ikthalon, "he whose icy touch makes cold and rigid the minds of men...Ikthalon...the symbol of man's inflexibility and resistance to change" (Marvel Spotlight #14, pg. 10, panel 2): a perfect demon to attack a university. With the very next issue, Gerber began tweaking Daimon's "Satanic" origins: "Satan" visits Daimon on his birthday (Groundhog Day, no less; Marvel Spotlight #15, pg. 7, panel 4) to inform him that "No longer shall you be two men -- my sworn enemy by day, my reluctant ally by night! Your dual natures have merged! Never again will you suffer the torment of transformation -- from man to demon at dusk. But neither will you ever again be fully able to suppress your satanic side!" (Marvel Spotlight #15, pg. 10, panel 6; pg. 11, panel 1) This "satanic" side is usually called his "Darksoul;" it can make Daimon a big enough of a douchebag so that he pimp-slaps his unrequited love interest, Dr. Katherine Reynolds, at the end of their first meeting (Marvel Spotlight #14, pg. 19, panel 8) -- a bit much even for Marvel's flirtation with anti-heroes in the early 1970s.
The last three panels (panels 7-9) of the last page (actual page count: pg. 19) of Marvel Spotlight Vol. 1, #14 (Mar. 1973), as reprinted in Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (pencils by Jim Mooney; inks by Sal Trapani); given Daimon's savoir-faire with the fair sex, he must've studied Iceberg Slim's Guide to Dating....
While Gerber had Daimon and his dad, in the guise of Baphomet, duke it out atop St. Louis's Gateway Arch, in Marvel Spotlight #15, with #16, he began broadening Daimon's purview by having him face off with a cult of nihilists (one of whom carries a typically Gerberian sign saying "Repent now...or pay later!"; Marvel Spotlight #16, pg. 6, panel 1), which turns into a time-traveling adventure that takes him to a still above-the-waves Atlantis (eventual home of Namor the Sub-Mariner; but, also, in the 1970s, home of Robert E. Howard's Kull, as Marvel then had the rights to REH's fictional creations). Gerber squeezed in a more conventional demonic possession story (Marvel Spotlight #18 & 19) -- albeit with a rather neat fillip at the end -- before turning back to the nihilists / ancient Atlanteans storyline, fronted by an encounter with an animated tarot deck, which wrapped up his run on the Son of Satan strip. Chris Claremont wrote Daimon's final appearance in Marvel Spotlight, one that is much enlivened by the guest appearance of his sister Satana and the reasonably horrific, for a color superhero comic of the mid-1970s, art by Sal Buscema and Bob McLeod. (The penultimate page of this story, in Marvel Spotlight #24, is arguably one of the most disturbing pages from any of Marvel's color comics from the 1970s.)
While John Warner's stories in Son of Satan show a more conventional horror sensibility -- they're vaguely reminiscent both of a lesser horror novel of the 1970s, and also of the TV anthology series Night Gallery -- they also evince a stronger sense of actual occult knowledge, particularly in Warner's second and final arc, in SoS #4-7, which sees Daimon in conflict with a psychic assassin named Mindstar and the Egyptian lord of the dead, Anubis (a year after Thor first met and fought some of the Egyptian pantheon in The Mighty Thor Vol.1, #240-41 [cover dated Oct. - Nov. 1975; Anubis doesn't take a direct role until SoS #7, cover dated Dec. 1976]). Warner also had Daimon hired as a faculty member at the (fictional) University of the District of Columbia, as a member of their parapsychology department. (Claremont severed Daimon's connections with Gateway University and Katherine Reynolds in his wrap-up of Daimon's tenure in Marvel Spotlight.) I prefer Gerber's relatively non-denominational take on Daimon (even with the more straightforward superhero pencils of Jim Mooney and Sal Buscema; the only truly atmospheric horror art that graced one of Gerber's stories was by Gene Colan, on the two-part possession story, but Colan didn't have his best inker, Tom Palmer -- as he did on the more celebrated Tomb of Dracula -- but only Frank Chiaramonte and Mike Esposito) to Warner's more explicitly Wiccan version, but Warner -- with inker Sonny Trinidad and a rotating roster of pencilers -- do manage to produce some effectively creepy moments, especially in Son of Satan #6.
The two team-up stories reprinted here, which pair Daimon off with two members of the Fantastic Four -- the Thing in Marvel Two-in-One #14 and the (second) Human Torch in Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #32 -- fall within his own strip's continuity; they're also something of a let-down, although I liked his pairing with the Thing well enough when I bought MTIO #14 off the rack as a kid in early 1976, and I should admit that Daimon is easily as feral as the far more celebrated Marvel character Wolverine in MTU #32: he spends more time batting Johnny Storm's Human Torch around than he does fighting that issue's villain, even though he's not possessed, mind-controlled, duped or blackmailed (the time-honored conventions to get superheroes to knock the stuffing out of each other).
Cover to Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #32 (cover dated April 1975), which apparently takes place between Marvel Spotlight Vol. 1, #20 and #21 (cover dated Feb. 1975 and Apr. 1975, respectively), due to the appearance of Dr. Katherine Reynolds and the footnote on pg. 6, panel 4; the cover art is by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia.
Although Satana debuted a month after Daimon's first appearance in Ghost Rider Vol. 1, #1 (cover dated Sept. 1973) -- she debuted in Vol. 1, #2 of Vampire Tales (cover dated Oct. 1973), part of Marvel's b&w, "mature" magazine comic books designed to compete with Warren's Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella titles -- she was always intended to be part of Marvel's "adult" line; I suspect that it was only after the b&w magazines that featured her original stories were canceled that she was toned down a bit so that she could be shoe-horned into Marvel's color line. (There's an intermittently amusing three-paged text feature by Carla Joseph explaining the discussions among Marvel staff that led to Satana's creation; originally appearing in Vampire Tales Vol. 1, #3 [cover dated Feb, 1974] and reprinted here, it was graced with awesome art by Spanish cartoonist Esteban Maroto, as well as John Romita's cheesecake drawing for a quarter-page house ad that ran in the back of Marvel's color comics in 1973.)
One of Esteban Maroto's Satana illustrations that enlivened Carla Joseph's text piece "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Satana* (*But Were Too Awestruck to Ask)," originally published in Vampire Tales Vol. 1, #3 (cover dated Feb. 1974); the art would be more effective if Satana were more realistically proportioned -- and posed.
The other Maroto illustration accompanying Joseph's text piece; this one owes an obvious debt to the work of Jim Steranko.
Her first story is a four-page throwaway, a macabre joke enlivened by John Romita's glamour girl rendition of Satana (Romita's people usually looked better than they should: it was Romita who started drawing Peter Parker as model-handsome when he took over the art on Amazing Spider-Man; even the would-be rapist here looks rather like Arch Hall, Jr. made up as Richard Kiel's caveman in Eegah.) She started to get her own full-fledged plots -- confused and lackluster though they may have been -- with Vampire Tales Vol. 1, #3, which sees her pitted against a putatively Christian moral crusader in Los Angeles; though the story is rather indifferently written by Gerry Conway (whose tenure on Werewolf By Night I also found to be sub-par), the evocative art by Esteban Maroto may convince an inattentive reader that an early Vampirella story was accidentally included in this collection. One neat trope is that the souls that she steals in her role as succubus (only by kissing, mind you; Marvel's b&w magazines featured more adult content than their color comics, but not that adult) are depicted as glowing butterflies that she catches between her fingers and, often, crushes to powder to condemn them to her father's "Hell." (There are many different infernal dimensions in the Marvel Universe.)
There were production problems with Satana's feature that led to the loss of Maroto as her artist and to her being bounced from Vampire Tales and moved to another of Marvel's b&w magazines, The Haunt of Horror, in a prose story ("A Fire in Hell") rewritten by Conway from his original comic book script (the woes facing Satana's strip are detailed in a text feature by Chris Claremont titled "From the Devil, a Daughter," also reprinted here), with spot illustrations by Pablo Marcos. She returned to b&w comic format in the same issue (#2; cover dated July 1974), also written by Conway and illustrated by Enrique Romero, best known for his work on the Modesty Blaise newspaper comic strip and the post-apocalyptic newspaper strip AXA. This story -- "Bloody is the Path to Hell!" -- attempts to explore a bit more of Satana's background -- an old frenemy, an incubus named Zannarth, is introduced here -- even as she continues her fight with the "moral crusade" fronted by an occult group called The Four.
Illustration by Pablo Marcos, from the contents page of the second issue of The Haunt of Horror.
One of Pablo Marcos' illustrations for Gerry Conway's prose story "A Fire in Hell," also from The Haunt of Horror #2.
Conway was replaced by Tony Isabella on scripting chores in her next story ("This Side of Hell," in Haunt of Horror #4 [cover dated Nov. 1974]), who wound up Conway's plotline in what looks to have been an attempt to clear the decks to launch Satana in a different direction; this is borne out by the appearance in that issue of a relatively lengthy prose story ("Doorway to Dark Destiny") in that same issue by Chris Claremont, with spot illustrations by Pat Broderick and "the Crusty Bunkers," that gives Satana a "Darksoul" of her own, called "Basilisk" (which is actually a separate demonic entity as opposed to a runaway id, as was the case with her brother Daimon) -- it's not capitalized here -- as well as a more pronounced human side owing to her extended stay on Earth. Claremont was able to conclude his reinvention of Satana in Haunt of Horror #5 (Jan. 1975) -- the magazine's last issue -- this time illustrated by George Evans; in this story, Satana manages to stymie the schemes of her father, thereby exiling herself from his kingdom and, apparently, halving her power.
Claremont's storyline leads into Satana's guest appearance in the last installment of the Son of Satan strip in Marvel Spotlight (Vol. 1, #24 [Oct. 1975]); she then had a one-shot story in another color tryout book, Marvel Premiere, in #27 (cover dated Dec. 1975), with the artwork credited to "The Tribe" (a name used to refer to a group of Filipino comic illustrators; it looks to me as though the main artist here was the first Pinoy artist to find work with American publishers, Tony DeZuniga, who is better remembered for his work on Marvel's Conan). In her Marvel Premiere story, Satana settles an old score with her combat tutor, Dansker, who is said to be even older than her father; Dansker, of course, seeks revenge on "Satan," and to regain his former preeminence. Dansker is dispensed with with relative ease, thanks again to the demon imprisoned within Satana and nominally controlled by her, the Basilisk.
Satana's final solo story was published in another of Marvel's b&w magazines, Marvel Preview (#7, cover-dated Sept. 1976; it was retitled Bizarre Adventures with #25, and canceled ten issues later); originally intended for two separate issues, this story's chapters -- "The Damnation Waltz" (an obvious nod to the 1969 horror novel The Mephisto Waltz by Fred Mustard Stewart, which was filmed in 1971 under the same title) and "La Simphonie Diable" -- are illustrated by Vicente Alcazar in a suitably surreal and horrific fashion, and take Satana through one of Claremont's favorite templates that he would use (and overuse) to great effect in The Uncanny X-Men: the deconstruction and reinvention (or, at minimum, recommitment) of a powerful woman. (It should be noted here that her enemies are cultists worshiping a race of extradimensional demons called N'Garai that were introduced in the pages of Uncanny X-Men #96 [Dec. 1975], the first issue of that title that Claremont wrote by himself; they bear a grudge against Satana's pop, who supposedly led "Heaven's" army against them eons ago, exiling them from our dimension.) While there is some interest in seeing Satana so thoroughly wrong-footed by her enemies, Claremont's dialogue is so teeth-grindingly bad and inconsistent in spots (for example, in "The Damnation Waltz," pg. 6, panels 2-6, which have Brian Abelard telling Judith Camber, who has just come home to find the butchered bodies of her husband and two children, "That's my girl, have a good cry. Get it all out of your system," and then, two panels later, tell her, "Hey, now, stop your crying. You're at my place, remember? You'll be safe here" and, in the next panel, "C'mon, let's go downstairs. I'll get the fire going, make some soup....I'll even hold your hand the rest of the night if I have to") that it seriously detracts from the story's tension. That said, the second chapter features the hands-down best, most explicit portrayal of the demon who shares Satana's mind and body, the Basilisk, with a full-page illustration of it erupting forth, followed by two pages of post-apocalyptic devastation that arguably -- and finally -- sell the idea that Satana is a baaaaaaaad mamma-jammer that no sane person wants anything to do with.
The Basilisk, as rendered by Vicente Alcazar, from pg. 14 of "La Simphonie Diable," from Marvel Preview #7. The Basilisk's head as depicted here first appeared as a birthmark on Satana's neck in "The Kiss of Death" by Gerry Conway and Esteban Maroto (pg. 7, panel 3), in Vampire Tales #3.
Claremont would also script Satana's first demise (yes, she's been killed off and resurrected at least once more; her most memorable recent appearance was in the ill-starred limited series Witches in 2004, although she's since joined the rotating cast of Marvel's long-running series about [mostly] reformed supervillians, Thunderbolts), in the pages of Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #80-1 (Apr. & May, 1979); this was a continuation/conclusion of a two-part arc that Claremont wrote in MTU Vol. 1, #76-7 (Dec. 1978 - Jan. 1979), wherein Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) aid Earth's then Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Strange, in rescuing the soul of his (at that time) disciple-cum-paramour, Clea, from the clutches of the man who killed Strange previously, the failed papal candidate -- no, really -- Silver Dagger. (At the time I first read this arc, I hadn't yet read Steve Englehart's original story about Silver Dagger (in the pages of Doctor Strange, Vol. 2, #1 & 2 [June & Aug. 1974] and #4 & 5 [Oct. & Nov. 1974]); suffice to say, Claremont's coda was decidedly not up to Englehart's original.) As far as the art goes, Satana is given a fine send off at the hands of the latter day "good girl" artist Mike Vosburg, with inks by Gene Day (MTU #80) and Steve Leialoha (MTU #81).
The memorable splash that concluded Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #80 (Apr. 1979), reintroducing Satana for her swan song; the woman with her back to the reader is Clea, Doctor Strange's disciple-cum-paramour from the Dark Dimension. Pencils by Mike Vosburg; inks by Gene Day; colors by Petra Goldberg.
The kinder, gentler Satana introduces herself to Spider-Man (off panel), in Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #81 (May 1979), page 3, panel 2. Pencils by Mike Vosburg; inks by Steve Leialoha; colors by Ben Sean.
In her final outing collected here, Satana's skills as a sorceress are highlighted, with her former role as a succubus barely garnering a mention. Spider-Man and Clea are helpless against the curse that has turned Doctor Strange into a werewolf (a curse wrought behind the scenes of the two-parter in MTU Vol. 1, #76-7, which is not included in this collection); Satana learns of Strange's peril through the occult grapevine and shows up to give them a hand. She and the Basilisk perish fighting a bunch of unnamed demons supposedly more powerful than "Satan," but Strange is cured of his lycanthropy and his soul is saved. Claremont would go on to write Doctor Strange from Vol. 2, #38 (Dec. 1979) through #45 (Feb. 1981); Strange would battle a N'Garai in the last issue that Claremont wrote.
Ultimately, the main appeal of Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 is the glimpse that it provides at how a comic book character can fail to catch fire (no pun intended) despite an interesting concept and talented creators. If Daimon Hellstrom was an unevenly executed character, he nonetheless fared far better than his sister Satana: Daimon Hellstrom at least was permitted to operate on the fringes of Marvel's mainstream superhero universe; he would go on to be an integral part of Marvel's "non-team" the Defenders when their comic was written by J.M. DeMatteis, before being shuffled off to relative limbo again (and being given a second series in the early 1990s: if it changed the spelling of his surname, at least it ran 13 issues longer than his first one did). Satana, on the other hand, was more problematic: she never had the fig leaf of a seminary education and training as an exorcist that her brother did; she stole men's souls, partly for sustenance, partly for defense, but partly for the sheer fun of it. Satana's closest brush with Mother Church was in befriending an ex-priest turned surgeon, and preventing her father from claiming his soul. It's telling how uncomfortable Satana made Marvel's editorial staff: the amount of different writers that were rotated through her strip and the amount of different takes on her within a three-year period bespeak of a deep discomfort, or at minimum a deep uncertainty, over how to present her once the one-off joke of her four-page debut was published. With the cancellation of Marvel's b&w horror magazines, Satana didn't really have a place where the more adult facets of her conception could be explored, and Marvel's color horror titles didn't fare any better: Werewolf By Night, the second-longest running color horror comic after Tomb of Dracula, was canceled after 43 issues, in March 1977 (the actual publication date was probably January 1977), one month after Son of Satan bit the dust. Doctor Strange, always more of a mystical title than a straight-up horror title, was in danger of cancellation before Roger Stern began his second run on it, with Vol. 2, #47 (June 1981), so Satana couldn't even be placed in it as a recurring guest star. (It goes without saying that Dracula was too strong a presence to permit a "Satanic" character even a walk-on part in Tomb of Dracula.)
Satana's demise seems as much of an editorial decision as an artistic one; however, I strongly suspect that there was no real "artistic" reason for her demise, save in the mind of Chris Claremont: she didn't seem to have caught on with very many readers, and Claremont's text piece from her final solo story in Marvel Preview #7, includes a writer's kiss-off ("So, with this thirty-one page extravaganza, the saga of Satana pretty much concludes. Barring a massive outpouring of reader support....this is the last story you'll ever see of the Devil's Daughter outside of guest-appearances in other people's books."). Apparently only Claremont cared enough about her to bring her back as a guest star, and then he mercy-flushed her; Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s was simply too nice, too family-friendly a place for the likes of her.
Still, if you squint, you can see in Satana what looks like a very early draft of Claremont's conception of Jean Grey as Phoenix in the pages of the Uncanny X-Men: after all, what is The Dark Phoenix Saga about if not an extraordinarily gifted and strong-willed woman trying to control a vast, decidedly not benign, power far beyond human (even Homo superior) scope and understanding? She fails, but also impossibly, gloriously succeeds, though at the cost of her own life. The Basilisk is never shown to be quite as cosmically scaled as the Phoenix Force is, but the parallels are clear. It should be noted that the denouement of The Dark Phoenix Saga would be published in the pages of Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1, #137 (Sept. 1980) -- not quite a year-and-a-half after Satana's ultimate sacrifice. (It should also be noted, however, that Jean Grey's suicidal sacrifice was imposed by editorial mandate, and was not the original intention of writer Chris Claremont or penciller John Byrne.)
In the early 1970s, in the wake of the Comics Code Authority's relaxation of their proscription against the mere mention, never mind the depiction, of vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and other supernatural creatures (the case for zombies is a bit more complicated) that were the mainstays of horror movies in the 1930s and 1940s, and were revived in the offerings of England's Hammer Studios from the mid-1950s onwards, Marvel Comics, following DC (National Comics), started color horror anthology titles and, with the October 1971 issue of Amazing Spider-Man, began introducing horror-type characters (in the person of Morbius, the Living Vampire) into their superhero titles.
Due to the warm welcome that fandom accorded Morbius, Marvel started creating more horror-themed characters that were initially kept isolated from their mainstream superheroes. One of these anti-heroes was the motorcycle-riding, flaming skull-headed Ghost Rider known to the world at large as Johnny Blaze (the second Marvel character to bear this name; the first was a Western hero introduced in 1967 that was subsequently renamed Night Rider and then Phantom Rider), who debuted in the tryout comic Marvel Spotlight (first series); after Ghost Rider graduated to his eponymous title (cover dated August 1973), an uneasy ally -- a self-styled exorcist named Daimon Hellstrom -- was introduced (though obscured by shadows and funky angles) in the first two issues of Ghost Rider, before graduating to his own feature in the recently vacated Marvel Spotlight (Vol. 1, No. 12 [Oct. 1973]), where he was first billed as "Son of Satan"; although, since Marvel Spotlight #12 wrapped up a Ghost Rider arc that began in #9, it can be argued that Daimon Hellstrom's own series didn't begin in earnest until Marvel Spotlight #13 (cover dated Jan. 1974).
While Marvel wasn't shy about throwing the name of Satan around in the early '70s, in recent years they've backed away from explicitly using Judeo-Christian mythology (unlike their rivals at DC); as a consequence, they've retconned the provenance of Daimon and Satana Hellstrom, stating that their father was actually a minor demon named Marduk Kurios, who pretended that he was Satan to both the Hellstrom children and the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider (who derived his powers from "Satan"). Writer Gary Friedrich, who co-created the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider, also co-created Daimon Hellstrom, specifically so that Marvel could (hopefully) cash in on the widespread popularity of film version of The Exorcist; given the cheesy, American International-inflected tone of his work on Ghost Rider, it was probably for the best that Friedrich left the scripting of Hellstrom's own strip after Marvel Spotlight #13, and was replaced by Marvel's most consistently whacked-out writer, Steve Gerber, who co-created Howard the Duck and is the definitive writer of Man-Thing and the superhero "non-team," the Defenders. Gerber would write the Son of Satan strip from Marvel Spotlight #14 to #23 (he shared the scripting chores on #23 with Mike Friedrich [no relation to Gary Friedrich]), although he also wrote the character when he incorporated him into The Defenders for the conclusion of the Sons of the Serpent arc (Defenders Vol. 1, #24-25 [June-July 1975]; it should be mentioned that Daimon Hellstrom's first association with the Defenders was in the pages of Giant-Size Defenders #2 [Oct. 1974], which was written by Len Wein; neither of these early appearances with the Defenders are collected in Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1, since they are more straightforward superhero tales rather than horror stories). Chris Claremont, then only in his second month co-writing (with Len Wein) the relaunched X-Men title, finished Daimon Hellstrom's run in Marvel Spotlight with #24 (Oct. 1975), which had the first meeting as adults between Daimon and his more disreputable sister Satana; Daimon would have his own title, Son of Satan, for a mere eight issues (cover dates from Dec. 1975 through Feb. 1977) before it was canceled.
The author of the first seven issues of Son of Satan was John Warner, a relatively low profile comic book writer who is perhaps best remembered for having co-created the third tier Marvel hero Ulysses Bloodstone (father of the comic relief character Elsa Bloodstone, who was utilized by Warren Ellis in his Nextwave series; Ellis, incidentally, wrote Daimon's second series, Hellstorm: Prince of Lies [the title deliberately changed the spelling of Daimon's last name], from #12 [Mar. 1994] until its cancellation with #21 [Dec. 1994]); though he never mentioned Warner by name, it is my belief that Gerry Conway, when asked about his brief tenure as Marvel's editor-in-chief in the mid-1970s on an episode of the podcast Comic Geek Speak, was referring to Warner when he told an anecdote about firing a writer, when he was briefly Marvel's editor-in-chief, who tried to explain missing a deadline by saying that his coven had a big ceremonial event to perform. The eighth and final issue of Son of Satan was written by one of Marvel's second tier writers, Bill Mantlo (who had respectable runs on Marvel Team-Up, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, but who is perhaps most fondly remembered for two of Marvel's titles featuring licensed characters based on toys in the late '70s / early-to mid-'80s, Micronauts and Rom); however, given that a page of the story was rejected by the Comics Code Authority for blasphemous content (the spiked page is reprinted here, possibly for the first time) and replaced by an emergency fix-up page written by editor Archie Goodwin and penciled by Marvel's then art director John Romita, one suspects that Mantlo was working off of an uncredited plot of Warner's: this issue, meant to wrap up most of the dangling plot threads of Daimon Hellstrom's series, has more seriously horrific elements than the series previously enjoyed, not entirely due to Russ Heath's stellar artwork. Whatever else one may say of Mantlo's work, it was never noted for its cutting edge weirdness or for being theologically provocative -- unlike, say, the work of Gerber or, to a lesser extent, Warner.
Cover to the infamous last issue of Son of Satan (cover dated Feb. 1977); the art looks to me like the work of Gil Kane and Ernie Chan
Daimon Hellstrom's origin, as related in Marvel Spotlight #13, is that "Satan," desirous of an heir, adopted a human guise (in which he bears a startling resemblance to Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner), wooed and wed a shy New England woman, and had a couple of kids by her. In a cheesy / laughable fashion especially typical of most of Marvel's early '70s horror titles, this devout Christian woman was as happy as a lark and never suspected that anything was amiss -- despite the fact that her husband insisted that they name their daughter Satana? -- until she discovered her daughter sacrificing the family cat in a satanic ritual, with her husband looking approvingly on. At this point, her husband assumed his demonic form and told her that she was the bride of Satan, which understandably caused her to have a freakout that resulted in her being placed into a mental institution and her children being placed into foster care (although it was later established that Satana was taken to "Hell" and trained in both physical combat and the black arts, including those particularly associated with being a succubus). Daimon's mother gave him a necklace of ankhs, which she told him was the only thing that would protect him from his father; naturally, daddy dearest has no difficulty in bedazzling Daimon into removing his necklace and trekking to "Hell" via the basement of the gothic mansion that "Satan" whipped up before goin' a'courtin'. After "Satan" gives Daimon the "Someday all this will be yours" speech, Daimon has a suspiciously easy time of surviving a duel (conducted with energy blasts fired from their hands) with his old man and nicking his "sacred" trident of netheranium, which supposedly even "Satan" himself cannot withstand. The trident lets Daimon focus his own energies better (giving him, for example, limited flight capability, as well as enhanced exorcism abilities); it also lets him summon his father's airborne chariot, pulled by a trio of demonic horses, which he also absconds with.
Steve Gerber, with Marvel Spotlight #14, took Daimon from his generic New England environs to a small (fictional) university in Missouri (where Gerber hailed from), at first to perform an exorcism, and then as a sort of visiting professor at the university's psychology (read: parapsychology) department, working with Dr. Katherine Reynolds. Daimon encounters an apparently pre-Christian demon / extra-dimensional entity named Ikthalon, "he whose icy touch makes cold and rigid the minds of men...Ikthalon...the symbol of man's inflexibility and resistance to change" (Marvel Spotlight #14, pg. 10, panel 2): a perfect demon to attack a university. With the very next issue, Gerber began tweaking Daimon's "Satanic" origins: "Satan" visits Daimon on his birthday (Groundhog Day, no less; Marvel Spotlight #15, pg. 7, panel 4) to inform him that "No longer shall you be two men -- my sworn enemy by day, my reluctant ally by night! Your dual natures have merged! Never again will you suffer the torment of transformation -- from man to demon at dusk. But neither will you ever again be fully able to suppress your satanic side!" (Marvel Spotlight #15, pg. 10, panel 6; pg. 11, panel 1) This "satanic" side is usually called his "Darksoul;" it can make Daimon a big enough of a douchebag so that he pimp-slaps his unrequited love interest, Dr. Katherine Reynolds, at the end of their first meeting (Marvel Spotlight #14, pg. 19, panel 8) -- a bit much even for Marvel's flirtation with anti-heroes in the early 1970s.
The last three panels (panels 7-9) of the last page (actual page count: pg. 19) of Marvel Spotlight Vol. 1, #14 (Mar. 1973), as reprinted in Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (pencils by Jim Mooney; inks by Sal Trapani); given Daimon's savoir-faire with the fair sex, he must've studied Iceberg Slim's Guide to Dating....
While Gerber had Daimon and his dad, in the guise of Baphomet, duke it out atop St. Louis's Gateway Arch, in Marvel Spotlight #15, with #16, he began broadening Daimon's purview by having him face off with a cult of nihilists (one of whom carries a typically Gerberian sign saying "Repent now...or pay later!"; Marvel Spotlight #16, pg. 6, panel 1), which turns into a time-traveling adventure that takes him to a still above-the-waves Atlantis (eventual home of Namor the Sub-Mariner; but, also, in the 1970s, home of Robert E. Howard's Kull, as Marvel then had the rights to REH's fictional creations). Gerber squeezed in a more conventional demonic possession story (Marvel Spotlight #18 & 19) -- albeit with a rather neat fillip at the end -- before turning back to the nihilists / ancient Atlanteans storyline, fronted by an encounter with an animated tarot deck, which wrapped up his run on the Son of Satan strip. Chris Claremont wrote Daimon's final appearance in Marvel Spotlight, one that is much enlivened by the guest appearance of his sister Satana and the reasonably horrific, for a color superhero comic of the mid-1970s, art by Sal Buscema and Bob McLeod. (The penultimate page of this story, in Marvel Spotlight #24, is arguably one of the most disturbing pages from any of Marvel's color comics from the 1970s.)
While John Warner's stories in Son of Satan show a more conventional horror sensibility -- they're vaguely reminiscent both of a lesser horror novel of the 1970s, and also of the TV anthology series Night Gallery -- they also evince a stronger sense of actual occult knowledge, particularly in Warner's second and final arc, in SoS #4-7, which sees Daimon in conflict with a psychic assassin named Mindstar and the Egyptian lord of the dead, Anubis (a year after Thor first met and fought some of the Egyptian pantheon in The Mighty Thor Vol.1, #240-41 [cover dated Oct. - Nov. 1975; Anubis doesn't take a direct role until SoS #7, cover dated Dec. 1976]). Warner also had Daimon hired as a faculty member at the (fictional) University of the District of Columbia, as a member of their parapsychology department. (Claremont severed Daimon's connections with Gateway University and Katherine Reynolds in his wrap-up of Daimon's tenure in Marvel Spotlight.) I prefer Gerber's relatively non-denominational take on Daimon (even with the more straightforward superhero pencils of Jim Mooney and Sal Buscema; the only truly atmospheric horror art that graced one of Gerber's stories was by Gene Colan, on the two-part possession story, but Colan didn't have his best inker, Tom Palmer -- as he did on the more celebrated Tomb of Dracula -- but only Frank Chiaramonte and Mike Esposito) to Warner's more explicitly Wiccan version, but Warner -- with inker Sonny Trinidad and a rotating roster of pencilers -- do manage to produce some effectively creepy moments, especially in Son of Satan #6.
The two team-up stories reprinted here, which pair Daimon off with two members of the Fantastic Four -- the Thing in Marvel Two-in-One #14 and the (second) Human Torch in Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #32 -- fall within his own strip's continuity; they're also something of a let-down, although I liked his pairing with the Thing well enough when I bought MTIO #14 off the rack as a kid in early 1976, and I should admit that Daimon is easily as feral as the far more celebrated Marvel character Wolverine in MTU #32: he spends more time batting Johnny Storm's Human Torch around than he does fighting that issue's villain, even though he's not possessed, mind-controlled, duped or blackmailed (the time-honored conventions to get superheroes to knock the stuffing out of each other).
Cover to Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #32 (cover dated April 1975), which apparently takes place between Marvel Spotlight Vol. 1, #20 and #21 (cover dated Feb. 1975 and Apr. 1975, respectively), due to the appearance of Dr. Katherine Reynolds and the footnote on pg. 6, panel 4; the cover art is by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia.
Although Satana debuted a month after Daimon's first appearance in Ghost Rider Vol. 1, #1 (cover dated Sept. 1973) -- she debuted in Vol. 1, #2 of Vampire Tales (cover dated Oct. 1973), part of Marvel's b&w, "mature" magazine comic books designed to compete with Warren's Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella titles -- she was always intended to be part of Marvel's "adult" line; I suspect that it was only after the b&w magazines that featured her original stories were canceled that she was toned down a bit so that she could be shoe-horned into Marvel's color line. (There's an intermittently amusing three-paged text feature by Carla Joseph explaining the discussions among Marvel staff that led to Satana's creation; originally appearing in Vampire Tales Vol. 1, #3 [cover dated Feb, 1974] and reprinted here, it was graced with awesome art by Spanish cartoonist Esteban Maroto, as well as John Romita's cheesecake drawing for a quarter-page house ad that ran in the back of Marvel's color comics in 1973.)
One of Esteban Maroto's Satana illustrations that enlivened Carla Joseph's text piece "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Satana* (*But Were Too Awestruck to Ask)," originally published in Vampire Tales Vol. 1, #3 (cover dated Feb. 1974); the art would be more effective if Satana were more realistically proportioned -- and posed.
The other Maroto illustration accompanying Joseph's text piece; this one owes an obvious debt to the work of Jim Steranko.
Her first story is a four-page throwaway, a macabre joke enlivened by John Romita's glamour girl rendition of Satana (Romita's people usually looked better than they should: it was Romita who started drawing Peter Parker as model-handsome when he took over the art on Amazing Spider-Man; even the would-be rapist here looks rather like Arch Hall, Jr. made up as Richard Kiel's caveman in Eegah.) She started to get her own full-fledged plots -- confused and lackluster though they may have been -- with Vampire Tales Vol. 1, #3, which sees her pitted against a putatively Christian moral crusader in Los Angeles; though the story is rather indifferently written by Gerry Conway (whose tenure on Werewolf By Night I also found to be sub-par), the evocative art by Esteban Maroto may convince an inattentive reader that an early Vampirella story was accidentally included in this collection. One neat trope is that the souls that she steals in her role as succubus (only by kissing, mind you; Marvel's b&w magazines featured more adult content than their color comics, but not that adult) are depicted as glowing butterflies that she catches between her fingers and, often, crushes to powder to condemn them to her father's "Hell." (There are many different infernal dimensions in the Marvel Universe.)
There were production problems with Satana's feature that led to the loss of Maroto as her artist and to her being bounced from Vampire Tales and moved to another of Marvel's b&w magazines, The Haunt of Horror, in a prose story ("A Fire in Hell") rewritten by Conway from his original comic book script (the woes facing Satana's strip are detailed in a text feature by Chris Claremont titled "From the Devil, a Daughter," also reprinted here), with spot illustrations by Pablo Marcos. She returned to b&w comic format in the same issue (#2; cover dated July 1974), also written by Conway and illustrated by Enrique Romero, best known for his work on the Modesty Blaise newspaper comic strip and the post-apocalyptic newspaper strip AXA. This story -- "Bloody is the Path to Hell!" -- attempts to explore a bit more of Satana's background -- an old frenemy, an incubus named Zannarth, is introduced here -- even as she continues her fight with the "moral crusade" fronted by an occult group called The Four.
Illustration by Pablo Marcos, from the contents page of the second issue of The Haunt of Horror.
One of Pablo Marcos' illustrations for Gerry Conway's prose story "A Fire in Hell," also from The Haunt of Horror #2.
Conway was replaced by Tony Isabella on scripting chores in her next story ("This Side of Hell," in Haunt of Horror #4 [cover dated Nov. 1974]), who wound up Conway's plotline in what looks to have been an attempt to clear the decks to launch Satana in a different direction; this is borne out by the appearance in that issue of a relatively lengthy prose story ("Doorway to Dark Destiny") in that same issue by Chris Claremont, with spot illustrations by Pat Broderick and "the Crusty Bunkers," that gives Satana a "Darksoul" of her own, called "Basilisk" (which is actually a separate demonic entity as opposed to a runaway id, as was the case with her brother Daimon) -- it's not capitalized here -- as well as a more pronounced human side owing to her extended stay on Earth. Claremont was able to conclude his reinvention of Satana in Haunt of Horror #5 (Jan. 1975) -- the magazine's last issue -- this time illustrated by George Evans; in this story, Satana manages to stymie the schemes of her father, thereby exiling herself from his kingdom and, apparently, halving her power.
Claremont's storyline leads into Satana's guest appearance in the last installment of the Son of Satan strip in Marvel Spotlight (Vol. 1, #24 [Oct. 1975]); she then had a one-shot story in another color tryout book, Marvel Premiere, in #27 (cover dated Dec. 1975), with the artwork credited to "The Tribe" (a name used to refer to a group of Filipino comic illustrators; it looks to me as though the main artist here was the first Pinoy artist to find work with American publishers, Tony DeZuniga, who is better remembered for his work on Marvel's Conan). In her Marvel Premiere story, Satana settles an old score with her combat tutor, Dansker, who is said to be even older than her father; Dansker, of course, seeks revenge on "Satan," and to regain his former preeminence. Dansker is dispensed with with relative ease, thanks again to the demon imprisoned within Satana and nominally controlled by her, the Basilisk.
Satana's final solo story was published in another of Marvel's b&w magazines, Marvel Preview (#7, cover-dated Sept. 1976; it was retitled Bizarre Adventures with #25, and canceled ten issues later); originally intended for two separate issues, this story's chapters -- "The Damnation Waltz" (an obvious nod to the 1969 horror novel The Mephisto Waltz by Fred Mustard Stewart, which was filmed in 1971 under the same title) and "La Simphonie Diable" -- are illustrated by Vicente Alcazar in a suitably surreal and horrific fashion, and take Satana through one of Claremont's favorite templates that he would use (and overuse) to great effect in The Uncanny X-Men: the deconstruction and reinvention (or, at minimum, recommitment) of a powerful woman. (It should be noted here that her enemies are cultists worshiping a race of extradimensional demons called N'Garai that were introduced in the pages of Uncanny X-Men #96 [Dec. 1975], the first issue of that title that Claremont wrote by himself; they bear a grudge against Satana's pop, who supposedly led "Heaven's" army against them eons ago, exiling them from our dimension.) While there is some interest in seeing Satana so thoroughly wrong-footed by her enemies, Claremont's dialogue is so teeth-grindingly bad and inconsistent in spots (for example, in "The Damnation Waltz," pg. 6, panels 2-6, which have Brian Abelard telling Judith Camber, who has just come home to find the butchered bodies of her husband and two children, "That's my girl, have a good cry. Get it all out of your system," and then, two panels later, tell her, "Hey, now, stop your crying. You're at my place, remember? You'll be safe here" and, in the next panel, "C'mon, let's go downstairs. I'll get the fire going, make some soup....I'll even hold your hand the rest of the night if I have to") that it seriously detracts from the story's tension. That said, the second chapter features the hands-down best, most explicit portrayal of the demon who shares Satana's mind and body, the Basilisk, with a full-page illustration of it erupting forth, followed by two pages of post-apocalyptic devastation that arguably -- and finally -- sell the idea that Satana is a baaaaaaaad mamma-jammer that no sane person wants anything to do with.
The Basilisk, as rendered by Vicente Alcazar, from pg. 14 of "La Simphonie Diable," from Marvel Preview #7. The Basilisk's head as depicted here first appeared as a birthmark on Satana's neck in "The Kiss of Death" by Gerry Conway and Esteban Maroto (pg. 7, panel 3), in Vampire Tales #3.
Claremont would also script Satana's first demise (yes, she's been killed off and resurrected at least once more; her most memorable recent appearance was in the ill-starred limited series Witches in 2004, although she's since joined the rotating cast of Marvel's long-running series about [mostly] reformed supervillians, Thunderbolts), in the pages of Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #80-1 (Apr. & May, 1979); this was a continuation/conclusion of a two-part arc that Claremont wrote in MTU Vol. 1, #76-7 (Dec. 1978 - Jan. 1979), wherein Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) aid Earth's then Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Strange, in rescuing the soul of his (at that time) disciple-cum-paramour, Clea, from the clutches of the man who killed Strange previously, the failed papal candidate -- no, really -- Silver Dagger. (At the time I first read this arc, I hadn't yet read Steve Englehart's original story about Silver Dagger (in the pages of Doctor Strange, Vol. 2, #1 & 2 [June & Aug. 1974] and #4 & 5 [Oct. & Nov. 1974]); suffice to say, Claremont's coda was decidedly not up to Englehart's original.) As far as the art goes, Satana is given a fine send off at the hands of the latter day "good girl" artist Mike Vosburg, with inks by Gene Day (MTU #80) and Steve Leialoha (MTU #81).
The memorable splash that concluded Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #80 (Apr. 1979), reintroducing Satana for her swan song; the woman with her back to the reader is Clea, Doctor Strange's disciple-cum-paramour from the Dark Dimension. Pencils by Mike Vosburg; inks by Gene Day; colors by Petra Goldberg.
The kinder, gentler Satana introduces herself to Spider-Man (off panel), in Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, #81 (May 1979), page 3, panel 2. Pencils by Mike Vosburg; inks by Steve Leialoha; colors by Ben Sean.
In her final outing collected here, Satana's skills as a sorceress are highlighted, with her former role as a succubus barely garnering a mention. Spider-Man and Clea are helpless against the curse that has turned Doctor Strange into a werewolf (a curse wrought behind the scenes of the two-parter in MTU Vol. 1, #76-7, which is not included in this collection); Satana learns of Strange's peril through the occult grapevine and shows up to give them a hand. She and the Basilisk perish fighting a bunch of unnamed demons supposedly more powerful than "Satan," but Strange is cured of his lycanthropy and his soul is saved. Claremont would go on to write Doctor Strange from Vol. 2, #38 (Dec. 1979) through #45 (Feb. 1981); Strange would battle a N'Garai in the last issue that Claremont wrote.
Ultimately, the main appeal of Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 is the glimpse that it provides at how a comic book character can fail to catch fire (no pun intended) despite an interesting concept and talented creators. If Daimon Hellstrom was an unevenly executed character, he nonetheless fared far better than his sister Satana: Daimon Hellstrom at least was permitted to operate on the fringes of Marvel's mainstream superhero universe; he would go on to be an integral part of Marvel's "non-team" the Defenders when their comic was written by J.M. DeMatteis, before being shuffled off to relative limbo again (and being given a second series in the early 1990s: if it changed the spelling of his surname, at least it ran 13 issues longer than his first one did). Satana, on the other hand, was more problematic: she never had the fig leaf of a seminary education and training as an exorcist that her brother did; she stole men's souls, partly for sustenance, partly for defense, but partly for the sheer fun of it. Satana's closest brush with Mother Church was in befriending an ex-priest turned surgeon, and preventing her father from claiming his soul. It's telling how uncomfortable Satana made Marvel's editorial staff: the amount of different writers that were rotated through her strip and the amount of different takes on her within a three-year period bespeak of a deep discomfort, or at minimum a deep uncertainty, over how to present her once the one-off joke of her four-page debut was published. With the cancellation of Marvel's b&w horror magazines, Satana didn't really have a place where the more adult facets of her conception could be explored, and Marvel's color horror titles didn't fare any better: Werewolf By Night, the second-longest running color horror comic after Tomb of Dracula, was canceled after 43 issues, in March 1977 (the actual publication date was probably January 1977), one month after Son of Satan bit the dust. Doctor Strange, always more of a mystical title than a straight-up horror title, was in danger of cancellation before Roger Stern began his second run on it, with Vol. 2, #47 (June 1981), so Satana couldn't even be placed in it as a recurring guest star. (It goes without saying that Dracula was too strong a presence to permit a "Satanic" character even a walk-on part in Tomb of Dracula.)
Satana's demise seems as much of an editorial decision as an artistic one; however, I strongly suspect that there was no real "artistic" reason for her demise, save in the mind of Chris Claremont: she didn't seem to have caught on with very many readers, and Claremont's text piece from her final solo story in Marvel Preview #7, includes a writer's kiss-off ("So, with this thirty-one page extravaganza, the saga of Satana pretty much concludes. Barring a massive outpouring of reader support....this is the last story you'll ever see of the Devil's Daughter outside of guest-appearances in other people's books."). Apparently only Claremont cared enough about her to bring her back as a guest star, and then he mercy-flushed her; Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s was simply too nice, too family-friendly a place for the likes of her.
Still, if you squint, you can see in Satana what looks like a very early draft of Claremont's conception of Jean Grey as Phoenix in the pages of the Uncanny X-Men: after all, what is The Dark Phoenix Saga about if not an extraordinarily gifted and strong-willed woman trying to control a vast, decidedly not benign, power far beyond human (even Homo superior) scope and understanding? She fails, but also impossibly, gloriously succeeds, though at the cost of her own life. The Basilisk is never shown to be quite as cosmically scaled as the Phoenix Force is, but the parallels are clear. It should be noted that the denouement of The Dark Phoenix Saga would be published in the pages of Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1, #137 (Sept. 1980) -- not quite a year-and-a-half after Satana's ultimate sacrifice. (It should also be noted, however, that Jean Grey's suicidal sacrifice was imposed by editorial mandate, and was not the original intention of writer Chris Claremont or penciller John Byrne.)