A quick word regarding the title of ESSENTIAL MARVEL HORROR: VOL. 1 before we get to the review: Do we really live in a land so PC that we can’t have something called ESSENTIAL SON OF SATAN gracing the shelves? Hopefully not, but that’s ESSENTIALly what this volume should be called, seeing as how it collects the adventures of one Daimon Hellstrom, the oddly spelled occult offspring of ol’ Scratch himself, as first appeared in the pages of GHOST RIDER before graduating to a two-year MARVEL SPOTLIGHT tryout run and eventually his own SON OF SATAN title, though short-lived.
Despite his Satanic heritage, Hellstrom doesn’t want anything to do with his Pops. Daimon’s a do-gooder, albeit one with devilish eyebrows and hairline, forever trying to suppress his angry, evil side. At nighttime, it pops up (complete with cape, costume and trident!), but at least he uses it to rage against the powers of immorality and sin. He battles demons and other supernatural entities both in hell and on earth, his father included. One of the better storylines – a possession tale involving a little girl – shamelessly (and wonderfully) rips off THE EXORCIST. Some of the worst are so generic, they can be summed up entirely with the following three words: “Daimon fights (blank).”
Though various issues of SON OF SATAN entertain, others are rather dull. Part of this is because the concept and character suffer from what I call “the Dr. Strange syndrome”: When anything can happen, there’s no real sense of menace and, therefore, no genuine suspense. That’s the downfall of episodic fantasy, with no one’s powers so ill-defined that they don’t appear to have any limitations or weaknesses.
Better are the book’s backup adventures of Daimon’s sister Satana. She’s an unapologetically sexy succubus, who gives bad guys a good enough throater of a kiss so that she can steal their soul, which emerges from their mouths (disturbingly enough) as a butterfly. Hey, with knockers like hers, who can blame them for falling for her dastardly fatal tricks? Because her stories appeared in Marvel’s black-and-white horror mags like HAUNT OF HORROR and VAMPIRE TALES – free of Comics Code Authority restrictions – they’re edgier and more dangerous.
And because no Marvel ESSENTIAL volume would be completed without the inevitable pairings with Spider-Man and/or The Thing, the requisite issues of MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE and MARVEL TEAM-UP are thrown in, and emerge of some of the book’s strongest stories. Don’t know how else the heir of eternal damnation would interact with The Fantastic Four otherwise. –Rod Lott
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