Demon: From the Darkness TPB review:

Collects: Demon (1987 series) #1-4 and Demon (1990 series) #22.

  *Major Spoilers*

 Ah, Etrigan the Demon. Here’s a character of whom I’ve been meaning to review more material, especially considering my review of Demon Knights #1 back in 2011, where I went on an overblown and overlong rant about the history of the character. It feels weird to devote so many words to a character I obviously feel very strongly about, and then not bring him up since. I mean, if I can give Satan’s Six (Kirby’s somewhat justifiably lesser-known entry in the 70’s Satanism craze) a big overview on this site, I should review more Etrigan comics. I intended to review the four issue Matt Wagner series from 1987, problem is; while looking though my storage, I found that I had all issues except the third, so I kept putting it off. Surprise, surprise though, DC actually reprinted the whole series recently, along with a bonus story!

  So with no more excuses, it’s time to get out the chalk, black robes, candles, jagged daggers, bound young virgins and call up some fiends from the netherworld to help me review this sucker.

 This limited series takes place shortly after Alan Moore and other writers established that Etrigan was a purely evil creature (something that Kirby could never make up his mind about in the original run) and that Jason Blood was some poor guy who had been bonded to him by Merlin, like a supernatural version of Rick Jones and Captain Marvel (In the original series, it was more of a Thor/Don Blake scenario, with Blood just being an illusion/construct). Naturally, Jason is pretty pissed about this whole situation, but after centuries, he’s grown more or less resigned to it and gone to live at Merlin’s tomb in England, cutting off contact with all of his friends. However, Glenda (Jason’s former love interest) isn’t happy with this:

 She’s also been learning to use the Philosopher’s Stone, although she isn’t very good at it yet:

 Whatever her skill at sorcery though, Glenda has found what she thinks might be a key to freeing Jason from his curse. After looking through an old grimoire, she came across a woodcut featuring a demon that bears a startling resemblance to Etrigan:

 Even though Jason doesn’t see any resemblance, that’s clearly the result of some sort of mental block the curse has on him, so the two go on a quest to find answers, with lots of cliffhangers and attacks by demon guards along the way, who Jason has to turn into Etrigan to fight off. Eventually, they find out that the demon in the woodcut is Belial, and not only is he Etrigan’s father, but Merlin is Etrigan’s half-human brother. Thus, if Jason wants to end his curse, it’s Merlin who he has to deal with. However, is Etrigan also willing to be freed?

  This series is a pretty cool deconstruction of the original. Here, the villain isn’t Morgan Le Fey (or “That bitch Le Fey”, as Jason calls her), but Merlin himself, previously depicted as a kindly mentor figure. Jason’s characterization is also very unusual; he wants to be freed of his curse, but it’s gone on for so long that it really isn’t his #1 priority anymore. In his own way, he’s come to accept his situation. The main reason he even starts to take the final steps to salvation is less for his own sake, and more because Glenda ends up kidnapped.

  Glenda is also interesting. She’s no longer the damsel in distress of Kirby’s series, but an aggressive, no-nonsense chick who has had it up to here with the occult weirdness in her life, and refuses to let Jason just accept his curse. At the same time though, there’s also the implication that she isn’t doing this because she gives any particular fuck about Jason Blood, but because she’s thrilled at the idea of having the chance to pull one over on a demon and the most famous wizard in history. She’s had a taste of wielding occult power with the Philosopher’s Stone, and even if she doesn’t necessarily want more of the same, she at least wants a big pay-off to her occult ventures before she goes back to being a normal person.

 As much of a deconstruction as it is, there are still some fun shout-outs to the Kirby series. There’s a mention of that weird Golem-thing from the first issue, a reference to Klarion the Witch-Boy, and even word by word quotes from the famous Camelot prologue. Most writers doing deconstructions of characters usually hand-wave the sillier or stranger aspects of a character’s past to fit their take, or revel in them to the point it becomes obnoxious (I think you can take it for Granted who I’m talking about), but Wagner manages a fun balance, even if some things, like the fate that befalls Harry Matthews (the comic relief character from Kirby’s run, and an obvious Kirby self-insert) feel a bit mean-spirited (During the Alan Grant series, Harry came back, and he ended up becoming perhaps the single weirdest supporting character in the history of comics).

  The series is not without flaws though; Etrigan’s rhyming sounds more like poorly-written limericks to me, and gets really forced at times (Although Wagner is still better at it than some other takes I’ve seen). The big showdown with Merlin also happens so abruptly, so mechanically that it feels underwhelming, not to mention the fact that the whole series is told as a flashback by Belial, who has claimed Merlin’s soul and is recounting to him the events that led to his downfall while he tortures him. This would have worked better if it was unclear at first who it was being tortured, but it’s so obviously Merlin that you wonder why Wagner attempts to hide it. This move kills a lot of suspense. Also, even though Merlin is clearly meant to be seen as a hypocritical scumbag who gets his comeuppance, he does so little throughout the series (He mostly just sleeps) that his gruesome fate never feels all that satisfying.

 On the plus side though, Wagner’s art and storytelling abilities are at their absolute peak. Some of his panels have an almost Toth-like quality. Take out the color from the art, and it wouldn’t look out of place in some Warren magazine.

 Speaking of taking things out of the art, the scene with the woodcut has an interesting history. It’s from a real 1483 German manuscript depicting Belial called “Belial at the Gates of Hell”, but here’s the thing; in the original limited series, there was nothing depicted on the page!

 Apparently, no one got the memo to include it, and when Wagner noticed the error, it was too late to make corrections, and since it fit the dialogue, they left it in (That wasn't the only printing error, they also misnumbered the second issue as number four). Nice to see they added it in here.

  Also, interestingly enough, the same anonymous German artist who did that woodcut also did another woodcut featuring Belial, and in it he’s colored yellow.

 There’s also a different edition of that book which also colors Belial yellow in the “At the Gates” picture:

 That’s---eerie. I’m going to shut up about this now, because this is the kind of stuff of which Creepypastas are made.

  As for the bonus story from Demon #22, it’s a simple, to-the-point tale told in rhyme about a witch who forces Etrigan to save her beloved familiar/pet from a rival. It has a nasty, EC-like vibe where everyone gets screwed over. In some ways, it’s actually more entertaining than the 4 issue limited series because of how compressed it is. Wagner’s more mature art is also brilliant, although it seems to have picked up a bit of a Mignola-esque quality to it.

Yes folks, Wagner drew that Cock--with a cock

 This isn’t an earth-shaking volume by any means, but considering how rare it is for DC to acknowledge, let alone reprint obscure material like this, it’s definitely worth a blind-buy, and if like me you’re a fan of the character and artist, a must-have. 4/5 for what it is.

Demon Knights #2 review:

 Picked this up today. Some thoughts (and spoilers):

 -We see that Etrigan can grow wings and fly. I think he was shown doing this in flashbacks in the 90’s series, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Etrigan traditionally doesn’t have wings. This could either come in handy when we see him re-introduced into regular continuity (man it feels weird to type that, with the new DCU only being a few months old), or there eventually will be a scene where he loses that ability. Also, Etrigan is practicing rhyming now, indicating that he DOES have plans of conquest like the old post-Crisis Demon, since only high ranking demons rhyme. We also see that he still considers himself evil and that Madame Xanadu’s relationship with him may not really be love but a way of controlling him. Interesting...

Is it wrong I can't help but hear Margot Kidder's "arms of a god" voice-over?

-There’s no denying it now: Vandal Savage is flat-out comedy relief.

 There are hints of the evil he’s capable of, but it’s all being played for black comedy for now. Also, I love how ordinary dinosaurs are considered dragons. Other characters, such as the Amazon Exoristos and Al Jabr who had little more than cameos last issue, are given more prominence.

-There’s a lot of humor in the book, the title itself is “They Shall not Pass” and next issue’s title will be “The Maleficent Seven”. There are also a lot of great little scenes like this one:

 There’s really nothing to summarize plot-wise, as this issue is basically an extended action sequence, but it’s a good extended action sequence. On par with the first issue. Definitely worth picking up. 4/5.

Demon Knights #1 review (plus rambling by me)

 Before I review this issue properly, I just want to take a moment to kindly blow off some steam about the DC reboot:

I really, really didn’t care about it.

At first.

I mean, continuity in comics these days has gotten so whacked out that even when something gets fixed you still have to spend hours reading older issues just to know what was broken in the first place. Throw in all the retcons and awkward attempts by writers to try and reintroduce pre-Crisis concepts and it all just becomes a big clusterfuck. Don’t even get me started on Marvel. I’d stopped caring long ago.

But the new comics that DC was bringing out just looked like more of the same, rather than attempts to attract new readers and/or to start over fresh.

So that’s why I didn’t care.

So far it looks like I was right. I mean, is the already famous ending to Detective #1 really something that couldn’t have been done in the old continuity? And Action #1 sounds and looks like a valiant attempt to return Superman to his Golden Age roots, but at the same time, it’s written by Grant Morrison. Remember what I said about writers who awkwardly attempt to reintroduce pre-crisis ideas? That’s who I was primarily referring to.

But, DC was also bringing out titles devoted to their more obscure properties, and since this is all really just a big sales gimmick, if those titles take off, that means that books devoted to obscure properties won’t automatically be cancelled to make room for more titles related to their more famous properties, like the gazillion Batman titles. Basically, everything has a fair chance to succeed now.

/End rant.

  Anyway, boy was I excited for this title, and for the most part, it delivers. The concept here is a sort of cross between A Game of Thrones (a series that’s very much in the public-eye as of late thanks to the HBO series) and The Magnificent Seven. That’s intriguing enough, but the big draw for me was that would it be a series featuring the medieval adventures of Etrigan the Demon and his human alter-ego Jason Blood.

 The Demon, for those not in the know, was a series that began with the fall of Camelot, after Merlin had failed to save it. He had used the help of the Demon Etrigan, who he then set loose to wait for the return of Morgan Le Fay in a few centuries. Merlin also gave Etrigan a human alter ego named Jason Blood. They both could switch back and forth with a rhymed spell. That’s the gist of it, ignoring retcons.

 I was a huge fan of the original Jack Kirby series, and am just three issues away from having completed the entire original 16 issue run. What intrigued me about those old issues was (like a great many things done by Kirby) how many great concepts and hints of untold stories there were that were never expanded upon, some so dismissed that subsequent writers and readers forgot about them.

For example, a great myth that fans of the post-Crisis Demon have spread was that the original Kirby series was just a generic superhero series with supernatural elements, that Etrigan was a straight-up hero and that there was no conflict between him and his alter-ego Jason Blood besides the usual secret identity angst.

 Uh…I can politely say no.

While it’s true that in these original comics Etrigan had none of the schemes to conquer hell or to rule the world that the modern incarnation did, and occasionally showed compassion to fellow supernatural creatures and disgust towards the more obviously evil ones, he was still a ravenous monster who delighted in tormenting Jason Blood and had no special love for humans.

 To make matters worse, while post-Crisis comics have made it that Jason was a man bound to/possessed by Etrigan, in the original, Jason was just an illusion, an alter ego designed to shame Etrigan, much like Don Blake was for Thor. The existential horror of not being real at all, just an illusion with a separate mind, was never developed by Kirby, but could have been; much like how Alan Moore handled Swamp Thing discovering he was not Alec Holland in The Anatomy Lesson (a comic that still gives me chills). But nooo, this great potential conflict was discarded by post-Crisis writers for a typical (okay, slightly atypical) demonic possession scenario.

But Jason Blood was no angel either; it was hinted in the original series that his past deeds (he apparently forgets who he is and starts a new life every few decades, writing off his past lives as ancestors) were rather less than heroic.

If "Knights" fails, they could always write "Demon Pirates"

  Yet, at the same time, we also occasionally saw flashbacks of Etrigan in the more recent past, implying that Jason had discovered the truth about himself at various points. What happened in those past lives? How many times had Jason unleashed Etrigan? We never got to know in the pre-crisis comics. And in post-Crisis comics? Outside of humorous scenes in the 90’s revival which showed Jason present at crucial points in history (he was a sailor on Columbus’s voyage etc.) we also never got to know. I always wished DC would do a limited series, or at least a story arc, showing the past adventures of The Demon.

So finally, this series comes along to show the adventures of Etrigan and Jason at one point in the past. That alone got me excited. Was I expecting it to fill in the blanks of past series? Of course not. After all this was set in a new continuity, but at least it would finally give the character a concrete background. Besides, if you wanted to do a series set in medieval times with familiar DC characters, why not use the Demon?

To be fair, I was a bit disappointed at first to see that, rather than expanding on the fall of Camelot shown in the origin story, or at least, focusing on the events leading up to the fall (which is what I thought this series was going to be about), we still begin after Arthur’s death and with Merlin setting Etrigan loose, and sadly, going with the “Etrigan is bonded to Jason” origin rather than the original. Even worse is that this time around, we don’t get to know anything about Etrigan or Jason when this happens. It just feels rushed, and abrupt, without even any great mysteries apparent like in the original, or in the retellings where both are horrified about the bonding.

Even worse? Unless you had some general knowledge of the concept of the Demon, this all doesn’t make any sense. It just happens, boom, bam, thank you ma’am. Not a great way of being new-reader friendly.

Those quibbles aside, this then becomes a very promising first issue.

And to be fair, this is pretty funny dialogue.

 We pick up a few hundred year later, but still in medieval times. Britain is besieged by the evil Mordru (who may or may not be Mordred of Arthurian legend, he may also be connected somehow to the Legion of Super Heroes villain of the same name)  and his unnamed Queen (Morgan Le Fay?). Their hordes rampage throughout the land. Meanwhile, we see that Jason Blood and Madame Xanadu (an immortal DC heroine) are now an item (seemingly). They meet up with old friend and fellow immortal Vandal Savage at a tavern, as well as a rather er….genderly ambiguous version of The Shining Knight. However, the Queen’s hordes attack the tavern, Jason turns (quite willingly) into Etrigan and our heroes do battle with the hordes, that is, until the queen sends an army of dinosaur warriors to attack. We also see what Madame Xanadu’s real reason for following Jason is: She’s really in love with Etrigan. End issue.

I like this a lot. Cornell may have fumbled a chance at a new origin for Etrigan/Jason, or at least a chance to explore the possibilities of the old Kirby one, but he brings a very new and interesting spin to the Etrigan/Jason dynamic. For example, Etrigan seems very level-headed and world weary, almost heroic. Jason is portrayed as a weakling and coward who constantly relies on Etrigan to get him out of tough spots, rather than the stalwart hero of older comics who was tormented over being bonded to Etrigan. Yet, he’s still rather likeable. Also interesting is the concept of him hanging around with other immortals like Xanadu and Vandal Savage. After all, wouldn’t he prefer the company of his own kind?

  I also love the idea of Xanadu pretending to love Jason but really loving Etrigan. Quite a new spin on the old “loves my alter ego” trope. The character conflict practically writes itself. It’s definitely better than the tiresome “I must stop my alter ego from destroying me first” nonsense from the post-Crisis comics. With this more ambiguous characterization of Etrigan that is neither that of a ravenous monster or an evil villain, and with an easily manipulated, weakling Jason that revels in using his powers, there’s no telling where this will lead.

THIS is Vandal Savage?

Also, I’m intrigued with Vandal Savage’s portrayal. Generally, he’s been portrayed as an evil villain instrumental in many famous crimes, like the Jack the Ripper murders and several famous wars. He was also a charter member of the original Injustice Society. Artistic depictions of him range from being caveman-like to looking like a sophisticated Bond villain. Here, he’s portrayed as a big loveable oaf, with little hint of the villainy he’s noted for. Will this series show his start of darkness? Or will he remain heroic throughout? Can’t wait to see.

As for the writing, well, Cornell has a tendency to rely too much on shifting dialogue and half-finished sentences, and like I said before, this comic isn’t as new reader friendly as it should be, but maybe that’s the direction he’s going for. I do like the sense of humor running throughout the book, though. As for Diogenes Neves artwork, all I can say is that it’s first rate stuff.

Color me impressed. 4/5.