- #1-2 - Origin: Etrigan, Merlin, Jason Blood; (Morgaine le Fey, Warly). Intro: Randu Singh, Harry Matthews, Glenda Mark.
- #3 - The Reincarnators
- #4-5 - Ugly Meg and the Iron Duke (Kamara, #4)
- #6 - The Howler
- #7 - Klarion the Witchboy (last Merlin)
- #8-10 - Phantom of the Sewers (Farley Fairfax)
- #11-13 - Baron von Evilstein (Rakenstein)
- #14-15 - Return of Klarion the Witchboy
- #16 - Morgaine le Fey, Warly the Warlock
I have been trying to remember the first "Demon" comic I read. I bought the Matt Wagner mini-series new off the shelves, so that may have been it. I was buying Alan Moore's Swamp Thing as backissues right around the same time, so #25-27 of that series may have been it as well. I was also buying backissues of Jack Kirby's original series right around then, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it. I bought Amazing Heroes #93, which cover-featured the then-upcoming Matt Wagner series, and I know I read that before reading any of Kirby's. In that issue, J. Vance provided a "Hero History" of The Demon which I found fascinating. He didn't like all of the issues (he classified them loosely as "The Peak" (#1-6), "The Plunge" (#7-10) and "The Pits" (#11-16), but I found even the descriptions of the issues he didn't like to be fascinating. For the record, I disagree with his assessment, or at least his conclusions; I find the entire series to be of a kind, and you either like it or you don't.
Vance went on to detail all of Etrigan's appearances between Kirby's series and Wagner's (Brave & the Bold, Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, DC Comics Presents, Swamp Thing, Blue Devil), which I used as a roadmap to plot my near-term backissue purchases. I found most of them and read all the ones I did, but I've read few of them since. Later this month DC will publish a "DC Finest" collection of the original series plus a good number of the follow-up stories I mentioned. What took me weeks (if not longer) to acquire on the backissue market back in the late '80s, will soon be available in one swell foop... and if you tell modern fans they're living in a Golden Age of comics, they won't believe you. But I digress...
I have read the original Kirby series quite a few times over the years, but what I'm really looking forward to (re-)reading are those post-Kirby stories. Yet I nevertheless felt the need to refresh those first 16 issues in my mind before jumping into Detective Comics #482. So review (or not) as you see fit, and I'll see you back here on February 25 (or thereabouts).
Replies
Etrigan's next appearance is in the humorous Blue Devil #12-13, in which he "bounds the lengths of the country in search of a 'Hell-born entity' that has posessed the Blue Devil's trident, trading lines of meterfracturing rhyme with other characters, and ultimately arriving too late to do anything more than observe: 'This rod contains no magic power of any kind! Ah, wel well--in that case... never mind!'...
"Within a few months, he was back in the Blue Devil Annual, spoutingmore rotten poetry 9including a hellish limerick), and, as in his first Swamp Thing adventure, gobbling up tiny demonsright and left. One of the story's highpoints was a single panel in which Etrigan, mouth crammed full of the little devils, proclaims, 'Mumble flubble murgling glub. Briflig wuggle drobble blub!"
A footnote places Action Comics #587 before Matt Wagner's Demon limited series (although it was released after), hence its inclusion at this point. Superman exploits a loophole in order to overcome Morgaine Le Fey's magic. Superman learns that Jason Blood and Etrigan are one and the same, but because time travel is involved, none of the events depicted in this issue ever "happened" and no one involved remembers them.
One of the letters published discussing this issue points out that Morgan Le Fey is likely to remember these events and therefore have an ax to grind with Superman - one that Superman would have no clue about.
This story can't happen after Matt Wagner's series because several of the characters are in a different place when that series is concluded.
Back on January 31 of this year, when I started this thread, I couldn't recall exactly what my first "Demon" comic had been. But when I wrote about Saga of the the Swamp Thing #25 (in the "Swamp Thing" discussion) back on May 16, 2022, I remembered that it was, in fact, the first issue of Matt Wagner's Demon mini-series in 1987, so I'm going to go with that. I knew at the time I read it that it was something of an EYKIW, even though I didn't know anything at all. It inspired me to go back and read virtually every Demon story up until that point, but ironically, it was the last new Demon story I was to read for 18 years. As Luis pointed out yesterday, "several of the characters are in a different place when that series is concluded," not the least of which is that [SPOILER] Etrigan and Jason Blood are separated from easch other. Also, Harry Matthews is dead (and/or in Hell). The part I objected to, however, was that Merlin was revealed to the the son of the demon Belial and that he and Etrigan are half-brothers. [END SPOILER] Today marks only the second time I have read this series, and first in a single sitting. I doubt I will read it again.
Having read all of Kirby's Demon now, I think the plunge starts a little later than Vance pins it -- I like the Phantom of the Sewers storyline quite a bit -- though Kirby changes horses in midstream, shifting the character Glenda resembles from the Phantom's object of desire to the sorceress who cursed him between issues. The Baron Von Evilstein issues seem a little weaker to me, and then the final three issues weaker still -- Kirby seems to be taking a lot less care in drawing them -- though I'd never go so far as to call them "the pits!" Even as they feel rushed and kind of insubstantial, they're still a lot of fun!
In rereading the Rick Veitch run on Swamp Thing (I'll eventually get to the new issues DC is printing!) I came across the next appearance of Blackbriar Thorn. In Swamp Thing 70, John Constantine gets a medium to channel him on the stage of an inn in Gotham City, looking for information about the Green. I suspect this appearance, an incidental one but so close to his first, is what helped keep Thorn from becoming one of few villains created for team-up books that managed to escape and become a regular part of the larger DC Universe.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next