Issue(s): Defenders #105
Cover Date: Mar 82
Title: "...Rising...
Credits:
J.M. DeMatteis - Writer
Don Perlin - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker
Al Milgrom - Editor

Review/plot:
The Beast has been coming around to Dr. Strange's Greenwich Village home since issue #103, and now we find out why. Surprisingly (to me) it's a follow-up to DeMatteis' fill-in Avengers issue wherein the Beast's girlfriend Vera was poisoned. The effects of the poison are worsening and Vera is running out of time, so the Beast has been working with Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic to find a cure.

Strange has been investigating the shattered Resurrection Stone, and eventually he determines that he can travel into the Stone's shards.

The Beast and Mr. Fantastic accompany him. But it turns out the Stone was sentient, and it lured the heroes inside it to keep them prisoner.

Meanwhile, Satan is testing his son Hellstorm. Daimon refuses to kill an innocent baby...

...or play along with a Satanic re-enactment of the Crucifixion, thus failing the test, but Satan says to him that he is actually pleased with the choice. He then reveals that he is in fact also Thog, Satannish, and Mephisto, and possibly also God.

The potential consolidation of the Satanic representations is interesting and a bit confusing from a character tracking point of view. The Satan/Mephisto duality is confirmed in a later issue of Ghost Rider, so i log all Satan appearances as Mephisto, but i log Thog and Satannish appearances separately. Even the Mephisto/Satan connection has been put into doubt by later Marvel stories, so it may be a mistake for me to log them as one. During the God revelation we only see Hellstorm's reaction so we don't know exactly what's being revealed.

Free to go his own way, Hellstorm shows up in time to save Strange, Beast, and Mr. Fantastic from the Resurrection Stone...

...and then he cures Vera.

DeMatteis' writing is very dry for such a lofty topic, and Perlin's pencils are unimpressive here, even with Sinnott's inks.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - possible consolidation of all of Marvel's Satanic characters

Chronological Placement Considerations: Mr. Fantastic's appearance is context free; the MCP place him here before Fantastic Four #239. The Defenders that were kidnapped last issue aren't shown here. This issue is part of a long sequence of events that doesn't end until Defenders #115 that leaves Nighthawk dead and Devil-Slayer in jail.

References:

• This story picks up from a plot in Avengers #209.
  
• Hellstorm has been with his father, Satan, since Defenders #100.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

"Satan" in all of his appearances was retconned as Mephisto in disguise around this time, probably on orders by Shooter. I'm guessing he found the presence of Satan in superhero comics too distasteful.

Very possible, Mark. Or it could have just been an attempt at consolidation. Shooter or someone else in editorial may have just decided that marvel had too many Devils.

That's not canonical anymore. It was later revealed that some of the appearances of "Satan" were actually Marduk. The Satan of Son of Satan parentage was Marduk, most importantly.

Marduk was an important Babylonian god, for reference.

Actually, this water is further muddied by the Hellcat mini-series from 2000 where Hellcat figures out that Satannish was actually Hellstorm's father (and Dormammu his grandfather...!) Since she says their relationships were "illicit", it seems Satannish left a cuckoo's egg in Marduk's nest or possibly "Satan" was Satannish all along...?

But everyone's ignored that revelation since- Marvel's official take on the end of the Hellcat series is "Nothing is what it seems in Hell, yada, yada, yada." (The problem is that it seemed to imply that Daimon was evil all along, which is completely nonsensical. )

"Satan" by any name has built up quite a reputation for being an unreliable narrator. By revealing himself as "God," he might very likely have been trying to apply a little devilish reverse psychology on Daimon. It's always hard to be sure about these things, whether they come from comics or other sources. I haven't read all the revelatory comic stories mentioned above, but as Bob Dobbs sub-famously said, beware of voices in your head, they might not be Jesus.