In several previous blog posts (most extensively in this one), I’ve described the early 1970s horror boom in American comics as part of a larger wave of interest in monsters (especially among young people) that can be traced back to the arrival of the classic old Universal monster movies on television in the late 1950s, and that flourished in the following decade and beyond, ultimately giving us such enduring cultural artifacts as Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s hit 1962 single “Monster Mash”, the Gothic TV soap opera Dark Shadows (which premiered in 1966, but didn’t really didn’t take off until the arrival of the vampire Barnabas Collins in ’67), and, lest we forget, Count Chocula and Franken Berry breakfast cereals, which first crept onto grocery shelves in 1971.  It was a legitimate popular phenomenon, but one that had largely passed American color comics by — at least until the early 1971 revisions to the Comics Code, which allowed for vampires, werewolves, and ghouls to be used “when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works” for the first time since the Code’s adoption in 1954.  Before too many months had passed, spinner racks were filling up with titles like Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, Frankenstein, and Swamp Thing — and fifty years ago, in the summer of 1973, new ones were continuing to arrive. 

I still believe this account is accurate, as far as it goes, but I’ve also come to realize that it doesn’t quite tell the whole story.  Because along with the relatively light-hearted “monster craze” that gave us Groovie Goolies, et al, the 1960s saw another, arguably more serious societal trend that figured into the horror boom in comic books as well:  a burgeoning interest in the occult, which we’ll define as does Wikipedia:

…a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of organized religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism and their varied spells. It can also refer to supernatural ideas like extra-sensory perception and parapsychology.

In the view of your humble blogger, the key phrase in distinguishing interest in the occult from a taste for horror/monster-oriented pop culture is “beliefs and practices”; when we talk about the occult, we’re talking about ideas that people actually give credence to and/or invest their faith in, as opposed to simply appreciating them for their entertainment value.

Naturally, a thorough discussion of the development of the Sixties’ “occult explosion” (as the title of a1972 book by Nat Freedland called it) is beyond the scope of this post; but, even at the risk of oversimplification, I think wer can safely say that its origins lay in the same countercultural currents that gave us the decade’s vogue for experimenting with psychedelic drugs, as well an increase in interest in Eastern religion and other “alternative” spiritualities (Don Juan, anyone?) among traditionally Christian-dominated Western cultures.  Among its notable signposts were the respective publications of Sybil Leek‘s Diary of a Witch in 1968 and Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible in 1969 — books whose popular success reflected the growing visibility throughout the decade of both real-life practitioners of magic (or “magick”) and self-described devotees of the Devil.

Such real-world developments ultimately found themselves mirrored in entertainment media, as well; and so, 1967 brought the release of Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby, in which a modern Satan-worshiping coven contrives to have the Devil’s son born of a mortal woman (a successful film adaptation followed a year later), while William Peter Blatty’s novel of demonic possession, The Exorcist, came along in 1971 (its hit movie version would arrive in December, 1973).  By June 19, 1972, Satan was so strong a presence in the zeitgeist that he dominated Time magazine’s cover story on the occult.  (This was actually the news magazine’s second cover devoted to the occult; the first, back in March, 1969, had focused on the somewhat less alarming topic of astrology.)

All of this is offered by way of attempting to explain how — regardless of how radical it might seem in our present cultural moment — it made a certain kind of sense in the summer of 1973 for America’s best-selling comic book company to launch a new continuing feature about the “Son of Satan” — a feature whose basic concept might well be boiled down to the question, “What if Rosemary’s Baby grew up and became The Exorcist?”

Or even to entertain the original notion of Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee, which was even more eye-opening from a 2023 perspective (and perhaps from a 1973 one, as well) — which was to put out a comic book starring Ol’ Scratch himself.  As then-Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas told the story decades later for an interview published in Comic Book Artist #13 (May, 2001):

That was supposed to be “Mark of Satan.”  If Tomb of Dracula was such a big hit, Satan would be bigger! [laughter] Stan called me into the office one day, and said he wanted to do a book called Mark of Satan, but this time, the hero/villain was going to be Satan himself.  I went to a parochial Lutheran school, but I’m not religious, but I thought this was going to get us in trouble, and who needs it?  I didn’t even like the idea.  So I went off and thought about it for a little bit, and I came back and said, “I think we’re asking for trouble with Mark of Satan, but what if you made it Son of Satan?  You could still have Satan as a character, but he’s not the hero.”  It’s a little different from Dracula, where the heroes were the human beings fighting the vampire. Stan loved it, and it was only a little later I realized that name and basic concept had been a fanzine comic by a friend of mine, Biljo White, back in the early ’60s!  He wound up looking even looking a lot like Biljo’s character, by sheer coincidence, because I don’t think Herb Trimpe and Gary Friedrich, who did the actual story, ever saw him and I don’t think I described it much…  I explained it to Biljo, and he understood, but it was really weird, because if you look at his old fanzine, it’s almost the same character!

Of course, Satan wasn’t exactly a new presence in the Marvel Universe.  Setting aside a number of one-off appearances in various Marvel/Atlas/Timely comics (mostly the horror/fantasy anthology titles) extending back to the Golden Age, in 1968 Stan Lee himself had introduced Mephisto — a dead ringer for the Devil of Christian tradition — as a villain in Silver Surfer #3. There was also Doctor Strange’s foe Satannish (first mentioned in 1966), whose name, fiery visage, and propensity for striking bargains with mortals set him apart from most (if not all) of the other extradimensional demon-lords typically faced by the Master of the Mystic Arts.

But while Marvel might have claimed “plausible deniability” as to whether either Mephisto or Satannish were intended to be identified with the Satan, that could hardly be said in regards to the diabolical fellow who’d been an integral part of the publisher’s “Ghost Rider” series since its launch just over a year ago in Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug., 1972).  As readers of our post about that issue will recall, within its pages writer Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog told how the young stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze made an ill-advised deal with the Devil — aka, you guessed it, Satan — offering his soul in exchange for his mentor and father-figure, Crash Simpson, being spared from dying from the fatal disease that was due to kill him in a matter of weeks.  Naturally, the Devil played dirty, so that Crash died instead in a stunt-related accident; but when Satan came to claim payment on Johnny’s debt, he was stymied by the purity of heart of Crash’s daughter (and Johnny’s girlfriend), Roxanne “Rocky” Simpson.  Still, even though he wasn’t able to drag Johnny’s soul off to Hades as planned, Satan was nevertheless able to lay a heavy curse on the young man — one which would turn his head into a blazing skull every night — and would simultaneously grant him a set of what were, at first, rather vaguely defined super-powers.

As you might expect, Johnny wasn’t exactly happy with the results of this stalemate, and neither was the Big D; and so, while Johnny went ahead with his stunt-riding career, attempting to pass off his nightly transformations as mere all-for-the-show special effects, Satan continued to plot to finish the business of claiming his immortal soul.  This ongoing conflict would eventually provide the opportunity for launching “Son of Satan” as a spin-off series… a process that would play out over the next several issues of not just Marvel Spotlight, but also the first two issues of a brand-new Ghost Rider comic which would debut in June, 1973.

The story arc that eventually led to the advent of Satan’s scion as the newest “supernatural superhero” in the Marvel Universe began in Marvel Spotlight #8, which found Johnny, Rocky, and the other remaining members of what had been Crash Simpson’s stunt-riding troupe leaving New York and heading out West to Arizona.  There, Johnny planned to jump Copperhead Canyon, but soon ran afoul of members of the Apache nation who claimed the canyon and its surrounding lands as theirs; these included the activist Sam Silvercloud and a medicine man named Snake Dance.

This plotline meandered along for a couple of issues, only really coming into focus with the arrival in issue #10 of Linda Littletrees, who was both Snake Dance’s daughter and Sam’s girlfriend.  It turned out that in the time she’d been away at college, she’d become part of a Satanic cult, and her return to the reservation had less to do with concerns about Apache land rights than delivering the soul of Johnny Blaze to her infernal lord and master.  And Satan had invested her with enough of his power to get that job done… or so it seemed.  In issue #11, the Witch-Woman (as Linda now called herself) captured the Ghost Rider and bound him with hellfire — but then got so carried away while telling him her origin story that she let her magical control slip, and he escaped.  An unhappy Satan ordered Linda to turn her powers upon herself, and she faithfully complied, becoming comatose as a result.

So ended the eleventh issue of Marvel Spotlight… and so too ended Ghost Rider’s run as that bimonthly title’s lead feature.  The month following its release, June, 1973, saw the debut of the new, monthly Ghost Rider title, and the continuation of the “Witch-Woman” storyline … though, interestingly, the first person that writer Gary Friedrich and artists Tom Sutton and Syd Shores choose to show us on its opening page (if only from behind) isn’t Johnny Blaze at all; but, rather, the very individual who’ll be taking over his prior slot in Marvel Spotlight one month hence…

We won’t spend a lot of time here trying to unravel the whole tangled skein of Johnny Blaze’s recent travails, but just so you know: he’s currently wanted by the local police for, um, speeding.  Well, that and lobbing hellfire at them in an attempt to stop their pursuit.  In any event, it’s now daytime (though if it’s only just after dawn in New England, as Friedrich’s opening caption above indicates, it really should still be dark in Arizona… oh, well), and Johnny can no longer access the Ghost Rider’s powers — meaning that when he bursts through a police barricade and the cops respond by shooting him in the arm, it hurts, and when he spins out and crashes as a result, he’s badly injured.  Ouch.

Meanwhile, the comatose Linda Littletrees is being fretted over by both her father, Snake Dance, and her boyfriend, Sam — neither of which have a clue about her secret life as Witch-Woman…

As the mysterious Daimon Hellstrom prepares to travel to Arizona, the injured Johnny Blaze is admitted into the same hospital where his lover, Roxanne Simpson, is presently recovering from poisonous snake bites received in a ritual conducted by Snake Dance a couple of issues back…

Satan tells Linda he’s giving her a second chance; all she has to do is allow him to possess her body.  She acquiesces, and once the Devil is in the driver’s seat, he’s able to use his own “hell-spawned powers” to easily break the ropes binding Linda…

Satan, as Linda, rushes to the hospital — but by the time he she they get there, the sun has gone down, and Johnny has turned back into Ghost Rider, resulting in his injuries being instantly healed… at least until the next morning.  The Rider manages to slip out of the hospital without being seen (quite the accomplishment for a guy with a flaming skull for a head), eluding both the Devil and the police, and as this episode comes to a close, he and Rocky (who by now has more or less recovered from the snake venom that put her in the hospital) are driving off into the desert in a stolen truck.

The issue’s very last scene finds Daimon Hellstrom arriving at his destination…

Catch that “The Mark of Satan!” in the “Next” blurb?  Apparently, as late as one month prior to its premiere, the new feature was still being referred to by Stan Lee’s original title; either that, or someone simply forgot that the name had been changed.  In any event, the month of July would bring the next two chapters in our storyline, with the first arriving in Ghost Rider #2.  (This issue also found Jim Mooney coming aboard as the series’ new penciller, while Friedrich and Shores continued in their same roles).

We join GR and Rocky as, having almost wrecked their truck in a sudden rainstorm, they park on the side of the road to consider their situation…

Rocky desperately tries to talk Johnny out of this rash decision, but he’s convinced that this is the best course for both of them.  “I’ve caused you too much suffering and pain already!” he tells her.  “Now it’s time I ended it!”

Considering how steeped in Christian mythology the storyline has been up to this point, the introduction of a “pagan” Egyptian symbol like the ankh seems a little odd.  Wouldn’t a chain of little crucifixes, or just plain crosses, make more sense in this context?  Perhaps Marvel was leery of laying on the religious iconography too heavily (although it didn’t seem to cause them any concerns in Tomb of Dracula).

Ah, the old “no matter how much I beg” trope.  Even in 1973, there could be little doubt as to how this was ultimately going to go.

Meanwhile, back in the open desert, the Witch-Woman informs Ghost Rider that while Satan wasn’t expecting to get Roxanne as part of the deal, as long as she’s here, she’s going to have to come along to Hell as well…

Johnny is prepared to make a fight of it, but then…

Might Gary Friedrich have taken a slightly different tack with this scene, had Mel Brooks’ classic 1974 film Young Frankenstein been released a couple of years earlier?  We’ll never know.

Meanwhile, back in the desert, the cyclists turn out not to be cops, but rather a very nasty motorcycle gang, who call themselves Big Daddy Dawson’s Ruthless Riders.  They’re keen to show up Johnny Blaze, whose whole “Ghost Rider” bit is assumed to be just an act.  But Witch-Woman/Satan has no time or patience for such shenanigans:

At the same time, back on the rez…

Now that he’s back home, Satan releases his hold on Linda Littletrees’ body, so that the Ghost Rider can see who he’s been dealing with all along.  But while Satan expects Johnny to follow through on his earlier offer and surrender his soul quietly, our hero has changed his mind.  Knowing that Rocky remains in jeopardy from the cycle gang, he’s determined to go back and save her.  Here in Hell, however, the odds are decidedly against him…

“On sale now!”  Actually, according to Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, Ghost Rider #2 was available as early as July 3rd, while Marvel Spotlight #12 didn’t arrive on stands until July 24th, a whole three weeks later.  But, close enough, right?  Especially from our own fifty-years-later perspective, where we can hop from the last page of the former comic to the first one of the latter in the space of a moment.

Although, before we do, I’m thinking that this might be a good time to pause just long enough to satisfy the curiosity of any regular reader out there who, recalling my mentions of my conservative religious upbringing in several previous posts, might wonder whether my sixteen-year-old self had any trepidation about buying a comic book with the name “SATAN” boldly emblazoned on its cover in bright red and yellow capital letters.  The short answer is: no, I didn’t.  While the earnest evangelical Christian I was at that time did believe, as a matter of doctrine, in the literal existence of Satan (not in a horns-and-hooves physical form, you understand, but as a spiritual entity), I also believed that while the Devil could tempt me to sin, he couldn’t ever really get me, because I was a born-again believer and thus had an non-cancellable ticket to Heaven.  And as long as Marvel (or whoever) was portraying Satan as a bad guy, I didn’t see how their publishing (or my buying) a comic book about him meant they were promoting him, any more than publishing a comic book about Doctor Doom meant they were promoting megalomaniacal dictators.  I was well aware that many other evangelical Christians (including maybe my parents) wouldn’t necessarily appreciate these nuances, and I certainly didn’t go around the house flaunting my “Son of Satan” comic books… but as far as my own conscience was concerned, I was in the clear.

I hope that that’s answered any questions anyone out there had — and for those of you whom I’ve just bored silly with this digression, my apologies.  In any case, it’s time at last for our main event:

Though both were scripted by the same writer, the dialogue and action between the corresponding scenes in Ghost Rider #2 and Marvel Spotlight #12 don’t match up very well at all; one is all but required to assume that with both books, the story’s penciller (in this instance, Herb Trimpe, who also drew the comic’s very busy cover) had to work from a brief plot synopsis by Gary Friedrich, which left lots of room for individual interpretation.  The resulting discontinuity stands in marked contrast to the Avengers/Defenders multi-issue crossover that was being managed around this same time by writer Steve Englehart, in which the storyline flows from one issue to another in seamless fashion.

The Son of Satan continues to harangue the two Native Americans, using his trident to cause an earth tremor that literally brings Snake Dance’s house down.  Finally, Sam tells him everything he knows — basically, it’s a recap of all his scenes from Ghost Rider #1 — ending with, “But when I returned to the shack, she was gone — vanished into the desert after knocking her father aside like some wild animal!”  Which, if memory serves, is nothing that Daimon Hellstrom hadn’t already heard all about.  Either we’re supposed to think that Daimon’s nocturnal persona can’t access the knowledge of his daytime self, or Gary Friedrich isn’t paying very close attention to his own story.

Daimon Hellstrom promptly hops in his chariot and then takes to the skies, leaving Sam Silvercloud and Snake Dance gaping in his wake…

Big Daddy Dawson has had just about enough of “costumed crazies“, and he orders his Ruthless Riders to “pulverize the crumb!“.  But their greater numbers mean little to the Son of Satan, who claims to have “the strength of a hundred men“.

This is pretty disturbing stuff, no less so in 2023 than it was in 1973.  At this point, it’s difficult to see the Son of Satan’s crusade against his dad as anything other than a feud between two equally nasty individuals; does Marvel really expect us to accept the Son of Satan as a supernatural superhero?

Once again, this scene matches up poorly with the corresponding one at the conclusion of Ghost Rider #2, despite both having the same writer.

Daimon and his daddy proceed to toss verbal barbs at each other for a few panels, until Satan cries, “Enough!  I will not hear this blasphemy in the confines of my own domain!”

If your humble blogger is to be completely truthful, he has to acknowledge that the vision of Hell presented by Herb Trimpe (with the aid of inker Frank Chiaramonte) is hardly his favorite; seriously, if I’m in the mood to sear my eyeballs (and soul) with grisly, shudder-producing hellscapes, I’m much more likely to turn to the work of Stephen Bissette and John Totleben on Swamp Thing, or Kelley Jones on The Sandman.  That said, the sheer bold directness of the artwork in these pages has its own raw power, at least for this reader.

Yeah, about that sister… As the editorial note in the fourth-from-last panel above indicates, the same month that saw the premiere of Daimon Hellstrom in his own feature also brought readers the debut of Satana, the Devil’s Daughter, in a four-page strip (written by Roy Thomas and drawn by John Romita) that ran in the black-and-white pages of Vampire Tales #2 (see right for the tale’s concluding panels).  Despite what that publication’s title might lead you to expect, Satana wasn’t actually a vampire at all, but was, rather, a succubus (though the male victims left as desiccated husks in her soul-devouring wake were, of course, just as dead as if she had drained their blood).  Over the next several years, Satana would pursue a parallel career to her sibling, mostly (but not entirely) in the pages of Marvel’s b&w magazines — never really catching fire (if you’ll pardon the expression), but never really going away, either… well, at least not until her death in 1979, in the pages of Marvel Team-Up #81, which took her out of action for a whole fourteen years (actually a pretty lengthy stint among the deceased, as comic-book deaths go).

If you’ve read this far, it probably won’t surprise you to know that Ghost Rider #3 opens with a reprise of this very same scene… and that they don’t match up.  (Gary Friedrich’s right hand, please meet Gary Friedrich’s left hand.)  For one thing, it’s still dark in the Arizona desert when Daimon drops Johnny and Linda off — which is good, since as soon as Johnny returns to his normal, mortal self, he’ll be subject once again to his prior and very serious injuries, and will probably die.

We’re not going to offer a full recap of GR #3 here, let alone #4 (which is how long it takes some of this business to wrap up), but just so you don’t feel like you’ve been left hanging:  The unfortunate Rocky Simpson is once again accosted by Big Daddy Dawson, but she’s eventually saved by the Ghost Rider.  Afterwards, Johnny finally checks into a hospital and eventually — or, more specifically, after two whole months — completely recovers from his injuries, “somehow managing to keep secret his other identity” during that entire time (and, yes, that’s a direct quote from Friedrich’s script for issue #4), despite the fact that his head routinely becomes a flaming skull from dusk to dawn every single night.  Meanwhile, Linda Littletrees, having been freed from Satan’s possession, no longer has the powers of Witch-Woman, and sometime within this two-month periuod evidently decides to ditch the whole Devil-worshiping thing.  She briefly comes on to Johnny, who rejects her; and after issue #4 (Friedrich’s last as writer), she drops out of sight completely for the next eleven years.  (In Ghost Rider Annual #2 [Aug., 1994] Linda will come back just long enough for readers to learn that since last seen she’s married Sam Silvercloud and has had a son with him, but the couple is now divorced, and Linda has returned to the service of Satan [or Mephisto, as Marvel was calling him by then*]… ah, well.)

As for the follow-up to the Son of Satan’s first outing, Marvel Spotlight #13 did indeed feature Daimon Hellstrom’s origin story, just as #12’s next-issue blurb had promised.  (Of course, the cover for #12 had blurbed that one as an “Ominous Origin Issue!”, too, but never mind.)  There wasn’t all that much to it, actually:  A couple of decades or so ago, Satan had decided he needed an heir in Hell; so he traveled to Earth, seduced and married a naive young woman named Victoria, and had two children by her.  Several years later, when Victoria discovered the truth about whom she’d wed, she had a nervous breakdown, “Dad” disappeared, and the children were placed in separate homes.  Daimon eventually decided to become a priest, and studied towards that goal for over three years; but then, soon after his 21st birthday, he discovered and read his now-deceased mother’s diary, and thus learned the truth about himself.  Taking off the chain of ankhs he’d received as a gift from Victoria years before when visiting her in the mental hospital, Daimon became the Son of Satan for the first time.  He traveled to Hell via a portal below his parents’ house and confronted his father, coming away from the encounter with his “netheranium” trident and demon-horse-drawn chariot.  And that was that.  (Oh, one more thing… this doesn’t have anything to do with the origin, but just in case you’re wondering, nothing at all came of the Son of Satan’s silent promise in the last panel of MS #12 to “return later as Daimon Hellstrom” to rescue the two people he was leaving stranded in the desert, either in MS #13 or in GR #3; or, if it did, we didn’t see it.)

Both Gary Friedrich and Herb Trimpe left the “Son of Satan” strip after its second installment.  Their replacements were, respectively, Steve Gerber and Jim Mooney, the former of whom would remain on the series through Marvel Spotlight #23, while the latter would stay through #17 (though Mooney would return one more time, following Gerber’s departure, to pencil the first issue of the new Son of Satan title).  Gerber quickly made several important changes to the fledgling series’ status quo, ranging from the more-or-less cosmetic (e.g., inverting Daimon’s pentagram birthmark to its “correct” position) to the conceptual — the most important of the latter being to dispense entirely with the nocturnal transformation aspect of Daimon’s dual nature.  Or, as Satan himself would proclaim in MS #15, “Never again will you suffer the torment of transfiguration — from man to demon at dusk.  But neither will you ever again be fully able to suppress your Satanic side!”

It was a smart — and probably essential — adjustment to make, if the Son of Satan was ever going to work as any sort of superhero, since in the original concept he only had access to his powers when his demonic personality was in control; the results, as seen in Marvel Spotlight #12, didn’t really leave the reader with anyone to root for, other than the poor souls who had the misfortune to cross the protagonist’s path.  (As a related concern: how did Daimon Hellstrom ever hope to earn a living as an exorcist if his alter ego was going to pull down his clients’ houses as a matter of routine?)

The ten issues of Steve Gerber’s run on “Son of Satan” probably wouldn’t make any fan’s list of his very best work, but there were some pretty good stories in there, nevertheless, and I hope to share at least a couple of them with you in the months to come.  Join me, why don’t you?

 

*Some time after the occult revival/explosion of the 1960s-70s had somewhat ebbed (or been mainstreamed, if you prefer), Marvel appears to have decided that they no longer wanted a villain with such specific and significant religious connotations as “Satan” to be part of their Universe, and pretty much every instance of such was retconned to be someone else.  Unfortunately, there was little consistency applied, with the result that while the devil Johnny Blaze sold his soul to is now generally considered to have been Mephisto, the one that sired the Hellstrom kids is usually identified as a completely different fellow called Marduk Kurios — despite the fact that the Satan appearing in the crossover storyline we’ve been discussing today is clearly the same guy.  Yeah, it’s kind of a mess.