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Topic: Question for JB and the board: The Demon (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Robert White
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Posted: 21 July 2009 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | 1  

I just got my hands on the original Kirby run and JB's Blood of the Demon and was wondering if this is pretty much all I need as far as the Demon goes? My interest in the character has grown recently so I was curious about what you guys think.
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Matt Reed
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Posted: 21 July 2009 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | 2  

It's a great start.  I wouldn't go the Alan Grant "Demon" route.  Very nearly a totally different character.
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Wallace Sellars
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Posted: 21 July 2009 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | 3  

Robert, you may want to check out the Demon's appearances in JB's ACTION
and WONDER WOMAN runs.
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Paul Kimball
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Posted: 21 July 2009 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | 4  

There's a 1987 mini series with some really nice art by Matt Wagner that's
worth picking up, you could likely get it very cheap.

You may also like his appearance in Swamp Thing circa Alan Moore.
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 21 July 2009 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | 5  

The Demon follows a different path with nearly every creator who lays hands upon the character.

Bruce Timm does a fine Kirby-esque Demon in his appearances in Batman Adventures.

Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben take their cue from the Len Wein "rhyming" Demon and do excellent work with him in issues of Swamp Thing. This is not a popular interpretation with many on this board.

Matt Wagner does a more traditional Arthurian take on the Demon in his mini-series and the recent Madame Xanadu book.

There are almost as many versions of the character as there are moods you might be in when you feel like reading about him.

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Lars Johansson
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Posted: 21 July 2009 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | 6  

I think you should have the first meeting with Superman issue, drawn and written by JB. It's possibly in some Superman-man of Steel papperback. It starts out in an antiques store and then an artifact is opened up and a future town appears and grows up from the ground.
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Rod Collins
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Posted: 22 July 2009 at 12:50am | IP Logged | 7  

There is also an issue of Brave And The Bold that is worth picking up.  It involves Batman, a creature emerging from Gotham Harbour and some great Aparo art IIRC.
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Troy Nunis
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Posted: 22 July 2009 at 1:16am | IP Logged | 8  

and of course, there is always the Blue Devil Summer Fun Special . . . . well . . there IS . . .
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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 July 2009 at 4:30am | IP Logged | 9  

When he created the Demon, Kirby came as close to giving his readers something truly unique as we seen in American superhero comics. The Wizard Merlin summons Etrigan, the Demon, to defend Camelot from the forces of Morgaine le Fey, and when King Arthur's fabled kingdom falls, Merlin transforms Etrigan into a human being and sends him off into the world, to be called upon if ever there is need. A thousand years later, that human being, now calling himself Jason Blood, is found trying to learn about secrets of his own past. He has no idea that he is the demon Etrigan, or even that all the portraits of his "ancestors" that bedeck his apartment are actually pictures of himself, from different points in his long life. Jason, over the centuries, has developed his own personality -- his own soul, if you will -- and when he finally discovers his true nature, he sets upon a campaign to free himself of the Demon.*

One of the first things later writers changed was making Jason a human being who was possessed by a demon. In other words, something that was different was changed into something that was, at least in comicbook terms, ordinary.

It's not an absolutely clean break, but basically the dividing line between the Demon stories that are worth reading (and, yes, I include my own in this definition) and the ones that are not can be recognized by whether or not the Demon speaks in rhyme all the time. Kirby gave us a transformation spell, to summon Etrigan, and that spell was a few lines of doggerel. Kirby bridged from the verse into Etrigan's normal speech by having the Demon speak his first few lines after the transformation also in rhyme. This became an affectation several writers applied to Etrigan all the time, and, like so many such errors and affectations, it became canon. When I wrote the Demon in ACTION COMICS I reverted to Kirby's pattern, and found myself having to fight to keep it that way. One highly placed editor at DC even told me I had to change it because "we can't say Kirby got it wrong!" I had to pull out the bound volumes from the DC library and show people how Kirby had done it, and, astonishingly, some were still unconvinced! (Part of the problem, it became clear, lay in the fact that many thought it was Alan Moore who had made the change, and, then as now, Moore's stuff was considered sacrosanct.) I won my battle, but the next time Etrigan appeared he was rhyming again.

Along the way there was some beautiful art to look at, especially one issue illustrated by Joe Kubert, but the stories were almost entirely forgettable.


* It should be noticed that Kirby himself began messing with this matrix almost at once. Within a few issues we were seeing flashbacks to Etrigan battling the forces of evil in times past, after the Fall of Camelot, despite the fact that the first story arc seemed clearly to indicate that Etrigan had not been seen on Earth since that time. This was something I played with in BLOOD OF THE DEMON, along with the notion that Jason Blood that lived about ten centuries somehow without knowing it!

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Mark Dickie
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Posted: 22 July 2009 at 5:47am | IP Logged | 10  

Thanks greatly for writing that JB!  I look forward to reading your Demon run more than ever now. 

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Joe Zhang
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Posted: 22 July 2009 at 5:50am | IP Logged | 11  

"then as now, Moore's stuff was considered sacrosanct."


It's odd how the writer whose work is the most influential at DC happens to openly loathe the company.
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Joe Hollon
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Posted: 22 July 2009 at 7:10am | IP Logged | 12  

I tracked down all the original Kirby DEMON issues a couple years back and was very impressed.  One of my favorite Kirby series ever. 

For me, the only DEMON comics I pay attention to are by Jack Kirby and John Byrne.
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