Monday, March 10, 2014

Not an Ellis issue, but all right:


It actually is the issue before Warren Ellis took over the book: from 1994, Hellstorm: Prince of Lies #11, "Life in Hell" Written by Len Kaminski, art by Peter Gross Leonardo Manco, per the GCD.

After a failed attempt to storm the gates of Heaven; Daimon Hellstorm has been cast down into the fiery pits of Hell. There, he's given a walking tour of the place by a chap by the name of Simon Garth. Daimon recognizes the name, and you might as well: he was the Zombie, and says while his "mortal shell" was cursed to walk the earth, he was cursed to do the same in hell. They examine both the changing form and natures of Hell, and Garth describes it as "a mirror for the collective unconscious" as well as completely without justice. Sometimes the innocent are punished, sometimes the guilty rewarded, and souls are sent to heaven or hell more due to "flavor and texture" than sins or virtures. Of course, this may all need to be taken with a grain of salt, since Daimon realizes "Garth" knows more about hell than he should...

There's also a U.S. Postal Service Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation, which means someone was getting Hellstorm in the mail at one point. Weird, huh? The average number of issues sold the previous twelve months was 123,453; with the actual number of the single issue closest to the filing date was 77,310. Hellstorm was a lower-tier book in the hundred or so titles Marvel was grinding out a month around 1993, but per the January sales numbers, nowadays those sales would be good enough for #1 or just behind #5, respectively.

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Creepy. very creepy. That's how Marvel tried to be back then, apping off DC's vertigo imprint. Thus why the Clive Barker Line, Marvel Edge, before that the Midnight Sons. Yeah.

I need to get those Ellis issues thought. Damn good depressing shit, if you're into that stuff apparently.