Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 1)
by Gary Friedrich, Steve Gerber, Mike Friedrich, Chris Claremont, John Warner, Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bill Mantlo, Chris Claremont, Gary Friedrich, Gerry Conway, John Warner, Mike Friedrich, Roy Thomas, Steve GerberBrand: Marvel
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-18
ISBN: 078512196X
Number of pages: 648
Publisher: Marvel
Book Reviews of Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 1)
Book Review: Boring Evil
Summary: 3 Stars
This should really have been called Essential Son of Satan & Satana as those two characters take up the entirety of the book.
The Son of Satan stories take up the most of the book, dealing with the half-human son of "Satan", Damian Hellstrom, as he fights his father. Though an interesting premise, how would he use his satanic powers for good and how will he avoid becoming evil as his heritage would indicate he should be really gets repetitive. The beginning stories are interesting, but by the time he gets his own book they are becoming tiresome. Less horror at this point than straight up superhero.
The changing of authors also hurts the title. Steve Gerber, St. Louis native, had set up a nice continuity with Damian building up a career and relationships there. When a new author took over, without any pre-amble Damian moves away abruptly leaving his love interest. The other problem is the severely limited nature of his powers, he wields a Netheranium trident to which the denizens of hell are weak against, has the ability to project hellfire to damage the souls of the evil creatures from hell and superior strength. Though he bills himself as an exorcist, and is introduced in Ghost Rider that way, he actually does little exorcism, and what he does do is generally via his hellfire, not ritual magic. Not exploring this side of the character lessens his depth.
The last quarter or so of the collection deals with his sister Satana, who starts out raised by her father and ultimately evil. She is banished to earth as a succubus and comes into contact with humanity, and her own humanity, as she preys on people. The black and white format of the Essentials collections does not affect Satana as much as other titles as Satana was published at times in black & white magazines, thus the artwork for those stories is presented here just as it was originally and it looks great. Also included are three or four text pieces about Satana, also not affected by the black & white format of the collection.
As well, we get to see much better character development with Satana as she runs into mentors and enemies from her past and forms relationships with humans in the present, moving away from being just purely evil to a more nuanced character containing some good and a lot of bad. Unfortunately, Satana as a character was dropped from circulation fairly early and there are fewer stories about her than her brother.
On the whole it's just ok to below average. Unless you are a fan of the genre, or of each character you probably want to give this a pass.
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