BOUGHT:
So I was excited by this particular installment of DC's DC Finest collection, its 530 pages containing the entirety of the original series as well as the character's first appearances by hands other than Kirby's, taken from the pages of The Brave and The Bold, Batman Family, Detective Comics and Wonder Woman.
What I found most remarkable about Kirby's Demon run was the extent to which so much of what I know of the character, from Alan Grant and company's 1990-1995 series and the Etrigan appearances in the 30 years to follow, was right there at the beginning.
Kirby's original character design, apparently borrowed from Hal Foster's Prince Valiant* before being Kirby-ized, has barely changed over the decades, the only real changes being how big different artists might drawh is ears or horns or fangs, and whether his cape is scalloped around the edges or not (Kirby drew it both ways, first with the scalloping and then quickly abandoning it). Jon McCrea added some spikes to Etrigan's armbands in 1993, although their presence would depend on the artist.
And as for the cast, were all Kirby's creations, and present in the earliest issues. There's the immortal Jason Blood, currently a Gotham City-based demonologist, who shares a body with Etrigan, The Demon, the result of a spell Merlin cast during the time of Camelot. There's Jason's friends, Harry Matthews and Randu Singh, the latter of whom has psychic powers. There's love interest Glenda Marks. There's villains Morgaine Le Fey and Klarion The Witchboy (and his cat Teekl, who is here male, although when Klarion transforms Teekl into a humanoid form during their second appearance in book, Teekl seems to be part cat and part woman).
I was surprised that the comics also contained the disturbing little white, monkey-like monster The Kamara, which figured in Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette's Etrigan story from 1984's Saga of The Swamp Thing (and I had always just assumed was the creation of Moore and Bissette) and The Howler, which appeared in Alan Grant and Val Smeiks' 1992 The Demon #23, the first issue of that series I had ever read (thanks to the Robin Tim Drake appearance on the cover).
The other surprise, for me at least, was how self-contained the book is. Maybe that shouldn't be surprising, given how singular a talent Kirby was, how much latitude DC seemed to be affording him and how relatively little connectivity there was between various DC books in the 1970s, but the first 16-issues are completely self-contained and cordoned off from the DCU. The fact that much of it is set in Gotham City is really the only indication that this is a DC comic at all, and Kirby never really exploits the setting in his book (Jason, Etrigan and company never encounter Batman, Robin or Commissioner Gordon, for example...at least, not in Kirby's original stories from the pages of The Demon).
As for the character's most distinct trait, the fact that he speaks in rhyming dialogue, well, he doesn't seem to have started doing so in Kirby's series, nor anywhere else in the first decade or so of his fictional life.
Kirby does have just about every single spell that is cast throughout the book written in rhyme, and so Jason Blood and/or Etrigan mostly only rhyme when reciting some version of the still somewhat fluid transformation spell, in which "Etrigan" apparently rhymes with "man." There are a few other points where Etrigan uses magic, and thus speaks in rhyme, but it's clear that he only does so when casting spells (I also noticed that Kirby's Demon neve breathes fire, another thing I've long since come to associate with the chracter, but only shoots it from his hands).
Though the original series might not have lasted long, Kirby obviously created something pretty potent ad compelling, given that Etrigan and company are still around today and now thoroughly embedded in the shared setting of the DC Universe. Oh, and DC is set to launch a new Demon ongoing, the character's fourth, in the very near future.
There's a rather charming sense of making it up as he goes along to Kirby's comic. Though it is supposedly about the occult, its somewhat Incredible Hulk-like hero a demonologist in his secret identity and a literal demon when in his "superhero"/monster form, Kirby didn't exactly seem to have spent a second researching the occult himself. There's a sort of extremely safe, Saturday morning cartoon version of Satanism about everything here, with Etrigan and the various demonic entities he encounters all being pulled directly from Kirby's imagination, and seem like, if they were scaled up slightly, are the sort of things one would find in a pre-Fantastic Four Marvel monster comic rather than medieval Christian legend.
In the first issue, Jason Blood and a one-armed police officer encouter a strange creature, and officer screams, "LOOK-! BEHIND US!--- Is it a beast? ---or man---or BOTH?" Blood sizes up the orange creature, which looks like it could have stepped off a flying saucer to fight Thor in the early sixties, and declares, "The Gorla! A watchdog for witches!" Uh, if you say so, Jason.
Likewise, Kirby engages in no real world-building beyond what he must have done when originally putting the series together. There's certainly no sense of a consistent Heaven, Hell or afterlife, or of the entities that might hail from such places. Rather, they are all random monsters, and realtively few of them seeming all that infernal (Asmodon from The Demon #10, who looks like a highly Kirby-ized version of the traditional cartoon Devil and seems to be able to be called upon and bargained with, is a rare exceptin.)
The book open with Merlin clutching his Eternity Book in a flaming tower during the fall of Camelot. A turn of the page reveals a two-page splash in which Morgaine Le Fey's forces assault Camelot; the designs and renderings looking so purely Kirby that they evoke his work on the New Gods more than any other vision of King Arthur and company a reader might have seen. During the battle, Merlin summons his demon, Etrigan and then, with a sweep of his hand, Merlin "wondrous Camelo thundered, trembled and departed from the pages of history!!" Etrigan walks away from the ruined city, transforming as he does so into a man...and a man he would remain for centuries. (Unlike later version of the Demon's story, here it seems to be suggested that Etrigan became Jason Blood and, eventually, can switch back and forth, rather than being a demon from hell bonded by magic to an extant human being; also, Blood seemed to live all of those years as Blood, never once becoming Etrigan again, nor even knowing that he could transform).
We then jump to 1970s Gotham City, where Jason Blood is a dashing young demonolgist, living in a swank apartment full of all the crazy occult objects Kirby can imagine, and practicing martial arts with his friend Randu Singh, who works for the United Nations and possesses ESP, while their friend advertising executive Harry Matthews looks on.
The immortal Morgaine Le Fey's quest to restore her youth, beauty and power will eventually lead her to the Eternity Book, and thus call forth Etrigan to defend it. After two completely stuffed, action-packed issues, Blood will become aware of his own origins and start to settle into his new life, that of a man who can become a powerful demon after reciting a short rhyme.
Kirby then pits Jason, Etrigan and friends against a cult that can devolve humans into their past selves to control them, the Kamara and its masters, The Howler and Klarion (twice), while riffing on The Phantom of the Opera and Pygmalion/Galatea in one story and Frankenstein in another (There is nothing subtle about either of these stories, either; the Frankenstein riff, for example, features a doctor figure named Baron von Evilstein and a man-made monster at least twice as tall as a man with gigantic electrodes protruding from it).
The final issue wraps the story up, with Morgaine Le Fey returning (and being drawn with a lot more va-va-voom than is typical for Kirby's female characters) and Glenda finally learning the truth of Jason's double-life, a secret Randu and Harry had worked to keep from her throughout the series.
Interestingly, the final issue ends with an all-text panel suggesting we've seen the last of Etrigan:
This ends the adventures of The Demon...but not the efforts toward great and intriguing reader entertainment... See your dealer for a new and exciting comic from the DC Kirby-works! Coming very soon!
Obviously, this was very much not the end of the adventures of The Demon, which like so many of the characters Kirby created or co-created for Marvel and DC, continue to this day.
In fact, this very volume includes about 100 pages of comics featuring Etigan from after the cancellation of his series. Here are the other comics included:
•The Brave and The Bold #109 (1973) The first creators other than Kirby to tackle The Demon were Bob Haney and Jim Aparo, in the Batman team-up title. This is also Etrigan's first and only appearance outside of the pages of The Demon before the character's home book would be cancelled. This is also the first time the fact that Batman and The Demon are both based in Gotham City is exploited, as Haney doesn't have to do all that much to bring the two characters together.
A strange monster of sorts has clambered out of Gotham City Harbor where a new bridge is being built, and begins targeting seafaring men—or, in the case of Harry Matthews on his way to his yacht, men who look the part. A killing spree in which one of Jason's friends is almost a victim is enough to get both heroes involved.
They cross paths when Batman catches Etrigan in a net meant for the killer, and then Randu, Harry and Jason immediately explain Jason's bizarre double-life to the Caped Crusader, something that even Glenda doesn't know at this point. Together, Batman and Etrigan figure out the supernatural backstory of the killer and defeat it.
Like much of Haney's Brave and The Bold, his take on The Demon feels a bit...off, most notably in the narration and dialogue, which repeatedly refers to the character as simply "Demon," no "the" before it, as if "Demon" were his name. Aparo's take on the character honors Kirby's design, and makes Etrigan look far more realistic, resulting in a stiffer, less dynamic, less idiosyncratic hero.
•The Brave and The Bold #137 (1977) Some three years after the cancellation of The Demon, Haney brought Etrigan back in the Batman team-up title, this time working with the art team of John Calnan and Bob McLeod. Batman is in Gotham's Chinatown to take a youth gang called The Savage Dragons (What are the chances that a young Erik Larsen read this issue, do you think?), but the supernatural threat of Chinese god Shahn-Zi from a previous issue of the series has returned.
Luckily Batman bumps into Jason Blood ("In the well-stuffed flesh, old friend!") and Glenda, who he introduces here as his fiancee (Congratulations to the young couple, I guess...?). They were in the neighborhood for "the superb Peking duck in Lum Fat's establishment," Jason says, although Glenda adds, "Jason's here to observe the new year--hunting spooks as usual."
Before the issue is over, Shahn-Zi will turn Etrigan into a fly and Batman into a vampire bat, while Etrigan will ask Merlin to grant him the power to change shape like Shahn-Zi himself does. He can only use the new power once though, and when the Chinese deity turns himself into a huge cobra, Etrigan becomes a mongoose to defeat him.
•"There's a Demon Born Every Minute" from Batman Family #17 (1978) This is the Man-Bat/Demon team-up by Bob Rozakis and Michael Golden that I posted about fairly recently; in terms of the Jason Blood/Demon, I think it's probably most interesting in regards to Golden's highly-stylized art. Rozakis does bring Morgaine Le Fey back from the state in which Kirby left her...only to leave her in a similarly permanent-ish state of defeat at the end. Jason's square, paperweight-like Philospher's Stone plays a role as well.
•Detective Comics #482-485 (1979) When Etrigan next surfaces, it's in another Batman book. Writer Len Wein has a weird-looking sorcerer named Baron Tyme, apparently previously seen in a Man-Bat story, employ a magically-created creature to steal Merlin's Eternity Book for him. Etrigan gives chase, and the pair end up at Merlin's tomb beneath Castle Branek in the European city of Wolfenstag. The first chapter is again drawn by Golden (and, on its opening splash, includes several visual call-backs to foes Blood and Etrigan fought in Kirby's series), while the remainder are drawn by Steve Ditko.
Their styles don't match up in the least, but both are great. It's particularly fun to see Ditko, the other artist who helped build Marvel Comics, tackling a Kirby creation. His Etrigan has an off-kilter, ape-like gait, and seems to always be half-crouching. Tyme is afflicted with a weird state of being that seems tailormade for Ditko to draw, and there are lots of gorgeous and unusual depictions of magical powers and other dimensions...as one might expect from the guy who created Doctor Strange.
The 46-page epic includes a panel in which Etrigan rhymes upon his entrance—"Thunder calls me from the sky-- --to save the book which dare not die!!"—and for a moment I thought maybe this was the point at which Etrigan's dialogue would start to all rhyme, but he drops it afterwards.
Oh, and Randu is suddenly blind for some reason in this story. It's not until the second installment that an editorial note points us to where it happened, in an issue of the short-lived Kobra series.
•Wonder Woman #280-282 (1981) Etrigan would next surface in the pages of Wonder Woman, of all places. The story is written by Gerry Conway, while Jose Delbo and Dave Hunt handle the art. (Len Wein, meanwhile, is the editor; I wonder if he was enough of a Demon fan to have suggested Conway use Etrigan here...?)
A black mass summons a demonic entity named Baal-Satyr from a netherworld (the word "Hell" is never used here) that claims Etta Candy as a sacrifice, taking her back to his realm, where it seems he's going to cook her in a pot. A fortune-teller sends Wonder Woman to Jason Blood, and soon the demonologist summons The Demon, who takes her to Baal-Satyr's realm for an adventure. Once they successfully return, they find a man who has done a deal with Klarion the Witchboy. He serves Klarion in order to regain the ability to walk again, but there's an unforseen side-effect to the cure: It turns him into a minotaur.
At the climax, Klarion transforms Teekl into a were-cat in order to fight Wondy, and once again Teekl's humanoid fom is female presenting. The script doesn't use any pronouns to refer to Teekl in this story at all.
Will DC produce a second DC Finest volume, picking up with Etrigan where this one leaves off....? If so, that would seem to take us to the character's appearances in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Blue Devil, a John Byrne story in his Action Comics run, an issue of The Spectre, Matt Wagner's four-issue Demon mini-series and then we'd be into Alan Grant's tenure on the character, which started with a feature in Action Comics Weekly, a Batman team-up in Detective Comics (The first Demon story I ever read, and still one of my favorites, thanks to Grant and pencil artist Norm Breyfogle's take on the character as a mad demon and how he sees his reflection in Batman) and then the second The Demon series, which Grant would write for about 40 issues (minus Dwayne McDuffie's four-part 1992 arc, "Political Asylum" and Matt Wagner's one-issue fill-in).
With the exception of that Detective Comics arc, I don't think any of Grant's Demon comics—from the pages of The Demon or elsewhere—have ever been collected, so I would love to see DC's keep publishing DC Finest: The Demon trades until they get to 1993's The Demon #39 (Garth Ennis would take over the title with #40, and his much shorter run has been collected in a pair of trades).
BORROWED:
On one hand, the art was great, Brombal obviously did his homework on the character's history and the creative team did an impressive job on conveying the unusual way in which Cassandra Cain sees the world, with body language being her native language, and verbal communication something of a secondary one. But on the other, Brombal had Cass making a couple of out-of-character, maybe even dumb decisions, apparently to meet the needs of the plot, which of course through me out of the story (Specifically? First, after being warned by Shiva that they were in too much danger to go to Batman and company for help without risking their lives, Cass instead goes to a civilian she knows, and that civilian is then immediately, predictably killed. Second, the book ends with Shiva telling Cass to flee while she holds off a bunch of deadly ninjas she seemingly has no hope of defeating, essentially sacrificing herself to buy Cass time to escape; Cass unheroically runs, letting her mother die for her...although, we all know Shiva isn't really did, right?)
The second volume is, I'm afraid to report, similarly uneven. Technically, it's very well-written and the art remains great, but I find myself questioning Brombal's decisions, which here include rather radically revamping the history/continuity of some long-lived if relatively minor characters.
The first two issues are a short arc entitled "The Book of Shiva". These are drawn by guest artist Isaac Goodhart, and they are gorgeous. Somewhat shaper and with a more solid line that Miyazawa's art, I think I actually preferred these issues visually to those drawn by Miyazawa. I was much less interested in the story, though. It's basically the secret origin of Lady Shiva and, while reading, I was reminded a bit of Marvel's 2001 Wolverine: The Origin. That is, sometimes keeping a character's origins mysterious is preferable, if the backstory you come up with them is ultimately kind of boring.
The story finds Cassandra on a train, apparently following her mother's command to find Ben Turner, while reading Shiva's life story in a book the master assassin had written for her daughter (Helpfully, Shiva also recorded herself reading it aloud, given that Cass is, traditionally, not the strongest reader, although writers Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad had transformed her into something of a bookworm during the course of their 19-issue, 2022-2023 Batgirls series).
Between scenes of Cass reading and listening in her train seat, Lady Shiva's life story plays out on the panels, starting with her girlhood. She had a sister she was very close to, her parents were murdered by ninjas, they were adopted by monks in a remote village and trained in the martial arts, etc. It's part two where it becomes interesting, as the now adult sisters are now touring the U.S., fighting challengers for money as "The Deadly Woosan Sisters." It's in Detroit's Chinatown that they take on a pair of fighters Ben Turner and "Richie."
As is quickly revealed, these are the future Bronze Tiger and Richard Dragon. In this half of the story, the four become close friends, traveling the world together and having martial arts adventures in which they fight for good and justice. At some point, Ben and Shiva's sister become lovers, while Richie expresses interest in Shiva. The quartet eventually break up when David Cain murders Shiva's sister, part of his apparently rather long-term plan to use her for breeding stock.
Now, Denny O'Neil's 1970's Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, the book from which Dragon, Bronze Tiger and Shiva all originated, was well before my time, and I'm mainly familiar with Bronze Tiger from John Ostrander's use of the character in Suicide Squad, while I've probably read less than three comics featuring Dragon (One of which was the 2004 Chuck Dixon/Scott McDaniel series, which I now see was a reboot). But this all sounded...wrong to me. So, after I finished reading the book, I went to Wikipedia to read the articles on Richard Dragon and Bronze Tiger. (As a general rule of thumb, if a comic script compels a reader to visit Wikipedia, then that script could probably use a little more work.)
It turns out that a) Richard Dragon and Ben Turner's histories are far, far more complicated and confusing than those of a couple of kung-fu guys from the seventies should be, including several contradictory continuity reboots and b) Brombal is rebooting elements of their history again here, adding at least one big revelation that reorients the character dynamics between the characters mentioned here.
Oh, and also? Due to DC's policy of messing with their continuity in cosmic events every couple of years now, I have no idea what counts and what doesn't. When it comes to a comic like this, for example, I find myself more inclined to just throw my hands up and walk away, rather than just go with the flow, as it seems Brombal has carte blanche to do whatever he likes with the characters he's using...and that whoever writes them next is just as likely to discard Brombal's version and start over again.
Miyazawa returns to illustrate the last three issues in this collection, which comprise the arc "The Three Swords." Set entirely at the Dragon Ranch in Whitefish, Montana, it finds Batgirl—arriving in full costume and astride a horse—confronting Bronze Tiger, telling him that Shiva is dead, that her mom sent her to him and asking about "The Jade Tiger."
Ben is reluctant to share anything, but when Batgirl gets physical with him, The Jade Tiger reveals himself, coming to his dad's defense. That's right, the Jade Tiger is the Bronze Tiger's son, and his mom? Well, that's—spoiler alert!—the one-time Jade Canary, Lady Shiva.
I was here reminded of the first story I had ever read in which Lady Shiva appeared. It was the "A Death in the Family" arc from Batman (which I read via a trade paperback collection, one of the first trades I had ever bought). Part of the 1988 story involves then-Robin Jason Todd seeking out his birth mother and, for some reason, the Dynamic Duo suspect it might be Shiva. When Batman asks her if she's eve had a baby, she laughs:
Certainly. I've had dozens of babies!!
I've dropped litters in every corner of the globe!!
Well, I don't know about whole litters, but that's at least two kids she's had now...! (Interestingly, Batman says he expected her to be uncooperative and thus injects her with "sodium pentothal--truth serum." He then asks her again if she's eve had a baby, and she answers with simple "No".)
Ben explains everything now that the meeting has been forced, and, oddly, at one point the boy, Tenji Turner, reveals that he has long known that his sister Cassandra was Batgirl, and that he admired her. Which seems...weird, given that when he sees a girl in a bat-costume in his kitchen, he doesn't even suspect it might be Cassandra, even questioning why she is dressed like a bat during their fight.
More fighting follows, as a trio of assassins—the "three swords" of the title—arrive at the ranch, seeking Batgirl's head. The second of these a member of The Blood, the group of ninjas that killed Shiva's parents, drove her and her sister from the village where they grew up, and to which Shiva (and thus Cass and Tenji) seem to belong (Hence the title of this collection).
They're not just regular ninjas, though, they also have a super-power, which they gained by having "forged deals with dark spirits of the spirit world". They have the ability to manipulate their own blood as a weapon; the Blood assassin Cass fights at the climax of "Three Swords", for example, apparently cuts herself, and uses her blood a little like a Green Lantern might use their ring, making various simple constructs (Mostly lashing tentacles and spiky balls, though, and not boxing gloves or baseball bats).
I do hope Batgirl doesn't learn to unlock this power to use herself. I think she's cool enough (and powerful enough) with her martial arts mastery and her ability to "read" her opponents' next moves. She certainly doesn't need a new super-power, and I'm not a fan of giving Bats powers (I think The Signal developing ill-defined vision powers, for example, was to the detriment of the character).
So that's two volumes in a row of a comic starring one of my favorite comic book characters that I've found well-made but full of frustrating choices. Will I read a third? I'm honestly not sure at this point.
So, what's wrong?
Apparently not content to wait for The Atoms to figure out their Atom Project (that is, getting the right superpowers back to the right superheroes) as is detailed in Justice League Unlimited and the risible Justice League: The Atom Project (although the fact that anyone is working on fixing this very problem is never alluded to in this book), Fire invites some other lady Leaguers to town for a karaoke night (Dr. Light, Black Canary, Zatanna and Zatanna's cousin Zachary Zatara, who Zatanna brought along even though it's supposed to be a girls' night).
Zatanna, whose super-power is basically that she can do anything as long as she phrases her wish backwards, tells Fire she can't help solve their problem magically but, while she and Zachary are busy singing, Fire fishes around Zatanna's magic top hat until she eventually pulls out a monkey's paw and makes a wish to give her and Ice their original powers back (As Greg Burgas notes in his review of the trade, this plot-driving impetuousness on Fire's part calls for her to, first, recognize a monkey's paw as a magical artifact that grants wishes, but, second, not also know that those wishes always go wrong, which is...weird. But, again, necessary to the plot!)
The result is that Fire and Ice are then Freaky Friday-ed, with Fire's mind going into Ice's body and Ice's mind into Fire's. So, each mind has access to the right powers, but now they are in the wrong bodies. After an issue or so of dealing with this, Fire makes things worse by making another wish, this one causing a bunch of the supporting cast members to get similarly Freaky Friday-ed.
So our heroines go to Jason Blood (who Byrne gives black hair instead of red), who then transforms into a somewhat off-model Etrigan (Byrne gives him a mouthful of big teeth but, more weirdly, a pair of red shorts that stretch towards his knees and, weirder still, bare feet). Etrigan opens a portal, and then our girls spend about four issues in Hell, facing their demons...and literal demons, of course.
Here is where I think the book really started to fall apart, as it separates the heroines from their supporting cast but, like I said, continues to follow that supporting cast, and as we jump back and forth between scenes, we go from stuff like, say, Smarty Pants and Mo planning to rob the vault of a casino that won't even be built for years yet to Beatriz confronting her father, who trained her how to assassinate people when she was still a young girl and accuses her of belonging in Hell with him (While I knew Bea was a government operative at one point, I don't recall these specifics, so I guess that's a pretty deep cut on Starer's part; Starer does repeatedly refer to the characters' previous adventure in Hell, in 2005's JLA Classified #4-9...over 25 years ago, now...! I can't imagine that story is all that easy to find at this point if a reader new to these characters wanted to consult it.)
To which Etrigan replies, "Oh, I do it to irritate. I am a demon, after all."
As I've been reading DC Finest: The Demon: The Birth of the Demon, I've been thinking a lot about Etrigan lately. And this is a fun explanation for the rhyming (I also liked the bits about his rhyming in Silent Knight Returns that Jeff Parker offered). Unfortunately, he does acquiesce to Fire's wishes, and quits rhyming for the rest of the adventure, although she still complains about his dialogue ("Over there. Just say over there," she says, when he refers to something being "yonder", for example).
Oh, and that's two mini-series in a row now in which Fire doesn't do a damn thing to update her horribly outdated costume...although at least one character makes fun of her for it (When Fire tells Tamarind she shouldn't judge someone until she's walked in their shoes, Tam replies, "Those shoes went out of style before I was born.") They do give one another's costumes a brief, temporary redesign when they are in one another's bodies though, with Tora covering Bea's body with a big, bulky green sweater, and Bea exposing Tora's mid-riff.
Significantly, this volume includes a revelation of the original source of the series' zombie plague and how it came to Earth (although not every mystery about it is revealed yet) and briefly checks in with various characters that Akira and friends have met throughout their travels.
