A bonus pin-up from
West Coast Avengers Annual #3 (1988):
Oh,
dear. Someone actually thought that was an OK costume for the
Son Of Satan?
Oh, that's right, this was the period when
Marvel chickened out on the whole "
Satan" angle for many of their supernatural heroes. It was no longer Satan that
Johnny Blaze had made his deal with, but
Mephisto;
Daimon Hellstrom wasn't the son of
Satan, but the demon
Marduk;
etc. [there have been many
re-retcons and
de-retcons since, but all go to great lengths to make sure we know the "
actual" Satan wasn't involved...]
And since they couldn't/wouldn't call him Son Of Satan anymore, they called him "
Hellstorm." And since bare chests with pentagrams were apparently no longer on the menu, they gave him this
abomination of a costume.
Sadly, it wasn't good taste (or coming to their senses) that made the above an unpublished cover. It was just that that was the month of Marvel's
stupidest "cover event" ever, when every mag featured just a portrait of one of the books' stars surrounded by a border mural of various Marvel heroes:
Next month, they had no problem featuring the stupid costume (on a pretty stupid cover):
Note as well the lame
mini-trident. Insert size jokes here at your discretion.
In a few years they'd relaunch him again, back to the bare chest and pentagram, back to the full-size trident, minus the cape, give him a
rad ponytail because it was the
90s...but they kept the "Hellstorm," going so far as to
actually change his surname from Hellstrom to Hellstorm:
But no matter how edgy & cool they tried to make him, no one could ever forget that the "son of Satan" once dressed like a
circus acrobat carrying a large salad fork:
The only evil there is evil costume design...
