Edited by Greg Morrow and Dylan Verheul
Issue 4: A Hope in Hell (Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, and Mike Dringenberg)
Fourth part of first storyline, More than Rubies
Fourth story reprinted in Preludes and Nocturnes
"A Hope in Hell" is a contradictio in terminus: In Paradise Lost Milton describes Hell as a place where "hope never comes". In Inferno Dante describes an inscription above the gates of Hell reading "Abandon hope all ye enter here." Hope will be a recurring theme in this issue.
The words running down the middle panel are from Dante's Inferno, in the 1948 translation by Lawrence Grant White. In the 34th and last canto of the poem, the poet and his master reach the lowest pit of hell, where they find the Devil torturing the three worst sinners of all time. The words visible on the cover read:
He thus kept three of them in constant torment.
For him in front, the biting was as naught
Beside the clawing; for, from time to time,
His back was left entirely stripped of skin.
"That soul up there who suffers greatest pain,"
My master said, "is Judas, the archtraitor,
Who has his head within, and kicks outside.
Those other two whose heads are dangling down
Are Brutus, hanging from the coal-black jaws --
See how he writhes, and utters not a word! --
Cassius the other, who is large of limb.
But night comes on again, and we must go --
For we have seen the whole extent of hell."
At his command, I clasped him round the neck.
He took advantage of the time and place,
And when the wings were opened wide enough,
He laid firm hold upon the shaggy flanks.
From shag to shag he now went slowly down,
Between the matted hair and crusts of ice.
When we had reached that point just where the thigh
Doth turn upon the thickness of the haunch,
My Leader, with fatigue and labored breath
Brought 'round his head to where his legs had been,
And grasped the hair like one who clambers up,
So that I thought our way lay back to hell.
"Hold fast! For it is by such stairs as these,"
My master said to me with panting breath,
"We must depart from such great wickedness!"
The mangled pages on the left and right sides come from the Purgatorio, in the same translated edition.
Panel 7:
The Morningstar is Lucifer Morningstar, the ruler of Hell. This is the entry for Lucifer from Gustav Davidson's A Dictionary of Angels, 1967. Some of his more interesting references are from Francis Barrett's The Magus, 1801, and S.L. Mathers' The Greater Key of Solomon, 1889:
LUCIFER ("light giver")
Erroneously equated with the fallen angel (Satan) due to a misreading of Isaiah 14:12: "How are thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning," an apostrophe which applied to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (but see under Satan). It should be pointed out that the authors of the books of the Old Testament knew nothing of fallen or evil angels, and do not mention them, although, at times, as in Job 4:18, the Lord "put no trust" in his angels and "charged them with folly," which would indicate that angels were not all they should be. The name Lucifer was applied to Satan by St. Jerome and other Church Fathers. Milton in Paradise Lost applied the name to the demon of sinful pride. Lucifer is the title and principal character of the epic poem by the Dutch Shakespeare, Vondel (who uses Lucifer in lieu of Satan), and a principal character in the mystery play by Imre Madach, The Tragedy of Man. Blake pictured Lucifer in his illustrations to Dante George Meredith's sonnet "Lucifer in Starlight" addresses the "fiend" as Prince Lucifer. Actually, Lucifer connotes star, and applies (or originally meant to apply) to the morning or evening star (Venus). To Spenser in "An Hymne of Heavenly Love," Lucifer is "the brightest angel, even the Child of Light."
In addition, a character in Roger Zelazny's book Jack of Shadows is called Morningstar, and occupies a role analogous to Lucifer.
Panel 1-4
This structure resembles Rodin's sculpture, "The Gates of Hell." The sculpture was based on Dante's description in The Divine Comedy.
Panel 1-4
This is not the same gatekeeper as seen elsewhere; first appearance of Squatterbloat. Squatterbloat speaks in triolets; the rhyme scheme is ABAAABAB, and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are the same, as are the second and eighth. The B lines are a syllable or two longer than the A lines. Note that DC has established that demons who rhyme when they speak are higher in Hell's hierarchy than those who do not.
Panel 5
A new title for Morpheus: "King of the Nightmare Realms".
Panel 5
Etrigan first appeared in a Kirby book of the 70s. He is a demon, the son of Belial and the half-brother of Merlin. He shares a body on Earth with Jason Blood, and has since the time of Camelot. Etrigan has had three series, all called The Demon. Originally, his speech only sporadically rhymed; the first writer to have Etrigan speak consistently in rhyme was Len Wein (in DC Comics Presents). Alan Moore made his poetry more sophisticated by using Shakespeare's iambic parameter. Later writers have retained the rhyme but been less consistent as to its scheme. I believe John Byrne is in the process of trying to restore the original version in WONDER WOMAN, in an attempt to go back to "the creator's original intent." (On the other hand, he doesn't like it when I ask how his version of Superman reflected Jerry Siegel's original intent...) Etrigan is, to judge by the meter of his speech in several instances, pronounced "eh-tri-GAN", with a short i sound.
Panel 4
Change is a major theme of the series.
Panel 5
The Wood of Suicides is from Dante's Inferno. It's in the Second Round of the Seventh Circle. According to John Ciardi's translation, since they destroyed their bodies, the suicides are therefore denied a human form in Hell. Furthermore, since the supreme expression of their life was their destruction, they can only express themselves (i.e: speak) when they are being destroyed. So long as they bleed, the suicides may talk; they find expression through their own blood. You will notice that Morpheus snaps a twig off a passing tree whilst in the Wood. Only then does the suicide begin to relate his story. The Wood has also appeared in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's book Inferno, which is a modern retelling of Dante. The Wood may also have appeared in other DC characters' visits to Hell; I am not sure.
Panel 3
Kai'ckul is another name for Morpheus; the prisoner is a woman named Nada. Nada will be important at least twice more, in a single issue and a major storyline.
Panel 4
Notice that Dream looks different to Nada; this will be explained in a later issue, when we meet Nada again.
Panel 1
Dis (according to my dictionary) is identical with the god Pluto, or with the underworld of Hades. However, Virgil's Aeneid mentions Dis as a city in the underworld, while Dante's Inferno identifies it as the city occupying the sixth to ninth circles of the Christian Hell. Dis Pater (literally, "death father") was a Latin god of the underworld, probably once an ancestral spirit. By classical times, it had become identified with Pluto. The name is morphologically similar to Jupiter ("sky father").
Panel 4
In some texts Lucifer's wings are torn off as part of his punishment, or burned off in the descent to Hell. However, Dante writes (and H.W. Longfellow translates) on the appearance of he wings in XXXIIII.46-51 of the Inferno, when Dante first sees Lucifer:
Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,
Such as befitting were so great a bird;
Sails of the sea I never saw so large.
No feathers had they, but as of a bat
Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.
Additionally, Milton writes (in the Shawcross edition of Milton's poetry) on the origin of the wings in II.630-635 of Paradise Lost, when Satan first starts his journey from Hell to Eden:
Mean while the Adversary of God and Man,
Satan with thoughts inflam'd of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of Hell
Explores his solitary flight, som times
He scours the rights hand coast, som times the left,
Now shaves with level wing the Deep, then soars
Up to the fiery Concave touring high.
In the original comic this is a double-page spread. The collections have these two pages as two sides of the same sheet, with replacement art by Mike Dringenberg.
Panel 2
"Lucifer" is Latin for "Lightbringer", more or less. Note the reference to Dream's family, including the first mention of Despair.
Panel 5
According to my dictionary, "diumvirate" should be spelled "duumvirate". As a result of the followup (in Swamp Thing #50) to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Lucifer was forced to accept Beelzebub and Azazel as co-rulers. A different light will be shed upon this in a later storyline. Also, the first storyline in the new run of The Demon was tumult and shouting about the ruling of Hell. The triumvirate has also appeared in the secret origin of "Stanley and His Monster" (by Phil Foglio, and very funny, of course, in the later issues of Secret Origins).
According to Neil Gaiman, the triumvirate was invented by Alan Grant, who was writing the Demon series, and editor Dan Raspler then required Sandman and Hellblazer to be consistent with that, even though Gaiman thought it was "needless clutter". (At the beginning of Sandman, Gaiman didn't have the clout he has today!) Ironically, the Demon series didn't start coming out until 1990, making Sandman #4 (cover-dated April 1989) the first appearance (as far as I know) of the triumvirate in comics, although it had been referred to very briefly in Hellblazer #12. Alan Grant wanted Beelzebub and Belial as the co-rulers. Gaiman replaced Belial with Azazel because he thought - incorrectly - that Belial was just a variation of Beelzebub, and because he liked Azazel. Neil writes on the subject:
I wanted to change them partly because Beelzebub and Belial are cognate, and partly because I've always been very fond of Azazel -- the goat forced out into the desert, all that... I don't think I'd managed to get my hands on a copy of The Book of Enoch back when I wrote Sandman 4.
And later he writes:
Well, whatever book of Demons or Angels I had closest to hand in 1988 listed Belial and Beelzebub as being cognate (or had them both as variants of Baal, more likely). Now, of course, I don't even remember which one that would have been...
These are the entries for Azazel and Beelzebub in A Dictionary of Angels
AZAZEL (Azael, Hazazel, "God Strengthens")
In Enoch I, Azazel is one of the chiefs of the 200 fallen angels (Revelation speaks of one-third of the heavenly host being involved in the fall). Azazel "taught men to fashion swords and shields" while women learned from him "finery and the art of beautifying the eyelids." He is the scapegoat in rabinnic literature, Targum, and in Leviticus 16:8, although in the latter he is not actually named. In The Zohar (Vayeze 153a) the rider on the serpent is symbolized by "the evil Azazel." Here he is said to be chief of the order of bene elim (otherwise ischim, lower angles, "men-spirits"). Irenaeus calls Azazel "that fallen and yet mighty angel." In The Apocalypse of Abraham he is "lord of hell, seducer of mankind," and here his aspect, when revealed in its true form, shows him to be a demon with 7 serpent heads, 14 faces, and 12 wings. Jewish legend speaks of Azazel as the angel who refused to bow down before Adam (in the Koran the angel is Eblis or Iblis) when the 1st human was presented toGod to the assembled hierarchs in Heaven. For such refusal, Azazel was thence dubbed "the accursed Satan." [Rf. Babmurger, Fallen Angels, p.278.] According to the legend in Islamic lore, when God commanded the angels to worship Adam, Azazel refused, contending "Why should a son of fire [i.e., an angel] fall down before a son of clay [i.e., a mortal]?" Whereupon God cast Azazel out of Heaven and changed his name to Eblis. Milton in Paradise Lost I, 534 describes Azazel as "a cherub tall," but also as a fallen angel and Satan's standard bearer. Originally, according to Maurice Bouisson in Magic; its History and Principal Rites, Azazel was an ancient Semitic god of the flocks who was later degraded to the level of a demon. [Rf. Trevor Ling, The Significance of Satan in New Testament Demonology] Bamberger in Fallen Angels inclines to the notion that the first star which fell (star here having the meaning of angel) was Azazel.
BEELZEBUB (Belzebud, Belzaboul, Beezeboul, Baalsebul, etc., "god of flies")
Originally a Syrian god, Beelzebub is in II Kings 1:3, a god of Ekron in Philistia. In the cabala, he is chief of the 9 evil hierarchies of the underworld. In Matthew 10:25, Mark 3:22, and Luke 40:15, Beelzebub is chief of the demons, "prince of the devils" (as in Matthew 12:24), but he is to be distinguished from Satan (just as he is in all magic, medieval or otherwise). [Rf. Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity 9,108.] In the Gospel of Nicodemus, Christ, during his 3 days in Hell, gives Beelzebub dominion over the underworld in gratitude for premitting him (Christ), over Satan's objections, to take Adam and the other "saints in prison" to Heaven. Another of his titles was "lord of chaos", as given in the Gnostic writings of Valentinus. Dante indentifies Beelzebub with Satan, but Milton in Paradise Lost I,79, ranks Beelzebub "next to Satan in power and crime;" in I,157 Satan addresses Beelzebub as a "fallen cherub." In Hayley's edition of The Poetical Works of John Milton (london, 1794), there is an illustration showing "Satan conferring with Belzebuth." In Gurdjieff's All and Everything, Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, the hero is Beelzebub.
Panel 3
Note the clock in front of Lucifer. It will return in a later issue.
Panel 2
The reference to the dead god is explained in Sandman #49.
Panel 5
This is the demon from Sandman #1, identified on page 16 for the first time as Choronzon, who appears in the writings of Aleister Crowley.
From Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson we learn that there was a connection between Choronzon, Aleister Crowley and the historical Dr. John Dee (see the Annotations for issue 2):
333 is the Cabalistic number of 'that mighty devil, Choronzon,' who once afflicted Dr. Dee in the 17th Century and gave Aleister himself a rough time in Bou Saada, North Africa, 1909, as recounted in The Vision and the Voice, by Aleister Crowley.
Panel 2
Note that the way Choronzon talks does not match issue 1, page 16, panels 3-5. Actually, judging by the text and the balloons, the demon in issue 1 resembles Beelzebub. Choronzon is identified on panel 1 as "a duke of Hell, one of Beelzebub's".
Panel 7
This game resembles a transformation combat, which is common enough in folklore and mythology that it has an entry in the multi-volume Motif-index of folk-literature by Stith Thompson. Some examples are The Magician and his Pupil (#68 in the Grimms' collection), The 12th Captain's Tale in the Arabian Nights, the story of Taliesin in Welsh mythology, and in T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone. In transformation combat, however, the contestants actually transform into the creatures or things that they describe, while Morpheus and Choronzon merely discuss (and illustrate) what they become. The game of reality is quite similar thematically to the Riddle Game of old, which is exemplified in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.
Panel 2
"The Hellfire Club" is a joke of course. The Hellfire Club was also referenced in the Annotations for issue 1.
Panel 1
I am aware of no predilection in snakes for spider-devouring.
Panel 4
In The Sword in the Stone the players (Merlin and Madame Mimm) set limits on the game, preventing them from becoming abstractions. Merlin eventually wins by turning into a virus, just like Choronzon does here.
Panel 5
"but still an old gambit" might be an allusion to the above.
Panel 4
Choronzon takes the role of the "Anti-Life". This could be a reference to the Anti-Life Equation, which is continually sought after by Darkseid (of the New Gods) in the DC universe.
Panel 6
Another mentioning of hope.
Panel 4
Agony and Ecstasy have popped up once or twice before, first in Hellblazer 12. They are Lucifer's enforcers.
Panel 4
It has often been suggested in literature that the worst part of Hell is the knowledge that the soul is not in Heaven. This statement of Dream could also be explained as a reference to hope.
Panel 3
And another mentioning of hope.
This is John Dee, Dr. Destiny, who has been mentioned before. The amulet is the same amulet for which Ruthven Sykes traded the helmet to Choronzon; it allegedly protects the wearer from "anything", and it is known to work against magical sendings.
Greg Morrow wrote the first version of the Annotations. Sol, Ian Lance Taylor, David Goldfarb, and William Sherman found citations for "Lucifer Morningstar." Ian and David, and Sasha and Andrew David Weiland found citations for the Wood of Suicides. Ian also found Agony and Ecstasy's first appearance, and referenced The Sword in the Stone. Viktor Haag and Chris Jarocha-Ernst commented on the infernal trinity. Chris also pointed out that Tim Maroney had identified Choronzon some time ago. R I K speculated on the nature of the dead god. Andrew Weiland and David Perry traced the lineage of "Dis". Tanaqui C. Weaver spotted Squatterbloat's poetry and relayed Neil Gaiman's correction on the first mention of Despair. David Henry recalled the Riddle Game. Joel Tscherne recognized the foreshadowing of Kai'ckul's guise. Francis A. Uy and Jeff Erickson provided a lot of information about Lucifer and various angels. Dave Stobbe provided false information about the first appearance of Squatterbloat. Ron Dippold noted the Hellfire Club and gave some other references. curtw@euler.jsc.nasa.gov (The Senile Scrutinizer) recognized the Rodin sculpture. Bill Decker gave information about Lucifer's wings. Dylan Verheul corrected various references, and added the reference for creation of Dream's helm. Katie Schwarz gave the information about the cover, and commented on the transformation game. Neil Gaiman and Katie gave information about the triumvirate. Ian noticed the inconsistency between Choronzon and the demon in Sandman #1, and mentioned the borders set for the reality game in Sword in the Stone. Don Macpherson mentioned the Anti-Life Equation. Brodie H Brockie noted the clock and the many references to hope. David Roel provided the correct information about Etrigan's rhyming.