#[two different ends of the spectrum but both end up making a bunch of goofy inventions]

[aion-rsa]

Helstrom: The Comic History of Marvel’s Son of Satan

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On Oct. 16, Hulu will be releasing the latest Marvel tie-in series Helstrom. It’s not so much like one of those upcoming Disney+ MCU shows that feature high-profile superheroes telling stories that will be important to the overall fictional universe. It’s more like Daredevil or Runaways where quality be damned, you’re never going to hear anyone in the movies make anything close to a reference to it, but it counts as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe anyway.

The series is about siblings Daimon Helstrom and Ana Helstrom, who have seemingly normal lives, but oppose demons and evil people on the side. Their mother is institutionalized, which is fairly true to the comics, but their father is also referred to as “a powerful serial killer.”

In the comics, things are a bit grander. Their father isn’t just any serial killer, but a variation of Satan. Marvel has a bunch of guys whose identities are “basically Satan, but not really.” Instead of suits and turtlenecks, the two have comic adventures where they dress like they shopped off the sexy Halloween costume rack at Party City.

Daimon Helstrom (played by Tom Austen) gets both L’s in the comics as Daimon Hellstrom, but also has the rad nickname of Son of Satan. Shockingly, he’s a good guy! Mostly. Even when bare-chested with a glowing pentagram over his torso. Even with a magical pitchfork as his weapon of choice.

Son of Satan and his sister Satana are essentially the Marvel versions of Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry. Both are half-human/half-devil and they lean on opposite sides of their genetics.

So let’s say you want to get into Hellstrom’s comic book exploits. Well, you’re in luck because we have a list of his main character runs since showing up in 1973.

The Early Spotlight (1973-1975)

Hellstrom made his first appearance in Ghost Rider #1. In the first two issues of that series, Hellstrom was hired as an exorcist to help deal with a missing woman who had been possessed. Interestingly enough, they never gave a clear look at Hellstrom in those two issues other than the demonic birthmark on his chest.

Initially, Hellstrom had a Jekyll and Hyde gimmick to the point that he told the woman’s loved ones to lock him up in a dark room and not let him out no matter what he said. Unlike the supporting characters in Young Frankenstein, the bozos didn’t take that to heart and let Hellstrom’s more maniacal personality Son of Satan loose.

Sidenote: His adventures were originally going to be called “the Mark of Satan” with more emphasis on Satan as the antagonist, but doing comics focused on Satan was deemed a little over-the-line, so they changed it.

Second sidenote: I did not hit her, it’s bullshit, I did not hit her, I DID NOT! Oh hi, Mark of Satan!

Read more

TV

How Helstrom Became One of Marvel Television’s Last Shows Standing

By Alec Bojalad

Son of Satan’s adventures continued into Marvel Spotlight #12-24. It didn’t take long for Marvel to realize that giving him a double-identity was kind of a lame idea and instead had Satan Sr. magically handwave that away and make Son of Satan just one dude. Definitely for the better as he no longer felt so blatantly like Marvel’s answer to Jason Blood/Etrigan.

Hellstrom continued to fight against ghoulish enemies while opposing his father’s ways and dated some generic woman whose name I couldn’t tell you if you paid me a million dollars. It all culminated in a really strong finale issue where Hellstrom fought against and with his sister Satana, but maybe ignore the part where Hellstrom had a dream about the two of them making out.

Striking Out Solo (1975-1977)

Son of Satan had his own self-titled ongoing series that only lasted eight issues. From the beginning, Hellstrom went to Hell to basically tell off his dad as a way to say that this series wouldn’t be about their rivalry. Instead, it was Son of Satan dealing with a bunch of random villains that nobody would ever really remember.

There was one ridiculous enemy named the Possessor (not to be confused with the Elder of the Universe) who wore a mask to hide the fact that he had demon faces where his ears are supposed to be. Too bad he never showed up outside of this series.

It was a trippy outing, but ended before it could find its footing.

Demon Defender (1981-1983)

The Defenders are, of course, the bundle of heroes who don’t quite fit in with the Avengers, Fantastic Four, or X-Men but need people to hang out with. Guys like Hulk, Dr. Strange, Namor, Valkyrie, etc. Son of Satan became a regular ally in the team’s early days, appearing to help out every now and then. Most notably, he was part of a storyline where the Serpent Society kidnapped the Defenders and Clea put together a second team to rescue them, featuring the likes of Son of Satan, Daredevil, and Luke Cage.

Then again, the only thing anyone truly remembers about those issues is a very bizarre and legendary scene of a random guy getting killed by an Elf with a Gun.

As the series reached its 92nd issue, Hellstrom finally joined the team. On one hand, having Son of Satan on the team meant the Defenders had to take on the occult more than usual. On the other hand, Hellstrom soon fell in love with fellow Defender Hellcat, who was regularly dealing with constantly being possessed and turning into a scantily-clad demoness.

When Defenders hit its 100th issue, they did a really climactic storyline where a handful of the various Marvel Devil guys invaded Earth and Son of Satan had to take on Father of Son of Satan for the fate of Earth. The conclusion is rather surprising.

Prince of Lies (1993-1994)

Okay, so Daimon Hellstrom and Patsy Walker have been married for ten years (our time). It’s a fairytale romance where they’ve made a few guest appearances here and there, but have otherwise retired, happily ever after. What could POSSIBLY taint such true love?

90s comics. That’s your answer.

Welcome to Hellstorm: Prince of Lies, a 21-issue ongoing series where every issue looks like a Nine Inch Nails video and they try to see how much lanky nudity they can get away with showing in a Marvel comic. Like, holy crap, there has to be a world record for shadowed-out junk in this series. They even edit in some obvious, hastily-drawn underwear on characters at times as if the editor has realized they’ve gone too far.

It’s a gritty and grimy series that you’d expect from a 90s comic where much of it is written by Warren Ellis and the main character is Satan’s son. Lots of spikes, sharp teeth, long hair, suffering, insanity, and so on. It’s most definitely a product of its time.

Plus it’s called “Hellstorm” instead of “Hellstrom.” Scout’s honor, I didn’t notice the difference until my editor pointed it out.

Maximum Hellstorm (2006-2007)

Ah, Marvel MAX. The days when Marvel decided to give R-rated comics a shot and just threw everything at the wall. Hellstorm: Son of Satan was one of them, going for five issues. By this point, we’re in the mid-00s, so Hellstrom has a more down-to-earth look and is constantly talking to his father on a cellphone and tries so hard not to remind us what he looked like in the 70s and 80s.

But because it’s Marvel MAX, it means that his adventure is filled with lots of curse words, ultra-violence, gross demon boobs, and explicit Jesus imagery you normally wouldn’t see in a comic like this.

While the whole “Hellstrom messes with Egyptian underworld deities” storyline is a bit high concept, it still feels more like the new Hulu show than anything else.

Zombie Slayer (2009)

Speaking of gritty Marvel trends, there’s Marvel Zombies! While the initial Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline and the first two volumes of Marvel Zombies dealt with the happenings of a doomed universe, the next few volumes went slightly more uplifting. After all, sometimes you need to have people to root for who can back it up.

In Marvel Zombies 4, the Black Talon and the Hood (under the influence of Dormammu) try to use the decapitated head of Zombie Deadpool (otherwise known as Headpool) to bring forth the zombie apocalypse in the regular Marvel universe. Yes, we actually have canon stakes this time.

To prevent this, we have the Midnight Sons, made up of Son of Satan, Morbius, Jennifer Kale, Werewolf by Night, and Man-Thing. It’s an incredibly badass group working through an incredibly badass adventure. Too bad the team doesn’t last.

On a similar note, around this time there was a miniseries called the Last Defenders where Son of Satan was a major character. It’s just that by the time the team came together, they were an immediately-forgotten afterthought, so there’s no use in giving it its own entry.

Ghost Riders in the Sky (2009-2010)

Jason Aaron had a really, really, really great run on Ghost Rider. Most definitely read it. It’s pure grindhouse and I love it.

The whole run finished with Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire. This culmination featured Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch working together against a corrupt angel, the anti-Christ, and a group of villains from earlier in the run teaming up.

At least they have Daimon Hellstrom there to help out. Unfortunately, Hellstrom looks outright goofy with a bald head and Fu-Manchu mustache. The story brings back Jaine, his EXTREME love interest from the 90s series who he ended up with after his relationship with Patsy went very south.

Anyhow, Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider run. Read it!

Strikeforce (2019-2020)

Much like how X-Men had X-Force as the team that would do the really dirty work, Avengers had a spinoff team called Strikeforce. Made up of Winter Soldier, Angela, Blade, Spider-Woman, Wiccan, and Spectrum, the team soon brought Hellstrom into the fold. Which is just as well, since he was working for Baron Zemo for a little while and really needed to get his head back on straight.

Unfortunately for Hellstrom, 1) he retained his bald look from Heaven’s on Fire and 2) the series didn’t last all that long. Only nine issues, sadly. Eh, it was fun while it lasted.

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At least he’s joining the Savage Avengers next! And they’re giving him his hair back!

The post Helstrom: The Comic History of Marvel’s Son of Satan appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/31dX5KF

[mypandapoles-blog]

PANDA POLES REVIEW BY MOUNTAIN WAGON

I’m weird about poles. I’ll cop to that right now. I’ve got strong, strong feelings about what is basically a fancy stick.

As previously explained, I think two segment poles are stupid – despite it being what I normally ski with.

To recap a prior diatribe – two segment poles don’t get short enough to fit in your pack for mountaineering type stuff which makes their collapse-ability pretty useless (and I can count the number of people I’ve seen adjust their poles mid-trip for side-hilling or whatever on one hand), but they still come with all the drawbacks of multi-segment poles. My argument is that you should probably have two sets of poles – a set of three segment poles for mountaineering stuff and a set of fixed length poles for days when you don’t need to toss your poles in your pack. Fixed length poles are stronger, lighter and cheaper if you break them.

Ever since I wrote that piece, I’ve been looking for a set of fixed length poles that were reasonably priced and ideally – brought something new to the table.

Turns out there’s not exactly a lot of innovation happening in poles for skiing powder. In fact, for a while, it looked like there was none. I mean, who’s innovating in the design of fancy sticks?

The answer my friend – is Panda Poles.

Panda Poles

Panda Poles is run by a group of skiers, and as far as I can tell, they basically decided they were going to start 100% from scratch in their design and took nothing for granted. With something simple like ski poles, you figure a company might have one feature that they use to differentiate themselves. Panda Poles on the other hand are straight up completely different.

When you buy your Panda Poles, you go onto the Panda Poles website and then configure them up the way you like. Grips, straps, shaft, baskets, everything can be tweaked to be exactly what you like.

The poles I'm reviewing today I paid for (but took advantage of a sale), so there's no paid shill thing going on here despite my overwhelming exuberance. They're 117cm and weigh a rather embarrassingly portly 692g. Oh damn. That ain't light. Exuberance tempered

Oh Damn, That ain't light

Let’s start with the simplest part of the pole – the shaft. Most poles are aluminum, some are carbon and Panda Poles are bamboo. Now, they aren’t the only bamboo poles out there, but it’s certainly different. It’s an interesting choice and actually what drew me to the poles in the first place – they look cool, and as Panda Poles point out - they're biodegradable if you break them. Without disassembling the poles to weigh the individual components, I get the impression the bamboo is responsible for a chunk of the weight of these things, and they aren’t exactly featherweights. Panda Poles offers a lighter weight bamboo option, but being someone who breaks gear at an absolutely terrifying pace, I wanted the burliest option.

Okay, now let’s look at what actually separates these from the rest of the market.

Grips

First, and the reason I ponied up for a set of these, is the grips. You can get your grips in different lengths. Yep – different lengths. They’re all tubular grips (no contouring for fingers), which initially worried me about them sliding in my hand, but the rubber of the grips is crazy tacky. In fact, as soon as I touched them, I flipped them upside down and saw an ODI logo on the underside of the grip – yep, looks like the guys at Panda Poles are re-purposing bicycle grips. Wicked idea which lets a small shop keep costs in check AND after a bunch of testing, these don’t move in your hands at all.

You can pick between a variety of colours and lengths of 6, 8, 9, or 11”. Weird eh? It’s also what makes these amazing. I got the 11” grip which lets me continuously adjust my grip up and down when I’m side-hilling while skinning. Get the 11” grip. It’s way better than the choke-up grip on poles like my Black Diamond Traverses because it’s both more secure thanks to the tacky rubber and easier to fine tune up and down since there is no variation to the diameter is continuous. 

Straps

Brace yourself for the greatest innovation in straps for backcountry ski poles I’ve ever seen. Are you braced? Like really holding on? You can order Panda Poles with NO STRAPS. Holy shit. Revolutionary. I can’t remember the last time I used the straps on any of my poles – they’re an absolute no-no when in avi terrain, which for me is always. Panda Poles – I just ticked the ‘no straps’ box. Boom. Done. Amazing.

Baskets

Up until now I’ve thought the best baskets out there were the Black Diamond ¾ Powder Baskets – they had decent float but the cut-out portion kept the baskets (if properly oriented) from causing the tips to skate when skinning up steep hard-pack.

NOW, there’s the Panda Poles baskets and I never want to use anything else again. Instead of a flexible flat disc, the Panda Poles use a rigid conical basket. You can take your pick from a few colours and diameters of 5, 7, 9, or 10cm baskets (yes, it’s infuriating that they measure their grips in inches and their baskets in centimeters) depending on where you lie on the resort to backcountry spectrum. 

Shockingly, I went for the 10cm baskets. 

Panda Poles claims this gives lower drag when the poles move through powder. I didn’t notice any difference on that front. What I did notice was two big advantages.

The first was that like the BD ¾ baskets, there’s no tip-skate when skinning steep hard pack – the rigid baskets can actually grip compacted snow themselves, so while the tip might not be gripping, your poles doesn’t go anywhere and unlike the BD baskets, you don't need to worry about the orientation of the basket.

The second big advantage I discovered is basically life changing for people who spend a lot of quality time swimming through alder on heinous bushwhacks. The conical pole basket means the poles don’t get hung up in trees or bushes. The conical shape guides the pole out before it gets jammed. I want these baskets on every set of poles I own. Zero hyperbole. They’d be amazing (especially the smaller diameter ones) in the summer, shoulder season, mid-winter, any time of year. All baskets, it turns out, should be cones.

The Down Sides

Okay, I’ve raved a lot about these things, but there’s some downsides. Downsides big enough to turn some people off of these otherwise awesome poles.

Weight

They weigh a ton.

My set are about 100g heavier the two segment BD Traverse Poles and almost 200g heavier than the G3 Fixie. This is not an insignificant weight difference. Like I said, there’s a lighter weight bamboo available (which Panda Poles estimates would save about 50g per pair so might be worth it) which would reduce the weight penalty, but the pole baskets themselves are giant pieces of rigid plastic and I think there’s a lot of room to shave that weight down. Some cutouts, like you see on standard powder baskets, would be a start. I may take a power drill to mine to lighten them up and I’m not exactly a weight weenie. The poles don’t have a great swing weight, and reducing some of the tip mass would go a long way to fixing that.

Tech Binding Compatibility

I know what you’re asking – how can a pole be tech-binding compatible. Take a look at the grips on your touring poles – see that little ridge or lip on the underside of the top piece of the pole? That’s there to let you lock your toe-pieces when you’re skinning. Flip the pole upside down and flip up the toe-lock.

The Panda Poles don’t have molded grips like normal poles (remember, they’re re-purposed bike grips), so they don’t have a lip for locking your toe-pieces. The rubber is grippy enough to allow you flick heel lifters up and down, but it doesn’t really work for me for toe-pieces.

There’s a solution of course – and that’s to just bend down and lock your toes by hand, but it’s required that I change up how I do things and I don’t like change. At some point I may try and modify the grip to let me lock my toes with it, but it’ll be more involved than just drilling holes like for the baskets.

If in the future Panda Poles adds some cut-outs to the baskets to reduce weight, if they were to add one big enough to hook your toe-lock, that would be an appreciated solution to both problems.

Shipping

Call this a bonus con. If you live in the states, shipping is a super reasonable $10USD. If you live outside the US? Holy hell it’s expensive. Shipping to Calgary was going to cost $65USD for a set of poles that list for $75USD. I ended up shipping them to a US border town and getting someone to mule them across for me (dutifully declaring them, I swear). The result is that if you live in Canada and don’t have an easy way to pick them up in the states, the shipping basically makes them unmanageably expensive.

So, two big cons – heavy and tech-compatibility and one location dependent mega one. If you can get around the international shipping, then I don’t think the binding thing will be a deal breaker for many people but the weight? That could be a killer. I’ve reached out to Panda Poles to ask for the difference in shaft weight between the two types of bamboo to see if that actually helps appreciably, but the rest of the poles just sort of pile onto the problem

Conclusions

I love these things. They’re too heavy, I hate having to bend over to lock my toes, but I love everything else. I love that they don’t skate when I’m skinning up steep hard pack. I love that they don’t get trapped by branches when I’m bushwhacking. I love that they don’t have straps. I love that they have goofy long grips that let me tweak my hand position up and down. 

Panda Poles went back to the drawing board for a product that doesn't see a ton of innovation and has come up with something wildly different that genuinely solves problems. They also did it at a price point that is very reasonable (international shipping aside).

If you live in the states or are have a post box down there or something – add these to your pole quiver (is that a thing?).

[infotainmentplus-blog]

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