In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively retconning away the previous story. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, we look at how Steve Gerber quickly dropped an original aspect of Daimon Hellstrom's status quo when Gerber took over the Son of Satan feature in Marvel Spotlight.

We first meet Daimon Hellstrom in Ghost Rider #1 (by Gary Friedrich, Tom Sutton and Syd Shores), where he is just a mysterious man at the grave of a woman named Hellstrom...

In the next issue, he introduces himself as Daimon Hellstrom, an expert exorcist who will help a family get their daughter back from Satan....

This was at an interesting time in the history of Marvel Comics, as the Comics Code had just relaxed its standards, so that a lot of horror-themed characters could be used for the first time and once they became available for use, Marvel went after them HARD. Whatever vampire or werewolf or demon that they could get into a comic book, they got into a comic book. One of the interesting twists in this is the quick adoption of Satan as a major recurring bad guy in the Marvel Universe. For instance, it was Satan who was the original demon who was behind Johnny Blaze's transformation into Ghost Rider. That embrace of Satan (for lack of a better term) is particularly interesting because we're talking almost fifty years ago and yet because of the embrace of Satan, these older comic books are considered sort of almost R-Rated nowadays. For instance, the trade collection for Son of Satan is actually marked as "Parental Advisory," which is hilarious considering that the original comic books were approved by the Comics Code nearly fifty years ago! That's pretty funny. Honestly, though, the changeover happened pretty quickly, as Ghost Rider's connection to Satan was erased by the early 1980s.

When he goes to work for the family, Hellstrom insists that they must keep him within a locked room all night long and not release him. There is also some sort of charm involved. However, he then finds a way to convince them to let him out and break the seal that was holding him within the room. This was a bit of a mistake, as he bursts from the room as the Son of Satan in Marvel Spotlight #12 (by Friedrich, Herb Trimpe and Frank Chiaramonte, the first issue of Son of Satan's ongoing feature in the book)...

Son of Satan helps Ghost Rider free the woman who has been possessed by Satan, but not because he's a good guy, but because he hates Satan more than anyone else (he's got some serious daddy issues).

Marvel Spotlight #13 was a brief origin story that shows just how Hellstrom was made aware of his connection to his father and his Satanic birth as well as how Hellstrom found a way to sneak into hell to steal the powerful trident that keeps his father from just killing him outright.

We see in Marvel Spotlight #14 (by then-new writer Steve Gerber, Jim Mooney and Sal Trapani), that Son of Satan turns back into Daimon Hellstrom...

But later, when he is needed (and it is nighttime), he's back to Son of Satan, willing to help with the case because it is again something that would hurt his father...

However, Gerber clearly felt that the whole transformation angle was not something that would work full-time, especially because it sort of limits the amount of adventures that the Son of Satan can go on if his "evil" personality will only do good things when it directly hurts Satan. Presumably, you could stretch the definition of what is "Satanic" and argue that a lot of normal good deeds would have some effect on Satan, but in those early issues, they kept to pretty straightforward Satanic set-ups, like a woman possessed or a Satanic cult and stuff like that.

Thus, in Gerber's second issue (drawn by Mooney and Dave Hunt), Satan comes to Hellstrom in a dream and when he is finished, Hellstrom and Son of Satan's personalities are merged...

No more does he have to suffer being transformed into a sort of demon, but also no more can he get a respite from that demonic side of himself. It is that weird mixture of a blessing mixed with a curse. Since it is Satan who did it, though, we can assume that it was mostly meant as a jerk move.

Obviously, though, the upside was that now Gerber had more freedom with how to develop Hellstrom's character, since he was no longer an obvious Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde riff. It definitely served the character well over the years. After his feature came to a close, J.M. DeMatteis brought Hellstrom over to the Defenders during DeMatteis' run there and the main thing that drew DeMatteis to the character was the stuff that Gerber did in this run. Since DeMatteis' Defenders run is really the time that Hellstrom saw his most character development (and it is where he met his future wife, Patsy Walker), the elimination of the split personalities set-up really did end up playing a rather significant change in the direction of the character's comic book career.

Amusingly enough, though, over the years, Hellstrom has had so many different directions, from villainy to heroism to villain to heroism that it is almost as if he remains in possession of a good deal of different personalities. It is just a matter of whatever personality that given writer feels like using. Cullen Bunn, in particular, tried to somewhat address the roller coaster ride that is Hellstrom's personality over the years and I might take the time to spotlight some of Bunn's attempts to deal with Hellstrom's varying personalities in the future.

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Abandoned Love, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!