Abstract
In the Hellblazer and Sandman comic books, depictions of hell rely on the writer’s perspective and the decade they are writing because they account for contemporary folklore, political situations, and cultural conventions. This paper examines how hell appears as a parodic version of the regular world in these texts, accounting for the dark age of comics from the 1980s, where grim and gritty topics prevailed. While borrowing from Judeo-Christian conceptions of hell, demonology, and fears of everlasting torment and damnation like many other representations throughout the centuries, these comics also took elements from the creator’s personal lives and hopes for society to create hells that reinforce the mundanity of current politics and daily life. Comic book writers like Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, and Neil Gaiman add modern elements and build on grim, dark narratives and ideas from earlier comics, such as the 1970s British science fiction comics magazine 2000 AD. Their ideas found greater acceptance with the growing comics direct market, which catered directly to fans and a more mature audience. I discuss how each text and creator utilizes mythopoeic and folkloric understandings of hell and society to humanize the characters’ quests and reify the fruitlessness of their actions against societal and political pressures they cannot control.
In these comics, the protagonist’s hierarchical positions reinforce how the trials between characters parallel earthly political processes as the heroes have motivations or abilities that help them complete impossible tasks. However, they can never change the system in ways that upset the status quo. They bargain with demons using their wits and devices that conflate the mystical and the mundane, further underscoring the similarities between the natural and supernatural worlds. For example, Jamie Delano comments on Thatcher’s England, setting Hellblazer’s John Constantine in a battle of wits against soul-brokering demons from Mammon Investments in a mundanely realistic London. In Sandman, Dream’s trips to hell deal with modernist devices, such as Dream’s Helm, that generally appear as manifestations of science and magic. Damnation can be bartered upon and changed based on transactions that correspond with earthly capitalism and politics. The outcome of these deals reinforces hell’s practices as business as usual.
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