NIGHT OF THE DEMON

Thoughts

X-men meets Cthulhu meets MR James, by way of 1957’s “Night Of The Demon”. With this issue, its obvious the title is still clearly finding its feet in relation to the type of comic it wants to be. After the pulp action of defeating the nefarious Count Nefaria, we’re onto mild comic horror. A sinister Runed stone that just happens to lie near the X-mansion gets damaged, releasing an Evil Demon. Who gets defeated by the end of the issue. Job Done.

But while the main plot is a one-shot standalone, already the title has cutaways hinting at things to come. We meet Stephen Lang, and get introduced to his fanatical hatred of mutants, culminating in him disposing of those government types who might stand in his way. I love the way this is covered in just a single panel on the final page. We also get Claremont already building in the backstory of the characters, in this case Storm’s Cairo past. This might some somewhat complicated given how she was introduced as a sub-Saharan Africa Goddess, but complexity-wise things are only just getting started.

Fun Panel

Kierrok The What!!?!

Any Googling

I quickly looked up the N’Garai, learning that this was there first ever comic book appearance so I wasn’t really missing any backstory around the Runic Stone. Although Claremont had used them previously in a prose story in 1974’s Horror magazine “The Haunt of Horror 4” featuring Satana. Sadly I wasn’t able to find a copy of this online.

None More Claremont

“Autumn’s come early this year — the September apples hanging heavy in the Orchards, the trees on both sides of the Hudson River ablaze with a thousand myriad fires… a thousand myriad shades of… DEATH!

You know him well, don’t you Cyclops — this Dark One, this Great Destroyer — you and your fellow X-men have walked with him all your young lives — Flaunted him, Taunted him, Tilted with him — and you’d always gotten away with unscathed…

…Until Now

…Until Thunderbird”

We’re only a few issues in, and yet the glorious purple prose of Claremont is already here. Right on the first page. This isn’t even an elderly, wise cliche character talking to Cyclops in the comic. This is the *narrator*.