Contributed by Ronald Byrd
An indeterminate number of years ago, a young woman was so burdened by shame and fear over her homosexuality that, when she died, the weight of her guilt resulted in her soul descending to “Hell” despite the fact that she had done nothing to deserve such a fate. She remained there until Reverend Joshua Crow, given a vision of innocent souls trapped in “Hell” and the power to restore them to mortal existence, returned her to the mortal plane in the body of Lisa, a married accident victim from Chelsea, New York. Unfortunately, Reverend Crow’s “vision” was a deception designed to allow the resurrected souls to serve as focal points through which “Hell” can manifest in the Earth dimension. Lisa’s “husband” is possessed by a demon, and she escapes to find haven with the other resurrectees under the protection of the half-demon Hellstorm. She and two other unfairly condemned souls accompany Hellstorm through the nether regions to ascend Mount Qaf, upon which “Heaven” rests. One, a promiscuous woman named Nikki, allows herself to fall from Mount Qaf out of fear that “Heaven” will rob her of her identity, but Lisa and Joseph Gerhardt, a guilt-ridden concentration camp guar, are accepted within, where their souls are bound in “metaphasic fusion” to billions of others, apparently forfeiting their individuality in the process. Hellstorm rages to no avail at the apparent injustice of this fate, but whether all is as it seems here is open to debate.
Although one might reasonably assume that a “damned” soul retrieved from “Hell” to occupy a new mortal body would have had some supernatural ability, neither Lisa nor her fellow resurrectees demonstrated any.
Created by Len Kaminski and Peter Gross. Art by Peter Gross and Ariane from Hellstorm: Prince of Lies #7 (1993).
All rights reserved Marvel Comics.
