BLUE DEVIL, Issue 20 (1985) - Part 1

This post covers Blue Devil, issue 20, “Old Haunts”. Published in 1985 by DC Comics. Written by Gary Cohn & Dan Mishkin. penciled by Alan Kupperberg, inked by Bill Collins, lettered by Bob Lappan, color by Michele Wolfman, and edited by Alan Gold.

Cover by Paris Cullins and Gary Martin

It’s probable that you’re not familiar with DC’s Blue Devil character. He hasn’t had many breakout moments apart from a few event comics and that canceled Swamp Thing TV show from when DC Universe was its own streaming entity. Apparently that series was pretty good, and Ian Ziering played Dan Cassidy (aka Blue Devil), but it has all faded into the mists of time it seems. So let’s get his fairly doofy origins out of the way.

Blue Devil is Dan Cassidy, Hollywood stuntman AND F/X specialist (double threat!) who created a very sophisticated costume—complete with an impressively strong exoskeleton—for the movie THE BLUE DEVIL. But then an actual demon showed up, got spooked and thought Dan in the suit was a real demon, and the monster blasted Dan so he was stuck/bonded inside the suit. Eventually he would just be turned into a cursed demon type that fought supernatural threats, but for most of the ‘80s—including issue 20, “Old Haunts”—he is a man who is stuck inside of a suit designed to look like a demon that is dressed like a pirate who runs afoul of other worldly creatures as he tries to free himself. So it’s like Iron Man, if Tony Stark couldn’t get out of the armor and also he was wearing a unitard and a gold hoop earring on top of the Iron Man armor. Comics!!!

Ah, balls. This probably needs some explanation too, huh?

Oy. So this is Cain who was the narrator/host for DC’s The House Of Mystery, a Tales From The Crypt/EC Comics-styled anthology series that had horror stories with ironic comeuppance and Cain would introduce them and make odd puns…apparently while dressed like Rusty Venture. Here’s an example of a frequent joke used then—Cain was the able caretaker of the House Of Mystery. [pause for laughter and applause]

Cain has a brother that ran The House Of Secrets, another EC-styled horror story series. The brother (who shows up on the next page) is named Abel, but they aren’t THAT Cain and Abel (but they also kind of are?) depending on if you’re dealing with the original writers or Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman. So if you were a DC fan in 1985 cracking open Blue Devil #20 you’d be like “oh hey, knock off Cryptkeeper is in this one and know there’s a House Of Weirdness, too? And it somehow involves one of McDonaldland’s Fry Guys?”

Did you know the Fry Guys were canonically “Gobblins”? Or that McDonaldland had canon? That’s what I just found out. Anywhoski, Cain is showing off the House Of Weirdness to this poor man’s version of Blobbie, the Toxic Avenger’s pet from Toxic Crusaders, hoping the creature will rent a room. There are jokes about how it’s been designed to look gross and haunted, with cobwebs and tattered shades and the like. Also a joke about DC Comics owning the house, a fun little wink to re-using stuff from old comics—but as I learned looking at the copyright on the front page, DC Comics was apparently located ay 666 Fifth Ave in 1985. I feel like more should’ve been made of that at the time. Anywhoski, Cain is set to show this mop with a mouth the excellent closet space (despite apparently only have sandals for a wardrobe), when hilarity ensues and the adventure begins!

I’m sure Bob Lappan is a great guy and 9/10 times he does amazing work. But the lettering on the “recap origin” at the top absolutely makes it look like “a blast of supernatural energy crapped Dan Cassidy…in the skin of his greatest concraption.” Pick a better font, is all I’m saying. It turns out Dan and his actress girlfriend, Sharon, are looking at houses to rent when Dan peeked inside a closet in Los Angeles and came tumbling out of the House Of Weirdness. The little fluffball took off through the L.A. house and out into the streets.

Meanwhile, across town, some hippies are excited to reunite their band and perform again after more than a decade—but the venue (“Thrillmore”, niiiice) is a dump and it’s in a horrible part of town. turns out that’s on purpose because the lead singer has been dead for 12 years but is walking around, makes the Thrillmore look good again, and chose the site specifically because it’s actually located on top of a hellhole.

The hippies are okay with all of this exposition, but the manager is outta there and he quits. But the show must go on and people can’t wait to see this folk rock band from 1973, apparently. And it’s supposed to be an early ‘70s band but the leader, Blackjack, is dressed like Jon-Mikl Thor circa 1989. Well it turns out the devil isn’t in the details, but in fact across town getting some information.

Cain then meets with Dan and the rest of the supporting cast to make it seem like the fuzzbucket is an actual threat (aka Chekhov’s Mogwai) and there’s also validation that Dan is, in fact, a “weirdness magnet” hence all of the shenanigans and goings-on with supernatural entities and situations. But then Dan’s occasional sidekick (and nephew of super producer/director Marla Bloom, she with the cool white streak in her hair there), Eddie, shows up wearing his superhero sidekick outfit as a costume for trick or treating. Eddie’s nom de sidekick is “Kid Devil”, and he built his own devil suit, but removed all the various weaponry from it for Halloween.

Except the bubble shooter! (Chekhov’s Bubble Shooter)

Kid Devil was originally kind of meant as a parody, the child helper being a trapping that every “real” superhero would have (and did have then in DC Comics; someone’s gotta fill up that Teen Titans roster!). But while Dan liked the kid, he also thought it was very ridiculous—fun commentary from the writers! And then Kid Devil would become a parody of a parody because he would become a real devil (like Dan before him…) and also would become a dark brooding villain/anti-hero type. They did Eddie wrong. And not just because they often refer to him as “gopher” (the nickname he got for being a “gofer” that would run and get/do things for people on the set). Sure enough Eddie, and his (cue ominous music) Bubble Shooter (end ominous music), meets up with other neighborhood children in the Hollywood Hills and goes trick or treating…with the fluffball in tow in complete incognito mode (who Cain reveals is “the Hairy Devourer”, a horrifying and deadly creature of arcane legend). This reminds me: why didn’t E.T. go dressed as himself? Like slap a zipper on him and boom. It’s a sheet on top of an alien. Almost literally a hat on a hat.

The Hairy Devourer loves scarfing down candy and oh what hilarity ensues as he makes the round on Halloween night. But no time for diabetic goodness when the show’s got to go on!

Overture, curtain, lights
This is it, the night of nights
No more rehearsing and nursing a part
We know every part by heart
Overture, curtain, lights
This is it, we'll hit the heights
And oh what heights we'll hit
On with the show this is it.

People are really taking the whole “we definitely thought Blackjack was dead” thing in stride. It’s probably meant as a nod to Jim Morrison (hippie rock dude from L.A. with mystical elements that died but people kept saying he wasn’t), or perhaps just a precursor to that time in 1991 that one guy impersonated Peter Criss from KISS and said he was homeless. In either case, it’s odd that everyone was very certain he was dead but are totally okay with that status being revoked and with his stage looking like a set from THE DEVIL’S RAIN. But they also live in a world with a guy in a robot devil suit that is dressed like a Go-Go Boy. Perhaps life/death is a bit more subjective in such a skewed world. I mean, it’s not like there are any signs that there is definitely something rotten afoot is there? Right, hippie bandmates?

Gaaaah!

Frontmen can be such divas. But with him being gone for 12 years, mystically altering the Thrillmore, asking for his meat to be more raw, setting up the stage like a Black Mass, and now with a skeleton face…perhaps Blackjack isn’t as on the level as these free love freebirds seem to think?

Very brief interlude as, in between this shocking discovery and Blackjack jiving his way back into the hearts of his acid brainwashed compadres, there’s a lovely ad for an Elvira T-shirt.

But there’s some fun nerd trivia that makes this retro ad not only quaint but relevant. Starting in 1986, DC Comics resurrected The House Of Mystery title (from whence our Rusty Venture-looking friend Cain arises)…but with Elvira as the “host” of all of the tales. It ran for eleven issues, plus a special Christmas edition, and had a through-line that the House wanted Elvira to find Cain. Evidently, she did not. Though that means that Elvira (intradimensional storyteller) exists in the same universe as The Endless from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, not to mention Blue Devil, Superman, and even Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew. Where’s THAT Shudder special?

Where were we? Oh right, the very brütal-looking Blackjack, done up in leather and chains, is explaining to his bandmates that are clearly folk rockers why he has the face of a skeleton and been doing all of that shady stuff. I guess the joke is that the other members of Window—which is the name of the band, but they kind of don’t refer to it as often as they refer to Blackjack. I legitimately can’t imagine the music these three make together.

Anyways, the other Windows members are apparently too fried from having a fun ‘60s to realize the very obvious dark situation and devilish work that Blackjack is up to. Too much LSD and appropriating Native American cultures will do that to you. Every time.

It’s interesting that Blackjack stipulates he wasn’t dead but has just been wandering through Hells. Which is metal AF, cool, and confoundingly ambiguous—was it just an infernal SLIDERS situation with Blackjack popping up in different hellscapes until finally arriving back in front of the Thrillmore and very informed about The Hairy Devourer?

Sharon is stood up by Dan (who is busy trying to find The Hairy Devourer with Cain out in the streets), and right when she’s about to bemoan dating a man stuck in a demon robot dressed like a flamboyant ‘80s wrestler…it’s time for Windows to take the stage. Ginger Glenn Danzig is ready to rock with “Nightwind”, which sounds like garbled poetry that would be spewed on the floor of a dorm by some freshman blitzed on Mike’s Hard Lemonade (so…Jim Morrison confirmed, then).

Readers: If you are musically inclined, please compose and record a version of you performing “Nightwind” by BlackJack and Windows. PLEASE. I will put it all over the web and hopefully, together, we can summon The Hairy Devourer. Email me at admin@neonsplatter.com or DM me on Twitter.

…PLEASE.

Sharon is mesmerized and brought on stage (to the cheering encouragement of her friend, Marla; gross) in order to help Blackjack summon forth this creature from the Pentagram and free himself from the chains of his damnation (but not the literal chains he is rocking as an outfit). Also, why does every other character involved in this sound like a sex act? The Hairy Devourer. Blue Devil. House Of Weirdness. BlackJack and The Windows. Thrillmore?!? Comics…you crazy.

But what will happen when Sharon goes onstage with BlackJack? Will Kid Devil finally use that Bubble Shooter? Will Cain find a suitable tenant for his room to rent? Will Windows play an acoustic version of “Nightwind” for an encore? For these answers and more, tune in next week for part two! Same Hairy Devourer time, same Hairy Devourer channel…