2. Hellstorm: Prince of Lies
What Is It? When I tell people that Hellstorm is one of my favorite Marvel characters, I usually get blank stares. Daimon Hellstrom first premiered in the 70s, going by the moniker of the Son of Satan. As the title suggests, Daimon and his sister, Satana, were the children of Satan and a human woman, Victoria Wingate. Trained by their father in the black arts, Satana embraced his teachings while Daimon rejected them. Once Victoria found out what her husband truly was, it drove her mad. Daimon was then raised in a Jesuit orphanage, never hearing from his father or sister again and became a professor of anthropology, as well as set himself up as an occult investigator, demonologist, and exorcist, fighting arcane forces (usually his father) as the Son of Satan. Daimon later joined the group of heroes known as the Defenders and eventually married fellow teammate Hellcat, but it was in the early 90s where he truly became an excellent character, during the very intelligent, superbly-written series Hellstorm: Prince of Lies. Written in part by a then-unknown Warren Ellis, this series showed Daimon struggling against his father, straddling the line between his human and demonic sides.
How To Do It Right? Adapt Hellstorm: Prince of Lies. Call Warren Ellis if you have to (no, just call him anyway). For the past several years, Supernatural has given us a new spin on Christianity that shows Heaven and Hell as two sides of the same coinboth ruthless, both self-serving, and both with a very low opinion of the human race. Hellstorm would take that a step further by showing us someone who is part-demon and still fights against them. You could even avoid a direct connection to Satan by going with Ellis retcon that Hellstorms father is actually a demon named Marduk Kurios. This would be a smart, edgy series that would be perfectly at home on a cable network like AMC.