The Phantom Stranger #9

Cirque du Soleil presents Cannibale!

Last issue we were introduced to The Sin Eater that I would say is the stupidest character so far in The New 52 if The Infernal Core hadn't already claimed and staked and married and sodomized on his wedding bed that title. And now that I've mentioned the worst new character so far in The New 52, you probably want to know the best, right? Easy! That prestigious title goes to Batcow!

This issue begins with The Phantom Stranger strung up in a tree in Hell while Etrigan sits nearby fiddling with his mouth organ. I'm not sure how he got here. Maybe this is the story in-between The Phantom Stranger being stabbed by the Spear of Destiny and The Phantom Stranger arriving on the doorstep of The House of Mystery! But it's not. It's just one of those comic book pseudo in media res openings that comic books love. By the fourth page, all the ducks are back in proper chronological sequence (at least when perceived through the illusion of time allowed by our organic thought machines).

Constantine stole that "damn good imitation" line directly from Deadman last issue.

The Stranger has learned that his family...well, Philip J. Stark's family is in Hell. With the help of Justice League Dark, he descends into Hell to rescue them.

Speaking of people that descend into Hell to rescue their loved ones, have y'all ever read Shel Silverstein's "The Devil and Billy Markham"? Of the handful of Playboys I'd gotten hold of as a youth, one of them contained this poem. At some point I got rid of the Playboys (perhaps when I went off to college? I was optimistic I wouldn't need them anymore!) but I tore out and kept the poem. Not long after, I sent the poem to my friend Bob while he was in Iraq during the first Bush's Iraq War. He and his fellow soldiers loved it but their main concern was where the rest of the Playboy was. Anyway, it's a terrific poem by one of my favorite writers.

The Phantom Stranger is greeted by Etrigan and The Sin Eater once he enters Hell. Etrigan then takes them on a tour to find Philip J. Stark's family.

They find them and everybody lives happily ever after. Especially the octopus.

Meanwhile, Terrance Thirteen is pouting in a bar ironically suffering from the belief that he's done something so awful that he can never be forgiven. It's ironic because the something he did was betray the man that gave rise to the psychological syndrome that Terrance Thirteen is suffering from right now. So if you betray the Son of God, you feel like you can never be forgiven. And if you betray the man that betrayed the Son of God, you feel like you can never be forgiven! The trick, though, is to forgive yourself because there is no ultimate arbiter of universal right or wrong. This is why The Phantom Stranger has entered Hell through his own mind. Because that's the only place that Hell exists. We punish ourselves. Unless a person is a sociopath. And then they either turn into full blown psychopaths and kill indiscriminately or begin to believe in God and The Bible because they have no empathy to determine right and wrong on their own and believe people can only determine right and wrong when told by a Higher Authority. This is also the same reason why some religious zealots are so adamant that sexuality is a choice. It's usually because those people are gay and denying it because of religious reasons. So they need to believe it's a choice and they're just fighting temptation. They must think everybody struggles with sexuality the way they're struggling with it because they simply won't accept their own sexuality and live with the knowledge that choice isn't a part of it.

Well, okay, choice can be a part of it! I can choose to fuck a guy! But I'm not sure my penis would cooperate.

The Sin Eater says he took away Philip J. Stark's family's love to torture them because he once read a line in a Dostoyevsky novel that said that Hell is "the suffering of being unable to love." And everybody knows that if it's in a Dostoyevsky novel, it's automatically true. So if you take love away from a person, they turn into naked husks of humans that eat rats and lose all sense of their humanity.

That doesn't seem right. I don't eat rats!

To save his family, The Phantom Stranger offers Etrigan a deal!

Wait a second! You're already supposed to be in Hell! Sharing a ninth level, unheated three room basement apartment with Brutus and Cassius.

The Phantom Stranger ends up strapped to a tree. But his suffering is hardly suffering when he's doing it for the love of his family. So The Sin Eater refuses to let Philip J. Stark's family go until The Phantom Stranger lets them go first. He has to give up his love and his memory of them if they are to be set free. Fuck, that's an easy decision! He gets to save them and be rid of the obligation of them all at the same time! Win-win!

But then The Stranger finds out the awesome deal is off the table because Etrigan wasn't really Etrigan.

I think I already covered this.

So The Phantom Stranger gets his love and his memories back. But he doesn't get his family back because they're now in heaven where they should have been many years ago before The Phantom Stranger saved their lives against God's orders. Now Dog is offering to take The Stranger up to Heaven if he's willing to go. But that'll have to wait until next month.

The Phantom Stranger #9 Rating: +1 Ranking. I don't know why this issue was called The Trinity of Sin. It doesn't feel like it's really going to connect to the Pandora story later this month and The Question story whenever that comes out. Maybe the shit The Phantom Stranger just went through with Justice League Dark will be the reason the JLD get caught up in The Trinity War. I bet it has something to do with the Nightmare Nurse demanding payment. And oral sex.