Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: bronze age, marvel, Satana, Vampire Tales

The First Appearance of Satana in Vampire Tales #2, Up for Auction

The early 1970s Marvel horror boom that brought us characters like Morbius and Werewolf by Night played out in both the comic books and Marvel's magazine line. Magazines such as Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed, and Tales of the Zombie included tales of monsters both famous and little known. Vampire Tales was another one of these, and though the headline characters at the start of the title included Morbius and a vampire character called Lord Ruthven, the second issue also saw the debut of Satana. Not a vampire, but something else entirely — the daughter of Satan. An interesting character who found her niche in the hellish corner of the Marvel Universe, and also appeared as played by Sydney Lemmon in the 2020 television series Helstrom on Hulu, there's a copy of her first appearance in Vampire Tales #2 (Marvel, 1973) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white to white pages, up for auction in the 2022 April 24-25 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122217 at Heritage Auctions.

Satana is the daughter of Marduk Kurios, ruler of the otherworldly dimensions known as Hell. Also of course, she's the sister of Damian Hellstrom aka the Son of Satan. created by Roy Thomas and John Romita Sr., an editorial in Vampire Tales #3 related Thomas's explanation of the character's genesis:

Stan was thinking about doing a strip on the Devil's Daughter for years, but until we got into large-sized comics it didn't seem practical. Then, when we were first beginning to talk over the possibilities of doing the Son of Satan series, Stan suggested that we do a strip on the Devil's Daughter also. He told me how he'd always wanted to do a Devil's Daughter character and sounded me out on whether I thought now might be a good time to try it.

John did some really fine costumes and developed a really great character to begin with… originally, we were going to have an ad announcing her arrival with three alternate Satana characters and not telling our readers which she would be. Then we nixed that as too weak an introduction for this character and John took the best features from each character and costume and combined them for Satana.

Certainly Stan came up with the original concept. As for the actual development of the character, Johnny and I share a goodly portion of that blame with Stan. The succubus idea was mine.

Vampire Tales #2 introduced the character of Satana and contains one of the early Morbius solo tales, and, and you can get a copy of that character debut in Vampire Tales #2 (Marvel, 1973) CGC FN 6.0 Off-white to white pages, up for auction in the 2022 April 24-25 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122217 at Heritage Auctions.

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