Thu Mar 13, 2008 — by Rick Marshall

Interview: Keith Giffen on DC's 'Reign in Hell'

War is hell - especially when the war is in hell...

Not long ago, Keith Giffen was charged with making Marvel Comics' catalog of cosmic characters relevant again. Little more than a year later, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and various other spin-offs from Giffen's critically praised Annihilation storyline are still finding success on the shelf, and the results of Marvel's grand experiment speak for themselves. That's why it seemed like a no-brainer that DC would turn to its now-exclusively held contract with Giffen to revitalize one of its own subsections of characters.

Starting in June, Giffen will begin redefining DC's magic users alongside artist Matthew Clark in an 8-issue miniseries titled Reign in Hell. The story will focus on a battle for dominion over the plane of hell waged between the forces of Neron (last seen imprisoned in Doctor Fate's tower at the end of 52) and  the combined efforts of Lord Satannus and his sister, Blaze, who gained a foothold over the realm in Neron's absence.

According to Giffen, one of the initial plot points of Reign in Hell will include a roll call for DC's magic users -- especially those with ties to the "real" underworld. I spoke with Giffen recently about his plans for the series, what impact he hopes it will have, and some of the characters that might be called into service for a "war in hell."

COMICMIX: Keith, you're becoming an old pro at this type of story, it seems. How do you approach the task of kick-starting an entire subsection of a publisher’s universe?

KEITH GIFFEN: I love world-building. That's always been my favorite thing to do since I took on Legion of Superheroes. When DC approached me and asked me to rethink hell, that was right up my alley. I just looked back over different versions of hell in Marvel, DC and other publishers, and realized that I didn't want to do any of that.

What I'm trying to do is create an infernal realm that stands on its own -- that's unique. The DC hell will not resemble, aside from the fact that it's about damnation and torment, any of the hells that we've seen in comics before. It's a different take on the environment, with different characters and motives, how  it runs, its hierarchy and what it means to have a "war" in hell.

CMix: What characters will play significant roles in the series? What characters should readers be watching out for?

KG: Doctor Occult is definitely a major player. I'm going to go in and see what makes that character tick. It will mostly be the DC mystics that you would expect to be involved in something like this. [It will be] Zatanna, Doctor Fate and some of the newer guys from that Countdown to Mystery series, like Sargon the Sorcerer, Ibis the Invincible -- or whatever he's calling himself these days -- and Black Alice.

It utilizes some of DC's matchbook characters, and also unearthes this magic bible -- these rules of magic that Michael Moorcock had done for DC years ago that had never really been implemented. There were some spectacular ideas in there about the nature of magic and the price you pay for wielding certain kinds of magic. For example, every time you use infernal magic, you're putting your soul in jeopardy. How does that affect the character?

CMix: How did you go about choosing which characters to bring into the mix? I read somewhere that you just went through the DC catalog and picked all of the characters whose sources of power were defined as "infernal" or something along those lines...

KG: Yeah, I went through all of the characters with infernal connections and cherry-picked the ones that I thought would work best. I said, "Look, these are the characters that will work, but let's do something with them. Let's gentrify them. Let's try to make them more effective." Basically, I don't this hell to be a bunch of naked little demons running around all of the time.

CMix: Were there any characters you "discovered" through this research that you weren't familiar with initially, but plan to use in a significant role in the series now that they're on your radar?

KG: Most of the members of hell's hierarchy were the ones that I really stumbled across and thought, "Well, that one's interesting" or "Hey, there's something here -- a nugget that will work." Azmodel the demon, Lilith -- and not the Teen Titans' Lilith, but the mythic, quasi-biblical Lilith -- all of these characters had a lot of potential. It's all about going in there and seing what makes them work and what makes them not work, and then jacking them up for this story.

CMix: Well, it seems like there are a lot of characters in the DC Universe that could conceivably get involved with a storyline like this, and I'm curious to hear your take on some of them. It's already been announced that Etrigan the Demon will be making an appearance in the service of Lord Satannus. What about someone like The Phantom Stranger?

KG: Yeah, Phantom Stranger does get involved, but not in the way  most people would think he'd get involved.

CMix: What about John Constantine? He's been shuttled back and forth between DC proper and Vertigo, so will he make any appearance here?

KG: Vertigo is Vertigo, DC is DC. At this point, he's just a Vertigo character, so no John Constantine, no Morpheus. None of those characters will be making an appearance in Reign in Hell.

CMix: What about The Spectre? He seems to have faded into the background of the DCU a bit these days...

KG: i haven't bumped up against The Spectre yet, so if he shows up, it will just be as a touch point in the series. The Spectre is really a celestial agent, and I'd rather keep that out of it, because it's a war in hell, not a war between heaven and hell. That said, Zauriel does play a role in this war in hell.

CMix: What about Eclipso? Is there any chance you'll be returning to that character in Reign in Hell?

KG: I'm not sure where Eclipso is at right now and what they're going to do with the character. He's a mystical character, I guess, but he's not really an infernal character. Again, i'm not 100-percent sure where this character is at at this particular moment. That said, this book is going on for 8 issues, so in issues #4 or 5, something might happen and the character might show up.

CMix: Fair enough. So what about the impact of the series on the greater DCU? How will the ramifications be felt outside of Reign in Hell?

KG: Once you've redefined the rules of magic, you can only hope that people will pick up on that and they'll move the precedent you've set along with the characters.

But I think the single, greatest impact it will have on the DCU is, during the time that this war is being waged in hell, all infernal magic and all infernal agents disappear from the face of the Earth. It's sort of a "calling in the reserves" situation. I think people will be surprised by some of the characters that they discover have infernal powers, or powers that are based on infernal magics and that type of thing.

So I guess you could say that's a pretty big impact up front, but as for how it will play out -- if anyone's going to pick up the ball and run with it or have their characters actually comment on it -- that's not up to me. I'm just trying to tell a story that's as self-contained as possible so people don't have to buy 5 or 6 different books to know what's going on.

Keith Giffen and Matthew Clark's Reign in Hell hits shelves in June from DC Comics.

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