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Etrigan

29 January 2005 by Steven — Filed under Comics

Etrigan

Excuse me, doesn’t Etrigan speak only in rhyming verse? Do these indie creators know nothing?

This entry was posted on 29 January 2005 at 12:49 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow responses with the Atom comments feed. Responses and trackback pings are currently closed.

Comments

  1. J. Kevin Carrier says:

    Etrigan only rhymes intermittently. He didn’t do it in the original Kirby series. I think Alan Moore was the first to write him that way. And Moore is about the only writer who’s ever been able to pull it off without it sounding stupid.

    — 29 January 2005 at 2:08 am (Permalink)

  2. Steven says:

    Oh.

    It would be funnier if he rhymed about killing a little goth kid, though.

    — 29 January 2005 at 2:26 am (Permalink)

  3. Steven says:

    And based on other Alan Moore-penned verse I’ve read, I’m not sure I believe you about his ability to write it!

    — 29 January 2005 at 2:28 am (Permalink)

  4. Steve Pheley says:

    Yeah, I think it pretty much depends on whether a given writer can do rhymes well. Ennis did a decent job when Etrigan popped up in HITMAN, as I recall.

    (I suppose he could be trying to rhyme “Merlin” with “Satan” and “wretched” with “hatched”, but that’s pushing it, and there’s not much in the way of meter there.)

    — 29 January 2005 at 2:34 am (Permalink)

  5. Rose says:

    If he’d used “godforsaken” for “unholy,” it would basically scan as two parts at least, though it needs a dah-dum-de-dum-de-dah-dah last line to tie them together. I think it would be a fun challenge and I wouldn’t tackle Etrigan without verses that rhyhme and scan (like that one!) but I don’t want to write comics anyway, so that’s a pretty lousy argument. I’m with Steven that it would have been more Bizarro-fun to have some rhyming.

    And I think I recall decent appearances in Peter David’s Supergirl, too.

    — 29 January 2005 at 2:41 am (Permalink)

  6. Scott says:

    Some time prior to Moore’s Swamp Thing run, Etrigan was promoted in the Hell Hierarchy to “Rhyming Demon”. This fact is alluded to by the other Demon’s in the “Rescue Abby from Hell” issue (helpfully reprinted in the Swamp Thing: Love and Death tradepaperback). Kevin’s right, Moore’s couplets scan pretty well in that issue (but not in his first attempt at Etrigan in Swamp Thing about a year earlier.)

    — 30 January 2005 at 7:21 pm (Permalink)

  7. Steven says:

    There’s a whole Rhyming Demon caste? That’s great.

    — 1 February 2005 at 5:19 am (Permalink)