The Pantheon's Cast

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

Satan

Satan's self-portrait
Everyone knows who Satan is. He's the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Prince of This World, Father of Lies and Lord of Darkness. But I've always harboured a preference for the bad guys, especially the dark ones with long hair and goatee beards. That's why he's my main character.
The first image of Satan When I first got the idea for a comic about Satan and what he gets up to, I looked for a tale about him in the Bible, expecting to find a detailed account of exactly what a certain angel named Lucifer did to prompt his expulsion from heaven. Must've been something pretty terrible, I reasoned.
But the references I was given which purported to be about Satan were, as far as I could see, referring instead to the Prince of Tyre and saying what a horrible bad man he was. The Christians I've spoken to have told me that Satan got tossed out for rejecting God and God's rule. I have yet to fathom how this rather harmless action could automatically turn an angel "evil". He didn't kill anyone, he didn't torture anyone, he didn't even copulate with a rutting billygoat!
Satan is now "the Judaeo-Christian god of evil", whether he meant to be or not. But what does he do on his days off? Read The Pantheon, fair lady or handsome gentleman, and all shall be revealed.

My modern Satan is descended from a cute li'l demon dude The diary demon who I used to draw in my school diaries. This one can be found on 20th August 1998 looking with distrust at some homework.
And here's a scarier Satan The Devil plays cards from a notebook of the same year. The fact that the present Satan has feathery wings, not batty ones, is thanks to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and their book Good Omens. Read it if you haven't. Tis very good.



Pan

Pan the Big Man and some friends Pan looks very similar to Satan, except that he's better-endowed. Apparently the resemblance is not accidental - early church leaders seeking to discourage the worship of pagan gods like Pan and the Celtic Cernunnos gave the Devil a similar appearance. They probably disapproved of satyrs too, the species to which Pan belongs and Satan is often mistaken for. Satyrs are very randy beasties and Pan is no exception.The first image of Pan


Jesus

Heaven for Jesus Son of God, Saviour of Mankind, etc. A decent sort of bloke, really, although he does occasionally suffer from the stress that being the focus of worship for tens of millions of people can generate. And it can be tough for an immortal being to understand the concerns of mortals, even if he's experienced mortality himself. Basically all he ever wanted was for people to treat other people with decency and respect.


Metrobius

A Greek shepherd. Or more correctly, a goatherd. But a goat herd looks like this: A bunch o' goats
Metrobius looks like this: It's a codpiece. Will Shakespeare gave it to him.
His name comes from one of Roman historian Plutarch's works - Metrobius was the lover of a great Republican general named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Metrobius was also a character in Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series, although we never got to see a picture of him. :(
But I liked him and Sulla, so I appropriated the name.
Metrobius' favourite colour is purple and he is always surrounded by purple flowers, with at least one behind his ear. It is possible that these are magical flowers which grow only where he has been.


God

Thou shalt have no other god but Me Aptly described by Terry Pratchett as "a great big beard in the sky", Jehovah/Yahweh/whatever-you -choose-to-call-him is also a reasonably decent sort of divine being, but with one big irrational hang-up. He refuses to acknowledge the existence of any of the other gods and becomes angry and patriarchal ("Thou Shalt Not!") if their names or belief systems are mentioned in his presence. Apart from that he's fairly similar to son Jesus, minus the advantage of having experienced mortality.
It's possible that God and Jesus' reputation as wholly good divine beings rests on the existence of Satan and his reputation as the incarnation of everything evil. For if there was no-one to cause "evil" things to happen, how could goodness be defined? Add to this the fact that God is supposed to be all-knowing and to have created everything for a purpose, and evidence begins to suggest that when God created Satan, he knowingly created a being who was destined to become "evil". Thus, God appears to have planned and deliberately created evil. If he didn't want any evil, he could have just not made Satan.
So if God made an evil being on purpose, in a way, he created evil himself. So he can't be said to be 100% "good". Despite his disdain for the gods of other belief systems, he's probably no more perfect than they are. But he needs Satan, so that he can pretend he is.
And the point of all that was: if you see Satan accusing God of using him as a scapegoat, you'll know what he's talking about.

More of The Pantheon's characters...