Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Resurrections - Hell's Council

[shakalooloo]

Ostensibly a spotlight on Butterball, this issue focuses more on Julia. Clive Barker's original intention was for her to become the movie franchise's main antagonist, so maybe she is deserving of the attention, but I personally would have thought pairing her with The Female would have produced more interesting opportunities for the two to play off each other.

Regardless, this is quite a quick read, with large panels and little dialogue. The puzzle box incident seems unrelated to the main plot, just there to clearly establish this is a Hellraiser book. Behold Hell's Council, though:







Identical bald dudes on skull thrones seems a little tame for Hellraiser, IMHO.

Comments

[icon_uk]

Yeah, that is perhaps the most boring version of Leviathan's Council it is possible to imagine.

Since Butterball predates Julia as a Cenobite, I'm not sure how she could have created him... and what are in the pod things inside him?

And how are the Hallways being defined? Are they the space that opens up behind the walls of wherever in our world a Lament Congifuration-like puzzle is solved?

[shakalooloo]

This, like the other one-shots, is set post-Hellraiser 3, with the Order of the Gash being reformed. Quite why Julia gets to stitch Butterball back together rather than the Engineer, I don't know; I can only attribute that to poor coordination between the creative teams.

It took me a while to realise, since the art is so... basic, but Butterball appears to be filled with gashapon capsules, which contain weapons. When he wants to gift someone with agony, he first has to slit himself open, rummage around in his gizzards and hope he picks something sharp. Not the best Cenobite gimmick, if I'm being honest, and likely just chosen to explain why he's so bulky.

The one hallway we see in the issue is made of writhing human bodies, but when Julia gets her office - with a desk and correspondence! - it has a nice labyrinth-patterned floor. I can only presume that these hallways are where Hell's pencil-pushers and administrators work, not the workshops where the blue-collar Cenobites get down to sublime suffering.

[super_fly]

An office, eh? Does she get a coffee mug that says "You don't have to be devoted to the ecstasies of pain and suffering to work here - but it helps!"

[cainofdreaming]

Looks like the pods are just containers, with a knife, hook and various other sundries inside them.

And Hallways? Isn't it just the Labyrinth?