Simon Hurt, Final Crisis & The New 52

[king of hybrids]

could Hurt serve as the Street-Level/noir 'voice' of darkseid's evil? the window through which the gritty heroes/anti-heroes deal with the 4th world's shenanigans?

[t hedge coke]

this was just always a giant red herring

It really wasn't.

He's a guy possessed by a literal devil sent to devil Bruce Wayne and to try to grow, inside a man, the personification of all evil. He's not the biblical Devil, but then, there isn't really so much of a biblical Devil, as there are devils, or The Devil as understood by popular conception. If he showed up in a pit of fire with hooves and a pitchfork, he wouldn't be the biblical Devil, either.

Bruce is just a poor boy, nobody loves him... Darkseid has a devil put aside for him.

Grant Morrison isn't Christian. The DCU isn't classically Christian, in its cosmogony. We don't say Zeus isn't a god, or that Green Lantern's not really a space cop because he doesn't have a flashing light on top of his car and he doesn't carry the same ordinance as the police down the street from me.

As a blanket description, it nails what Hurt does, how he does it, and why he does it pretty accurately. He devils people, to sow evil, to encourage corruption, as an emanation and tool of ultimate horror and vileness. And sometimes he possesses people or makes contracts to do it.

[scusemeprincess]

It really wasn't.

He's a guy possessed by a literal devil sent to devil Bruce Wayne and to try to grow, inside a man, the personification of all evil. He's not the biblical Devil, but then, there isn't really so much of a biblical Devil, as there are devils, or The Devil as understood by popular conception. If he showed up in a pit of fire with hooves and a pitchfork, he wouldn't be the biblical Devil, either.

Bruce is just a poor boy, nobody loves him... Darkseid has a devil put aside for him.

Grant Morrison isn't Christian. The DCU isn't classically Christian, in its cosmogony. We don't say Zeus isn't a god, or that Green Lantern's not really a space cop because he doesn't have a flashing light on top of his car and he doesn't carry the same ordinance as the police down the street from me.

As a blanket description, it nails what Hurt does, how he does it, and why he does it pretty accurately. He devils people, to sow evil, to encourage corruption, as an emanation and tool of ultimate horror and vileness. And sometimes he possesses people or makes contracts to do it.

i dont think it nails what hurt does much at all. i think the devil dead set against batman is the spacegod who set his own blood against him to hound him to the end of time.
the guy he uses is honestly closer to a typical batman villain. maniacal, bragging about his plans, delusions of grandeur, fatally flawed madman. but so much a man in the way he is used, in the way he schemes and plots, the way he fatally misunderstands, the way he slips on a banana peel
this isn't the demon. this is........just a guy. in the same way that bruce is often misinterpreted as "just a guy", sure. but you can see why devil just seems like a weak description or signifier. batman is bedeviled by him.......but this is a bond villain who would freak out like charlie caligula (am i getting that right) if he saw bat-mite over batman's shoulder.

you realize i'm saying all this as someone who adores every second of sulfuric imagery and theme in this run. i'm only being a stickler about it for this reason.
im with damian.

[PyroSikTh]

he's not really even the endless evil of darkseid. he's a madman and criminal mastermind who made a faustian pact with something he didn't understand. that's very much not the devil.

Way I read it is that Thomas Wayne was "a madman and criminal mastermind who made a faustian pact with something he didn't understand", and the pact with the endless evil was akin to possession, becoming a part of it and taking on the alias of Simon Hurt.

Ergo Simon Hurt is Barbatos is the Devil is Darkseid is the endless evil, possessing Thomas Wayne.