The Return of the Priest

Some notes about this because I truly did not adore this (see my rating on goodreads) but it felt like the thesis statement of this entire mini series so it feels right to finish up my notes on this series.

• Discussion of "middle hell" like a purgatory space
• the creation of pinhead-- not sure where this might be in the continuity and perhaps goes above my head. presumably there is a lore and series from 2012 that is being referenced that I am not privy to, nor am I specifically inclined to follow up about this
• I see as the issues continue on, that perhaps there is a further decline into hell. we see in Hell's Council and The Deep Gospel a transition to the underworld: Hell's council discusses a character we see again in this issue, waiting in purgatory for his master-- the deep gospel renames "the female cenobite" into "mother superior" which I thought was super interesting... but spends the entire time in hell and now we see perhaps a rebirth of pinhead here...
• discussion of religion-- "but through tears in the mist, we can hear eachother, we can remember eachother. we share it all. our agonies and our estasies. memory becomes litany. litany becomes prayer. we are a holy order..."
• The thesis specifically seems to be "I know now that I misunderstoof what I saw back then. I thought my friends were suffering their suffering. I pitied them, How was I to know that what they were actually experiencing... was enlightenment?"
• The idea that pain is the only truth there is. I think this is a sweeping generalization about pain itself-- Makes me think about porcupines, the idea tha they have to stay warm through closeness, but the only way they can be close is through pain. sometimes it hurts to get better. sometimes, the only truth in suffering and trauma is that you are human and therefore you get to feel pain.
• There is a deepness in this perhaps: the correspondence of pleasure and pain in which one can take pleasure in the humanity of pain, but as soon as the pain of others is taken as pleasure, one loses their humanity specifically. I think about The Onanistic Ritual wherein the incel is dragged away to hell... he does not get a happy ending because he specifically is causing harm.

status - 4. evergreen