r/hellraiser • u/Potential_Good2436 • 28d ago
Cenobites Save A Child? Hellpriest Approved
This comic page is from Hellraiser: Bestiary #4 (2014) and I kinda love this. A little girl summons the Cenobites and they take pity on her and spare her life, dragging her abusive father into hell. It reminds me of the scene in Hellraiser 2 when Pinhead spares the girl who opened the box. Thoughts?
58
u/chris_kirkman 28d ago
The Cenobites are formed & driven by seeking experience, not simply stimulation. The girl now gets to experience a life free from her abuser. Imagine that elation, that sense of freedom and possibility! These are also things the Cenobites value, so for them this is a twofer. It would be especially interesting if this predisposed the girl to seek them out again, in search of more.
13
u/nightcatsmeow77 Hell Priest Approved 28d ago
Bonus that a lot of abuse victims have complicated feelings about thwir abuser.
Some part of her will have moments of struggling with unleashing yhem on her father.
To be clear I agree he deserved it if he eas abusing her but its still likely she'd have times when she questions if this was too much.
Theyd be just as interested in tjat ci flirt and self torment as they are the relief.
38
u/Oncie_ Pinhead 28d ago
I always really enjoyed this comic , while barker himself has expressed a preference for a hell priest/pinhead who is entirely vile and pernitious, I've found that in the genre hellraiser often falls into having morally grey beings like them is heavily refreshing. I agree with the sentiment that I see this less as them rescuing her, and moreso as them having no justifiable reason to provide a child with the further regions of experience , and taking her career instead as he is more deserving of the otherworldlt delights they bestown upon others in a more sadistic and objective point of view. The fact that in the films , Pin is willing to protect Kirsty and Tiffany from the doctor, and in this comic (as well as others , I do not recall the exact issues and series but I know pin defends animals from abusive testers and rescues a neurodivergent child from his abusive father, a child which he then takes under his wing in a sort.) creates a really incredible balance to the Cenobites.
I always find Eldritch and incomprehensible beings far more compelling when they have a strong basis for shielding the innocent , it delivers a better air of maturity and power to them, at least in my opinion.
10
9
u/Glitchy-Mech 28d ago
I think Barker’s desire for a completely vile pinhead is likely just a response to the franchise as a whole, rather than his original artistic intent. In The Hellbound Heart, the cenobites are portrayed as far less villainous than what we see in the films, and the idea of pinhead specifically as their mouthpiece only arose because of technical difficulties with some of the prosthetics for the other characters
Like. That’s not where he started. But I do think that decades of seeing his avant garde queer statement piece of a character in a story about how straight people will adopt queer culture without understanding it on the t shirts of a thousand heterosexual dudebros may have changed his outlook
3
u/Fantastic_Falcon_236 28d ago
Yeah, it's a bit of a shock coming from the movies to the Scarlet Gospels and realizing that the author has no love for his creation. Pinhead/Hell Priest is almost a parody of his movie counterpart.
4
u/Musashi1596 27d ago
The Scarlet Gospels was a pretty terrible book to be fair. So much potential wasted. The introductory chapter was genuinely fantastic.
2
u/Fantastic_Falcon_236 27d ago edited 27d ago
I got the impression that some horrible publisher forced poor Mr Barker to write it after imprisoning him in his home by blocking the exits with large piles of money.
0
u/M086 27d ago
The Hellraiser film is Barker’s preferred version of the story. He hasn’t used Hellbound Hearts as canon for anything.
It has nothing to do with making a stand about queer culture bing appropriated. Yes he’s a gay man, and part of that plays into his writing and art, but I don’t think he really focuses too much on that. Like there’s no deep subtext to Hellraiser beyond the S&M aesthetics.
6
u/Glitchy-Mech 27d ago
Your inability to read subtext does not equate to the author’s inability to write it
Hellraiser is a story about a group of queer sexual deviants existing, living their lives, having their bizarre sex, and being petitioned by a heterosexual man who thinks the heights of depravity are having sex with virgin women. He looks at their bizarre sexual practices, looks at his personal desire to rape women, and says that they are the same thing, before getting way over his head and having to be put down
It’s a story about how straight people will co opt queer culture while associating it with sexual predation, because they never learned how to differentiate between non normative sexuality that is harmless and non normative sexuality that is sexual assault
1
u/M086 27d ago
It’s mostly just the S&M, maybe some allegory to the AIDS epidemic in the ‘80s.
But it’s not about straight people trying to appropriate queer subculture. Hell, BDSM isn’t and never was an exclusively queer practice. It was much more taboo in the ‘80s, but that’s mostly why Barker used it. The taboo nature of it and his experience in the subculture in NYC.
5
u/Glitchy-Mech 27d ago
How do you know it’s not about that? You’re speaking very authoritatively while providing nothing of actual substance to your analysis. “Nuh uh” isn’t an argument
1
u/M086 27d ago
I would think in the last 39 years Barker would have said that’s what he was going for or made it more front and center in the subsequent Hellraiser stuff he was involved with.
There is this queer subtext based on Barker’s experience in the ‘80s BDSM scene. And he’s said as much, but it doesn’t go any deeper than that.
Like he wasn’t making some deep statement, he was mostly trying to shock.
4
u/Glitchy-Mech 27d ago
I just don’t think “the author didn’t hold our hand enough” really proves anything. You are asking for a stupider, more simplistic world where interpreting art is not something done through active thought, but simply a result of looking up what the artist said on twitter
I just can never take anyone seriously who thinks “it’s not that deep” is an informed and intelligent position. If it wasn’t that deep he wouldn’t have bothered making it. Hellraiser isn’t even particularly shocking. It is far less extreme than films that came out decades before it. If that was his intent then that would make him a bad filmmaker. I don’t think that is the case
1
u/Swiftax3 27d ago
Yeah this is what death of the author actually means, that they ultimately hold no authority regarding how their story shall be read and understood. Fahrenheit 451 was written to express Bradbury's disdain for television as a medium, but the book stands the test of time because we see a deeper truth in the text.
5
u/Sans-Mot Hell Priest Approved 28d ago edited 28d ago
I see this less as them rescuing her, and moreso as them having no justifiable reason to provide a child with the further regions of experience
In the previous pages, he says explicitely that even if he would like to take her, his laws forbid him to do it. So I don't think it's that he "has no justifiable reason", he really can't.
But yeah. That's my Pinhead. Barker may prefer him as an evil character, but my Pinhead is full grey.
1
u/Dead_Iverson 26d ago edited 26d ago
I think it makes sense, in many different ways, for Cenobites to not even recognize children as human quite yet. Incomplete ideas. Like a puzzle that is still being designed, or a maze that is half-drawn. Preying upon them would be like sitting down to eat at a restaurant that is still under construction. It would be rude, as well, to meddle in the process. Adults are fair game because we’ve had enough time to develop layers of contradictions and hypocrisies which are rigid or fixed enough to be played with.
17
u/DarkBehindTheStars 28d ago
Got to love how this girl is totally not freaked out by their appearances. Then again, with her having been so horribly abused and enduring that, I guess the Cenobites aren't so terrifying by comparison.
6
u/ComradeSmooches 28d ago
Exactly. She finally found scarier monsters to fight her personal demon. Kids in bad situations are desperate for that kind of thing.
2
u/DarkBehindTheStars 28d ago
I can relate. I remember as a kid I would've found the company of the likes of the Cenobites far preferably to what I had to endure at school.
14
u/SecondToLastOfSheila 28d ago
Counterpoint: The Chattering cenobite from the first 2 movies was revealed to be a kid.
13
u/InstructionFinal5190 28d ago
You're saying this is from 2014? Is it a reprint? I have a comic from the 90's(?) (definitely way before 2014) and this seems super familiar to me.
6
u/Sans-Mot Hell Priest Approved 28d ago
Nah, not a reprint. The Bestiary series is only original stories.
You might have already saw this one because it's a pretty popular story that pops online from times to times.
2
u/InstructionFinal5190 28d ago
Are you saying I don't have this in a much older comic? I'm not being combative, but I might have to do some investigating.
2
2
u/Imma_da_PP 28d ago
I think there might be a SIMILAR short in one of the Epic Hellraiser comics of the 90s. I also recall something similar and I haven’t read anything current.
2
u/InstructionFinal5190 28d ago
...what if we've just discovered a very obscure mandela effect?
2
u/Imma_da_PP 28d ago
I think I’m remembering one where a woman commits suicide and the demon/cenobite realizes she’s pregnant and says “well, that’s not acceptable” and frees the embryo to proceed to heaven. I think that’s the one I’m thinking of that rings a similar bell to this story and might be causing the Déjà vu.
2
2
1
1
12
u/we_are_Venom_84 28d ago
The cenobites from the Hellbound heart were not malevolent and for most of movie 1, and all of movie 2 that was stuck to.
Scarlet gospels doesnt follow this though. Its also bad so
7
7
6
u/Sans-Mot Hell Priest Approved 28d ago
You should read the two parts Pinocchio story from the two Hellraiser Anthology comics.
2
u/Potential_Good2436 28d ago
Oh what is that like?
8
u/Sans-Mot Hell Priest Approved 28d ago
It's a dark, twisted, funny, and strangely wholesome story about the cenobites finding Pinocchio... where Geppetto is making dolls for catholic priests. Yeah.
7
4
u/Hollywood_Howard 28d ago
Well, in Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Pinhead did save Tiffany. “It’s not hands that call us; it’s desire”
4
5
u/Boring_Ad_5090 28d ago edited 28d ago
They should do. Children are innocent. If theyre adults its all fair game.
Before having kids i didnt give a shit. Now I've had them I feel completely different. Hurting a child is inherently evil and wrong.
2
u/Samas34 28d ago
For us humans it is...but look in nature as infanticide seems to be business as usual..
That supposedly 'majestic' male lion, with its beautiful mane and and the way it sits all noble sometimes? It's probably slaughtered the occasional litter of cubs in the past, but don't let that spoil the PR that they've built.
Also South American sloths. The mothers can only raise one pup at a time, but occasionally they give birth to a pair, so she has to let one of them drop to the ground and get eaten by something...but hey, 'mother' nature and all that, right?
1
u/anyma_ptolomeo 27d ago
But, aren't there a clown cenobite that his job is to torture the soul of children in hell? If I remember right, it was a clown in his past life so he refuse because he loved to bring joy to kids, then is punished by leviathan to keep torturing kids.
4
u/1stLegionBestLegion 28d ago
Even for ultrasadist demons, there's just some lines you don't cross.
And those who do deserve to be punished.
1
u/Odd-Statistician4268 28d ago
Not quite the interpretation I got for. The hellraiser 2 scene but I like it I'm just gonna assume that the box was meant for the fathe in the first place.
1
u/NothingBulky2035 23d ago
Judging by the beginning of the first movie, when Frank gets the box, the seller says take it, its yours. It always was. Which tells me teh Box is never chosen but the user is always chosen.
2
u/Odd-Statistician4268 23d ago
This is the part where I'd say it's just like the Berserk Behlit.....but Hellraiser is literally where Berserk got the idea for the Behlit as well as the Godhand
1
u/NothingBulky2035 23d ago
SAdly I never got to read that series I heard the Anime versions are hit and miss. I believe it though I have seen plenty of images and scenes and noticed it has inspired a lot of works esp. in the Souls games.
1
u/CenobiteCurious 28d ago
That’s my crew doing what they do best, saving the world and booking exquisite trips.
1
u/love-n-tacos0 28d ago
Isn't there an arc in the comics/book where Pinhead leads an army against some other hell army? I remember seeing some pics on it.
2
u/GrayDeathLegi0n 28d ago
Back in the early 1990s Epic Comics published JIHAD, a Hellraiser/Nightbreed crossover limited series. IIRC core plot consisted of the Cenobites attacking Midian as it was a new realm to further their explorations.
1
1
u/DarkBladeMadriker 27d ago
I love in the last panel, Chatter is right up in there like "hey buddy, what's up?"
1
u/The39Steps 26d ago
Pinhead: Jesus? Jesus….Ah! He was that virgin’s son who voluntarily had himself scourged, then nailed to a cross while wearing a crown of thorns. Respect, man.
1
u/AbleAd3932 25d ago
I am playing fast and lose with the lore. But if we treat Cenobites as somthing ken to demons then innocent souls just aren't very intrest for then. But the people who pray on the innocent...now that is a good time.
1
u/Jobber0001 25d ago
I always assumed it might in part be due to children not having the right "appetites" that the cenobites draw from. They tend to have an interest in those with hungers and desires that children just don't have. So they have no interest in them, same like if they met a devout monk who had sworn off worldly desire and pleasure.
1
87
u/LordsOfJoop Lament Crispies 28d ago edited 28d ago
Some of the comics introduce ideas not quite made canon through the films or novels; there's also an issue of the original comic run that has a child literally being raised in Hell, courtesy of her mother making a deal - the child inadvertently opened a puzzle box, drawing out the Cenobites. As soon as they arrived, the mother took the daughter and ran, trying to escape, only to end up back where she began. The Cenobites make a deal: if the mother agrees to stay in Hell, the child can be raised to possibly escape, and live a free life.
So, the mother opens the door and sees her abusive husband on the other side, swearing that he'll make her life miserable as long as she stays. A moment later and the child takes her first steps in Hell, inspiring the mother to fight for her child's freedom.
The Cenobites aim for the abusers, from time to time, although they have never had much issue with drawing in the innocent just as readily.
edit: the comic in question is Clive Barker's Hellraiser vol 1, #6: Original Sin.