<PERSON> described his concept for Season of Mists, the <PERSON> story which introduces <PERSON> as a major character, in these terms:
The story was inspired loosely by something <PERSON> had once said - that he believed that there was a Hell, because it was church doctrine that there was a hell. He was not required to believe that there was anyone in it. The vision of an empty hell was one that fascinated me.
Very well; Hell would be empty, abandoned by <PERSON> (whom I represented as a fallen angel, straight out of <PERSON>), and as prime psychic real estate would be wanted by various factions.
(Speech to the Chicago Humanities Festival in 1998, published in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art no. 31 in 1999, and collected in The View from the Cheap Seats, an anthology of <PERSON>'s non-fiction writing published in 2016.)
<PERSON> made a brief appearance in the first <PERSON> story but this is the tale which gave him the characterization that persisted. Some particular points of contact with <PERSON>'s Satan include: * <PERSON> directly quotes "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" (Season of Mists 1:20, Paradise Lost 1:263) and attributes it, accurately, to <PERSON>. Unlike other portrayals of Satan, such as <PERSON>'s mute prisoner, this is <PERSON> as the king of Hell, reigning in power. * In Season of Mists 2:15, "We fell, my comrades in arms and I. We fell so far... so long... and after an eternity of falling we came to rest in this place. And I knew then that there was no way that I would ever return to paradise..." recalls <PERSON>'s "Him the Almighty Power/Hurled headlong flaming from th'ethereal sky,/With hideous ruin and combustion,down/To bottomless perdition" (1:44-47) and parallel accounts elsewhere in the poem. * The brief recounting of the war in Heaven on the same page is compatible with the account in <PERSON> - no specific citation since there are allusions throughout Paradise Lost, but the point is that there was an armed rebellion and Satan lost very decisively. The idea that <PERSON>/<PERSON> was the most powerful angel, described by <PERSON> to <PERSON> in Season of Mists 1:8, appears in <PERSON> as "he of the first/If not the first Arch-Angel, great in power,/In favour and pre-eminence" (5:659-661). 247
* <PERSON>'s title "first among the fallen" recalls <PERSON>'s "Who first broke peace in Heaven" (2:690), "who first seduced them to that foul revolt" (1:33), "first/that practiced falsehood" (4:120-121), "first in flight from pain" (4:918), etc. * The contending demons in Season of Mists 3:16 are somewhat reminiscent of those in <PERSON>'s poem, books 1 and 2, as they try to persuade their compatriots on a course of action. * Dream's entry to Hell in Season of Mists 2:3, "There is a wind that blows between the worlds. A cold wind. It screams silently through the empty places, the nothing wind, traveling from nowhere to nowhere, in the uncreated wastes. I am so cold." is reminiscent of Satan's journey through the Abyss in the other direction in Paradise Lost 2:890-1055. <PERSON>'s Hell is bordered by Chaos, "the womb of Nature and perhaps her grave" (911), through which Satan flies "with difficulty and labour hard" (1021), with winds and currents buffeting him in all directions. * The key to Hell about which the story revolves is also in Paradise Lost 2:850-879. There, we learn that "not all the Stygian Powers/could once have moved" Hell's gate, but the key unfastens every bolt and bar. In Sandman, none of the assembled deities are able to claim the vacant Hell without having the key. * <PERSON> in Season of Mists 4:23 avers "I think Hell's something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go." <PERSON>'s <PERSON> says "Which way I fly is Hell/Myself am Hell" in 4:75. * The visual portrayal of <PERSON> is a handsome man with large bat wings, in contrast to other demons who are uniformly monstrous. 72