First Appearance: Spawn # 1.
What's the Story?:
Hell has had many rulers. They have all been ruthless... terrifying... powerful. Yet, they have all been enslaved or died as newer demons have ripped them bloodily from the throne. The Malebolgia is but one in a long line of these demons. However, he is different. He is more cunning than all those previous. More vicious. More cruel. And he, above all, can see into the long term. He has made his own army to protect him, even as he trains them to attack Heaven someday.
Born, or rather, forged in the fires of Hell's eighth plane, the Malebolgia had his first conscious thought seventy millennia ago. His creator, Leviathan, a Grand-Mal Demon and total ruler of Hell, sculpted his pet, infusing him with rivers of necroplasm and charging him with energy from the most loathsome and hideous acts any being can perform. True to his nature, shortly after reaching complete sentience, the Malebolgia turned on his master and slew him before his startled court during a three-year blood feast. After imprisoning his creator's surviving essence, he ecstatically placed the crown of rule upon his head and became the supreme master of Hell.
Now, as he has done for more than 70,000 years, the Malebolgia schemes sublime horrors from his throne. An innovator, he has managed to stay one step beyond the grasp of the other demons who covet his title. While he did not invent the Hellspawn, they are his greatest warriors; those creatures built from murder in the same way he had been made from evil. They are his puppets, his entertainment and toys. He uses them on occasion to torment his weaker rivals. But most importantly of all, he uses them to form the officer corps of his Hell-born army: his officers of the damned.
In our time, the Malbolgia has raised one particular officer who's made him more proud than the ten before him. In life, this Hellspawn was known as Lieutenant Colonel Al Simmons, and his soul's torture has been Malebolgia's great pleasure. For unlike the hundreds preceding him, this Hellspawn sold his soul for a pittance: the love of his wife Wanda. In him, level upon level of torment have intricately intertwined to form the perfect destructive force. This Spawn performs evil acts for noble reasons -- the truest damnation for any man.
