Bet on Diablo

The prominent role that Diablo plays in the Tarot mini-series brought back memories of Alpha Flight #21 (April 1985). The cover of that issue featured Canadian heroes Sasquatch and Aurora battling the villainous alchemist. Text on the cover announced this ominous warning:

Bet on Diablo--
--He's been doing this for centuries!

The story itself did not include any fight scenes between Diablo and Alpha Flight, however. Rather, the inside flashed back back to the Transylvanian Alps in 1875, when Esteban Diablo was already 1,000 years old. Superstitious villagers destroyed his alchemy lab and trapped him in a tomb until freed in Fantastic Four #30 (Sept. 1964)

Tarot: The Devil in the Details

A number of heroes and villains have used Tarot cards to harness their superhuman abilities. One of the characters most worthy of discussion was the Hellion code-named Tarot. Like the other Hellions, Tarot was a student at the Massachusetts Academy and taught by the White Queen.

Introduced in New Mutants #16, Tarot used her mutant power to animate images from a Tarot deck, from the Knight of Swords to the Devil. Although Tarot ascribed mystical meaning to the cards, was her power truly bound by the 78 cards in the deck? Seeing how her power was mutant in nature, I suspect that Tarot had the potential to animate any picture she might see but didn't recognize the full scope of her abilities.

The above image come from New Mutants #16 (June 1984).