Cupid

Creation

This version of Cupid was created by writer John Ney Rieber and artist Peter Gross in The Books of Magic issue 27, in 1996.

Major Story Arcs

Rites of Passage

The ancient gods Cupid and Psyche now live in modern lives, dressed in modern clothes. They are tired of being commercialized and cute. Cupid calls himself Q, “the Gangsta of Love,” and she is “Fly Girl.” They basically look and act like white people who adopt fake black “gangsta” fashion and speech.

Two teens in California, Oscar and Herschel, who also are gangsta-wanna-bees, meet up with Psyche and Cupid after getting dissed by Leah. The boys ask the gods to help them get revenge.

Cupid shows up at Leah’s modeling agency and shoots Tim Hunter and Leah with chocolate love bullets. His plan is to blackmail the agency by making all the models fall in love with uninteresting poor people.

Tim uses his magic to wrap Cupid up in a gift box, and the other boys explain what is going on.

Tim and Leah laugh at the idea that the bullets would affect them. Leah, a succubus, knows something about attraction, and tells Cupid what true love is.

When they’re distracted, Psyche shows up and points a real shotgun at Leah’s head. Even Cupid is disappointed at Psyche’s turn to violence. When Tim tells her how dumb it is that they got their gangsta thing out of magazines, she smacks him. Tim then uses his magic to create a giant flock of butterflies. Surrounded by the animals she is traditionally associated with, she turns back to her natural form and apologizes.

The Wild Hunt

Much later, Cupid and Psyche are on the run in the Okefanokee swamps. The Wild Hunt are after them. Cupid and Psyche seem to have reverted to their modern fashion, even if in slightly different ways, and Psyche pleads with the Hunt to let them go; she can get them into clubs or movies!

The Hunt shoots her to death with arrows. Cupid, sadly, describes all the things they were working on; he says she had all the best ideas, such as their porn videos or tattoos that say “mom.” He believed she was better able to adapt to the modern world than he was.

The Lord of the Hunt explains that they give gods who fight back well a choice–defeat a member of the Hunt or die. This is their way of making sure that the gods of old still have a reason to exist.

Cupid picks a random guard, and is allowed to pick his own form of challenge. His challenge isn’t seen on panel, but the implication is that his contest is to prove which one has a larger penis. Whatever the nature of the challenge, Cupid wins and becomes a member of the Hunt.

They next hunt Alpanu Lasas, a minor Turkish goddess. While on the run, she makes a deal with Auberon, who takes her shape. When the Hunt catches up to “her,” with Cupid in the forefront, she also wins a challenge and joins the Hunt. Cupid knows Alpanu from ancient times, and they chat a bit.

Alpanu/Auberon asks the Hunt to next chase down Tim Hunter, who is the only person with the power to lock them back up in another dimension. They follow his trail to Accasbel‘s Safe House, but he isn’t there, so they trash the place.

Tim finds the Hunt, and he challenges the Lord to a game of trivia. “Alpanu” reads the questions, and the Lord loses, and has to leave the Hunt. Tim becomes the new Lord, and remembers Cupid from their earlier meeting.

During this perior, Cupid sometimes wears modern clothes, with a baseball hat, and sometimes wears goth-y leather with straps and a hat decorated with hanging dead mice. He becomes invested in his new role, and believes in the mission of the Hunt.

“Alpanu” says that the magic storms that have ravaged the realms lately have been caused by Tim’s Other–and suggests that they hunt him.

They hunt Tim’s step-brother Cyril, and then the demon Barbatos, searching for Tim’s magic, to fight the Other. When they get it, Tim leaves the Hunt, to fight the Other on his own. He wants “Alpanu” to be the Lord, but she kisses him and says he wouldn’t survive her challenge. Next he asks Cupid, and he accepts. Cupid challenges him, selecting the weapon of Love. Tim says he loses, since he doesn’t know how to love. Cupid becomes the new Lord of the Hunt.

The real Alpanu switches places with Auberon, and now she is really a member of the Hunt.

Cupid is later seen riding along with the Hunt, enjoying his new role.