Not the literal, demons-with-pitchforks hell referenced in the comic, anyway. And, anyway, most of our ideas about what hell is like come from fiction: Dante, Milton, cartoons, Squirrel Nut Zippers songs. We know that -- we have to know that -- and yet, even people raised in the Christian church are sure there's something about that kind of hell somewhere in the Bible. Isn't there a litany of exotic tortures to be suffered? A demonic compendium of some kind? A lascivious detailing of the sufferings of the damned?

No, not really.

There's very little about hell in the actual Bible. What little there is, doesn't paint the perversely vivid picture that your typical hellfire-n-brimstone preacher likes to fixate on.

I can't blame the preachers for their obsession, in a way. Hell is fun. That's why writers and cartoonists and bored rural folk all want to go there. I mean, go there in the sense of imagining it, the same way I go to Mordor every time I re-read Lord of the Rings. I can blame the preachers for lying about the Biblical justification for their beliefs, of course. And, oh boy, can I blame them for the obvious, hate-filled, perverted glee they take in sending people there. It's bad enough they like to send people there in their minds -- getting excited imagining the torments suffered by the damned. It's worse that they decide to emulate hell on earth by mistreating those who are "damned." Because nobody knows if hell exists, but everyone can recognize human suffering when it's right there in front of them. Everyone except sociopaths.

Terra isn't in some literal hell because she has sinned against a literal god. There might be a literal god, or gods, or something, and that god, or gods, or whatever might be deeply and righteously offended by some of our behavior, but nobody actually knows the truth of that, and it's not the point anyway. When the preacher points his finger at you and says "Sinner! I cast you out!" he means you have sinned against the tribe, and he is casting you out of the tribe.

He might not think that's what he means. He might think that he has some special pipeline to the truth of the whole universe, and that this pipeline tells him that you have transgressed in some fundamental way, but he's wrong. He doesn't know any more about God than you do. He's never met God, except in his mind. Well, maybe you've met God in your mind, too. Who can say which of you, if any, met the "real" God?

(Presumably, if such a being exists, God. But, other than that...)

Anyway, many of us, as we grow up, find ourselves being cast out of our original tribe for one reason or another. It can seem like the end of everything, like we're lost in the wilderness. But usually we find a new tribe.

Let me put it this way: when I put sexy demon babes into my comic, it's not because I think they're some kind of ultimate evil. It's because I like drawing them. But, also, I think it's important to judge evil by behavior, and not by whether you have horns or a pointy tail.