Mister Melmoth

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Who is Mister Melmoth?

He looks very similar, facially and in his dandified attire, to Powerpuff Girls villain, Him (http://www.ppgworld.com/characters/characters.php?letter=H). To a lesser degree, he resembles Alan Moore's Guy-Fawkes-masked vigilante hero in V.

More central to the story is his similarity to The Tempter in Zatanna 3 -- probably not an accident.

Melmoth is the estranged husband of Gloriana Tenebrae and a member of the Sheeda royalty.

Melmoth was the main character of the 19th century novel Melmoth the Wanderer (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/014044761X/noahwylemanorani) by Charles Robert Maturin. The name has also appeared in comics before, as the title of long story arc within Cerebus (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/9923/cerebus.html). The Cerebus story is about the death of Oscar Wilde (who traveled under the name "Sebastian Melmoth" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#After_his_release) in real life) and the dangers of authoritarian society; the gothic novel is about a man who makes a bargain with the devil for immortality -- which he comes to regard as a terrible curse.

You can read more on the Cerebus story here (http://www.geocities.com/cerebuscomic/melmoth.html), and there's a full copy of the gothic novel (with an in-depth introduction) over here (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/maturin/charles/melmoth/).

From the novel's introduction: "...few know at this day—the terrible
story of Melmoth the Wanderer, half man, half devil, who has bartered away
his soul for the glory of power and knowledge, and, repenting of his bargain,
tries again and again to persuade some desperate human to change places with
him...."