Meat rots. It is a rather unseemly fact of life. Animals are made of flesh, and flesh decays when dead. As carnivores, humans soon learn that rotting meat can be toxic. They also realize that eventually, their own kind will suffer the same fate as the animals that they kill for food; the body will go to the worms.

Humans have an amazing ability: they can actually use their imaginations to celebrate the hideous and uncomfortable phenomena that they observe. When life gives lemons, they make lemonade. Such is the process of the invention of a creature such as Meatmarket.

Rather than bemoan their fate, creative humans celebrate with tall tales of gore and glory. Some of these legends are beautiful and some are grotesque. If humans can talk about the terrible things that they experience, exaggerating their fears into demons and monsters, then they can stand up to the real terrors of their daily lives. It works. The meat puppets known as Homo sapiens use art to survive the vile side of their existence. They do this with the help of some pretty horrible myths.

Stories of monstrous sickness and power can have a cathartic effect on the psyche. Bad dreams and outrageous horror movies can restore our mental balance, and allow us to face our darkest days by showing us how much worse things could be. Life for you or I could never get as bad as it does for Meatmarket.

Meatmarket has it rough. He is a product of the human imagination, born in the early nineties. He is a walking smorgasbord for vultures. One time, he had to fight the Nightstalkers. Frank Drake’s Exorcist Gun, lovingly named “Linda,” found a concealed Meatmarket in its sights. Since Blade sensed the demon’s presence in the room, Drake was able to take aim and blast the Lilin into visible cutlets. Then Hannibal King commanded an army of hungry rats to swarm all over our preview character and nibble him to the verge of death. Distracted by the gnawing, Meatmarket didn’t see Blade raising his sword. It was too late. The demon’s decapitated head was eventually thrown into his mother’s lap when she opened a portal from the Underworld to check on him. Creepy.

This was not the end. Meatmarket can rebuild his form by attaching any hunk of meat he can find. At various stages of his career, he has gone from an almost bare skeleton to a nearly fully fleshed bodybuilder. Since he is a member of the Lilin clan, he lives most of his life in the Underworld where things like that happen all the time.

Meatmarket is part of the Lilin. This means he is the child of Lilith, Mother of Demons. She is not to be confused with Lilith, Daughter of Dracula. When you see her brood, you will know why: the Lilin are some bad dudes. Blackout was not actually her offspring when he was originally created. He started out as her grandson. Then he was killed and begged for new life, so she snatched his soul and popped him out again as her son. That is disturbing.

The lineup of the Lilin includes such horrifying names as Bad Timing, Bloodthirst, Carver, Fang, Girth, Infinks, Meatmarket, Outcast, Parasite, Pilgrim, Pixil, Scatter, Short Circuit, Sister Nil, Skinner, Skitter, and Spitfire. With a family like that, it’s no wonder that Lilith is called the Mother of Demons.

The Infinks are Meatmarket’s littlest brothers and sisters. They are a motley crew of kids from the garbage pail. Like the other Lilin, they must find a portal somewhere in order to enter our world from the Shadowside dimension where demons thrive. One night, when Devil-Slayer came home from a long night of partying and mistakenly put his magic cloak in the refrigerator, the Infinks had their chance. They poured into our dimension and wreaked havoc for a while.

If little killer demon brats are still not enough to make you count your blessings, I have one more horror story from the Lilin Meatmarket before the lights go up. In Nightstalkers #1, Meatmarket caught Justin “Just Gonna Mess You Up!” Hoyt and hanged him from a tree. It was the final kill he needed to complete the craft project he was working on for his mother. Like a good son does, Meatmarket was making a present for Lilith. It was a quilt made from the remains of his victims. He stitched it with hair and used skin for fabric. He made sure his mommy would like it by portraying the nine faces of her enemies, the Midnight Sons. She liked it very much.

If you are a fan of the natural power-up, then you will like Meatmarket’s ability. Every additional chunk of his body that lands in the KO’d pile gives an extra pump while he is not stunned. Since the Underworld team affiliation likes to dig in the despicable dirt, there will be many wonderful ways to exploiting this power. Toss three Meatmarket body parts into the KO’d pile, and you will see him swell to an outrageous size. Your opponent will be grossed out, brickwalled, stunned back, and thanking his or her lucky stars that fiction is more horrible than truth.

Remember, this is only a myth. That awful smell of rotting carcasses is just your imagination. Cardboard cannot hurt you, no matter how hideous the creature it depicts. Such is the glorifying gift of human creativity, and such is the disgusting power of Meatmarket.