Chueh's Inferno series, as well as some of his other paintings, are currently on display at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, where he's also selling a limited edition sketchbook explaining the concepts behind each painting.

[Luke Chueh's Inferno via mashKULTURE]

Ring 1: Judgment
Ring 2: The Fornicators
Ring 3: The Gluttonous
Ring 4: The Hoarders
Ring 5: The Wrathful
Ring 6: The Heretics
Ring 7, Inner: The River of Blood
Ring 7, Middle: The Forest of Suicides
Ring 7, Inner: The Desert of Fire
Ring Eight, Bolgia Nine: The Sowers of Discord
Ring 9: The Traitorous

For those of you unfamiliar with the sport - which may be all of you, let's face it - Aeroball was the futuristic sport of choice for the Harlem Heroes, a 1970s comic strip from the early days of Britain's classic 2000AD anthology. Combining as many fads as possible for the day, the strip described the sport as...

...Football, Boxing, Kung Fu and Basketball all rolled into one! Players roar through the air wearing jet packs (controlled by buttons on their belts) and score "air strikes" by getting the ball in the "score tank".

If mixing football (soccer for those of you in the colonies), boxing, kung fu and basketball together doesn't sound like the ultimate sport of the future to you, then I'm sure you were sold as soon as jet packs were mentioned. The rules of Aeroball - which, because it was created for 2000AD, didn't take place in a stadium but in something called a "thrill-bowl" - were never exactly fully explained in the series, but seemed to involve doing whatever was necessary to get the ball into your opponent's basket, even including attempts to kill said opponents, as shown below:
Basically, imagine Harry Potter's Quidditch matches but with jetpacks instead of broomsticks, and death instead of jolly English children with scars on their heads. Who could resist?

Apparently, many people; Aeroball was eventually deemed too dull for the sportsfans of the future, and both the game and the Harlem Heroes strip found themselves replaced by Inferno, which announced itself as "Deadlier than Aeroball" and went on for the next 40 weeks to prove it, being quite so "deadlier" that the series was cut short after accusations of being a little too bloodthirsty for the young adult fanbase of the comic (If you're interested, Inferno was also "Faster than speedway" and "Crazier than ice hockey." I didn't know that ice hockey was that crazy, but everything was different back in those days).

While it may not have qualified as one of the most gruesome sci-fi death sports ever, Aeroball - one of the few fictional sports tame enough to require replacement by something more deadly on the demand of thousands of British teenagers - should definitely be considered for placement in all future Olympic games. Misty and Kerri should start getting fitted for their jet packs right now.

Futuresport of the Past [Those We Left Behind]

In the original Inferno, the minions of Belasco unleashed a demonic invasion of Earth, beginning with Manhattan. Worlds lived, worlds died, and a mailbox ate a guy. But even more importantly, two long-running X-Men storylines finally concluded, as Jean-Grey look-a-like Madeline Pryor was revealed to be not just a clone of Jean Grey, but also a little bit of a hoochie mama, and Magik, sister to Colossus, finally expunged herself of the corrosive Soul Sword and the destructive Darkchylde persona.

Now, twenty years later, comes a sequel crafted by writer C.B. Cebulski (who helped keep Marvel's Ultimate Alliance videogame so on point with the comics' continuity) and edited by Nick Lowe (who did not, alas, produce most of Elvis Costello's best albums). X Infernus, a storyline which will bring Magik back into the lives of everyone's favorite mutants, had originally been conceived by Cebulski as an annual but as Cebulski told the audience at the panel, "Marvel said, this is too big for just an Annual, let's make it a big event."

Cebulski also credited Craig Kyle and Chris Yost over on X-Force. "Craig and Chris were kind enough to queue up the return of Magik in their book, and it set everything up nicely." Although an artist for the event was not announced on the panel — "we're almost ready to announce the artist, but not quite," said Lowe — fan favorite David Finch will be doing the covers.

The first issue of X-Infernus is scheduled for December 2009. Although it wasn't revealed whether, at crossover's end, Marvel audiences would be able to climb the frost-bitten beard of Chris Claremont and ascend to X Purgatorio (and then work off their sins by reading Warren Ellis' run on Astonishing X-Men), the news was nevertheless well-received by the crowd, particularly by fans of attractive Russian sword-wielding magic-users.