Green’s Dictionary of Slang

very good.

1887		Oakland Trib. (CA) 17 Sept. 10/1: ‘He was hell wid his gun; used ter shoot till he could split der balls on a pin across the street’.
1897		A.H. Lewis Wolfville 244: ‘Ain‘t he hell!’ says ’Doby, a heap gleeful.
1929		T. Wolfe Look Homeward, Angel (1930) 390: Old man Sanford thinks you’re hell, ’Gene.
1953		W. Eyster Far from the Customary Skies 18: I thought you was hell with ropes.
1957		H. Simmons Corner Boy 58: Man, you’re hell [...] Who’s the babe you can’t make?
1967		E. Shepard Doom Pussy 171: I warned you I’m not much. Hell in bed, though.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 105: In keeping with the Lingo tendency for words to take on sometimes totally opposite meanings, youthful persons are currently using words like hell, to mean something exceedingly good. So that was a hell party means that the experience was intensely enjoyable and not, as we might logically be tempted to think, incredibly bad.