Category: Lucifer

 

By Mike Carey & various

(Vertigo)  ISBN 9781-84576-448-7

It’s an age old dilemma in comic book storytelling: What do you do the day after you save the universe? Mike Carey answers it by checking in on the survivors in a series of character vignettes that provide closure by counterpointing the Sturm und Drang with charm, humour and melancholy in equal measure.

From issue #70 of the monthly comic, Zander Cannon and Big Time Attic draw Fireside Tales, a yarn of the centaurs and humans of the alternate universe crafted by Elaine Belloc, God’s granddaughter. Evensong (issues #71-72) shows Lucifer setting aright what he can with past allies and enemies as he prepares to depart our universe for the great unknown. The art is by Peter Gross and Aaron Alexovich.

The vulgarly charming demon light relief takes centre stage with issue #73’s The Gaudium Option as the New God gives the repulsive tyke one last clean-up job. Eve (issue #74) and All We Need of Hell (#75) are both illustrated by art veterans Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly and feature a supernatural Girl’s Night Out, and finally the last departure of the Lightbringer, after a suitably telling ultimate chat with the long vanished original God, Yahweh. A perfect end to a masterpiece of comic fantasy.

Or it would be if the book had ended there. However, the editors saw fit to smash the narrative flow by tacking on the one shot Lucifer: Nirvana after that splendid conclusion.

Please don’t misunderstand. Nirvana is beautifully painted by Jon J Muth, an engaging fantasy anecdote as fine as anything else produced by Carey in his career as Lucifer scripter. But you don’t try to stuff in one more shirt after you’ve locked the suitcase. It’s just plain stupid. And annoying. Let’s hope it’s fixed in future editions.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Mike Carey & various

(Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84576-293-2

The penultimate volume of this supernatural saga begins with another Earthly digression as a grim agent of the Angelic Host moves through Hamburg to deliver retribution to some of the mortals touched by this affair. The Wheels of God is drawn by Colleen Doran and the story originally saw print in issue 62 of the monthly comic.

Morningstar (from issues 63-65), illustrated by Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly, returns to the main storyline as the war of Heaven inches closer to the flashpoint and Lucifer battles the thing that has been hiding in Jill Presto’s womb. Acquiring allies in the strangest places, he then goes to Christopher Rudd to recruit the new warden of Hell and his remaining Damned, as the war starts and both sides begin to take casualties.

Michael Wm. Kaluta illustrates a second interlude, The Beast Can’t Take Your Call Right Now (issue 66). With all the demons and monsters battling at the end of creation, who is answering when mortals summon infernal powers to make those legendary deals? This much needed and wonderful light relief serves to brace you for the carnage to come as Morningstar resumes (issues 67-69) with a severely wounded Lucifer fending off Fenris, the Avatar of Destruction, who is determined to unmake everything and return the universe to primal chaos.

This is a classic and remarkable end to a spectacular comic series, delivering the emotional pay-off that it promised and more besides. And there’s still one more volume to go…

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Mike Carey & various

(Vertigo)  ISBN 1-84576-23811-X

The war of Heaven is going badly for all concerned. God has vanished and, despite the machinations of each being of power, a rank outsider has assumed his position and responsibilities. Many disparate factions have aligned and realigned and final battle lines have been drawn. When the battle for everything begins it will affect all reality — and not all the combatants expect, or even plan, to survive.

The sides broadly coalesce into Lilith (the woman Adam and God replaced with Eve – and look how well that turned out!) and every creature that feels wronged or slighted by Heaven, ranged against the Host of Angels and Powers besieged in their Silver City. The first story, The Eighth Sin (issue #55 of the monthly comic), by Carey and artist Marc Hempel, concentrates on events in Hell as the Angels caretaking the fell domain cede control to medieval philosopher Christopher Rudd. Following is the eponymous Crux (issues #56-57), with art from Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly as Lilith recounts her meeting with a band of sinister beings at the fringes of creation and what she sacrificed to join their alliance to destroy Heaven.

The Yahweh Dance (drawn by Ronald Wimberly, from #58) depicts the first stumbling steps of the Replacement Creator and the amount of guidance one can honestly expect from the arch-rebel Lucifer. Gross and Kelly return to end the volume with The Breach (issues #59-61). As the preparations for all-out war accelerate and the implications are felt throughout the universe by all of the truly huge cast that populate this epic, the human Jill Presto must reach some accommodation with the supernatural force in her womb that intends to be born before it kills her — or she it.

Lucifer is a true epic that reaches beyond the cosmos by concentrating on the actions of small characters as well as mighty forces. It does the work no favours to parcel it up into broken portions, even if those portions are entire Graphic Novels.

Read in one continuous flow, it becomes a masterpiece.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.