Written by Mike CareyArt by Scott Hampton, Chris Weston, James Hodgkins, Warren Pleece and Dean Ormston
When "Lucifer" began, I remember thinking to myself that it was just an attempt to cash in on The Sandman, and having not been familiar with Mike Carey, I never even gave it a look. More recently, having enjoyed "Crossing Midnight", "Unwritten", and some of Carey's other work, I decided it was time to go back and give this title a shot.
The first volume is made up of the original three-issue mini-series, the first three-issue arc of the main title, and a one-off story. Each tale has different artists, although all three stories fit nicely into the usual styles one sees with Vertigo books.
In the first arc, Lucifer is pressed into the service of Heaven, to track down and deal with an 'old' god, who is granting wishes of a dangerous nature. This causes him to make a trip back to Hell, more to establish the series than for any real story purpose, before he goes on a pilgrimage of sorts with a half-Indian girl. The story reads well, and definitely does its job of establishing Lucifer as a right bastard.
In the second arc, he goes to Germany to consult with a living deck of Tarot cards kept under lock and key by a fellow angel, who also collects books. He keeps a shabby used bookstore, which is really a library of Borgesian proportions. This arc also features (because it's set in Germany) a gay Pakistani, neo-Nazis, and cabaret performers. I'm not sure where the beer wenches were - maybe they'll be in the sequel. This was a good story too, and Carey uses it to preview, by way of talking Tarot divination, much of what I assume will come in future volumes.
The final story is the best in the book. In it, a young girl with various mystical abilities attempts to solve the mystery of her friend's murder, accompanied by the spirit of that friend. That the girl meets with Lucifer is not much of a surprise. This story, more than any other, reminded me of those odd moments in Gaiman's "Sandman" where some character would end up meeting Morpheus only towards the end of their story, thereby explaining why the story was in the book in the first place.
I am intrigued by Carey's take on this character, and will continue to work through the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment