Lucifer Vol. 10: Morningstar

Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross, Ryan Kelly, Colleen Doran, and Michael Kaluta

I'd started to feel like this comic had played itself out a little over the last couple of volumes, and that feeling extended into the beginning of this penultimate book, but the latter half of the trade is amazing.

In this volume, Carey brings most of the plotlines that ran through the first sixty-odd issues of the comic to a head, as three armies (the Lilim, the Angels, and the combined forces of Hell and its damned) meet outside the gates of heaven while Lucifer fights the Fenris Wolf at the Primum Mobile, the throne of heaven.

The action and warfare is nowhere near as significant as some of the other things going on though, especially with Elaine Belloc and Lilith, who meet Jahweh and debate the future of all creation.

Wisely, Carey intersperses some of the more pivotal scenes with interludes, one of which involves a sorcerer who summons the most powerful demon in Hell to be his thrall, not realizing that Gaudium, the troublesome former cherub is the only creature currently in Hell.  That's a great issue, with art by the incomparable Michael Kaluta.  An earlier interlude returns to some of the earliest supporting characters of this series - the crippled Jayesh and his conflicted ex-skinhead boyfriend.  This story is drawn by Colleen Doran, an artist who we see way too little of these days.

This book goes a long way towards helping me understand why this series is spoken of with such respect, something I wasn't always getting earlier.  I look forward to finishing it all off with the next volume.