Lucifer Vol. 7 - Exodus

Lucifer Vol. 7 - Exodus
By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, & Ryan Kelly

By now, it’s clear to me that Mike Carey’s critically-acclaimed Lucifer series is something of an uneven experience. When it’s a good, it’s quite good indeed and surely worthy of praise. And when it’s not, it’s a well-intentioned mess.

Exodus, at least, falls into the former category. It’s a fairly focused work with a clear tale to tell – two, actually – and a clear arc that doesn’t leave you scratching your head.

So that’s good.

Though Exodus is made up of two separate stories, they’re connected in theme. God, you see, has left heaven. We don’t know where he went. He’s God. I guess he can go wherever the hell he wants. But anyway, he’s gone, and that’s Bad, because it means that his creation (as in the whole damn universe and everything connected to it) will slowly start to fall apart and die. Lucifer doesn’t want this to happen. Why? He has his reasons.

In the first story, ancient immortal creatures steal God’s power and try to take the throne of heaven. They can’t handle all that power, of course, giving Lucifer an opportunity to join ranks with the angles and stop them. For reasons that are his own.

It’s a decent little tale, especially fun for the uneasy tension between the always arrogant Lucifer and the even more arrogant angels.

In the second story, Lucifer decides that all immortal beings need to get the heck out of the realm he created (which won’t be affected when God’s realm dies, natch). He gathers up the folks who went on that magic boat ride from Mansions of the Silence, and instructs them to start kicking folks out. This arc is presented as a series of quirky fairy tales, seemingly unrelated at first but eventually merging into a larger story. There are some really swell high points here, especially the Puppet Show Of Gruesome Evil (my title). Essential to the overall narrative? Maybe not. But very enjoyable nonetheless.

This series continues to baffle the hell out of me. It has moments of pure excellence, then stretches of directionless blah, and then comes back to brilliant.

Yet I keep reading.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Lucifer Vol. 6 - Mansions of the Silence

Lucifer Vol. 6 - Mansions of the Silence
By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, & Ryan Kelly

Mansions of the Silence is a volume-long saga that pretty much amounts to an epic journey through strange and bizarre sights in, like, a totally epic and strange and bizarre dimension. It's writer Mike Carey's chance to pull out a dozen odd ideas and toss them onto the page. There are no rules, just do anything. Show anything. Make it a wild and crazy trip.

Well, it was indeed a wild and crazy trip. Did the story work? For the most part. At the core of the quest is an effort to bring back a character we grew to like in earlier volumes, so that at least helps draw us in. She's one of the few characters we ever really care about in Lucifer; I wanted to see her come back. You will, too.

On the other hand, this whole volume is almost all supporting cast. The titular fallen angel is the driving force of the story in spirit only; he's almost never on screen. He's busy with other stuff. You know, bugging angels or whatever. What a bastard.

It all wraps up with a I Have No Idea What Just Happened, which is frustrating because the ship on the cover? Cool. Some of what happens to our VERY awesome supporting cast? Cool. But the villains? Don't know, don't care. And the resolution? Don't know, don't care.

This is a repeated problem in the series. Carey has good ideas and at times his prose can really sing, but too often his stories are scattered, murky and indirect. Stuff seems to just happen, and it's hard to tell why or what it all means.

And it's not a matter of trusting the reader. I like writers who trust their readers. I admire the trait. This is not that. this is a pure storytelling issue.

Mansions of the Silence serves as a bridge between the initial major arc, concerning the Basanos, and the second major arc, concerning God's abandonment of heaven. It's the halfway point of the series and the link between the first half (a saga of its own) and the second half (a saga of its own). So yeah, you kind of have to get through it.

Decent enough stuff, but certainly not a high point in the series.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Lucifer Vol. 5 - Inferno

Lucifer Vol. 5 - Inferno
By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, & Ryan Kelly

The rise and fall in quality of this series ... it gets frustrating. It does. Just when you think writer Mike Carey is hitting his stride, just when you think you're going to understand all the accolades thrown his way because he just gave you a heaping helping of AWESOME, you get a mixed bag of great ideas and adequate execution. Such is the case with Inferno, which seems to slap together the end of Vol. 4 and the start of Vol. 6. By all rights, it shouldn't exist as its own volume.

Inferno picks up where The Divine Comedy left off, plunging Lucifer into Hell so he can confront a rival angel. It's a fine enough four-part story with some solid plot surprises, but the pacing stinks and the art is pretty bland. What is it about Vertigo fill-in artists that makes them so often wrong? Sad that the fantastic tale started in the previous volume ends like this.

(As a side note, I'm coming to find that uneven pacing is a repeated quirk of this series. When it's good, it's fine, but sometimes Carey gets into spurts where he is changing scenes on every page and can't quite nail down a satisfying flow.)

A one-shot sits in the middle of this volume, and it. Is. Outstanding. Absolutely outstanding. One of the best issues of the series. Dean Ormston does the art, and it rocks. Carey tells a nifty side story, and it rocks. The issue rocks. The whole thing rocks.

Did I mention it rocks?

Then it's into a two-party that is really just a prologue to Vol. 6 (Mansions of the Silence). The art is back up to speed, there is some very clever stuff happening, and Carey picks up a few storylines set aside prior to this volume. By the look of things, the next volume will be great, delving into Norse mythology and bringing the full supporting cast together for an epic journey.

But that's next volume. Infernoone is what we're dealing with here, and it is, sadly, a mixed bag.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Lucifer Vol. 4 - The Divine Comedy

Lucifer Vol. 4 - The Divine Comedy
By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, & Ryan Kelly

Outstanding.

Mike Carey's grand epic about the fallen angel Lucifer finally lives up to its potential, delivering a gripping story about Lucifer's Creation, a bold attempt to take it from him, and another Fall.

What's not to like about this? The art is sharp, the storytelling crisp and clear, and the story itself is nothing short of dynamite.

Carey uses the conceit of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy in reverse, opening with the three-part Paradiso, which depicts the grandness of Lucifer's rebellious creation, then steering into the three-part Purgatorio, during which Lucifer's own folly comes back to haunt him and he is cut off from that which he created. Standalone stories bridge the gaps between each section. (Inferno gets its own volume in Vol. 5 of this series.) Much of what previously laid groundwork explodes in this set of story arcs, including stuff going way back to the first few issues. Important supporting characters see some major action here, some of them changed in big ways.

But most impressive here is how much Carey's writing -- the raw prose -- has improved from the first volume or two. Finally he's able to tangle with Neil Gaiman, from whose Sandman series Lucifer leapt. The writing is rich, at times beautiful, but never shows off. It's always in the right voice, depending on viewpoint, and very well done.

Epic and wonderful, this is the stuff that made me want to read this series in the first place.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Lucifer Vol. 3 -- A Dalliance with the Damned

Lucifer Vol. 3 -- A Dalliance with the Damned
By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, & Ryan Kelly

Spotty and uneven. Missed opportunities. Flashes of excellence. Inconsistent. That's A Dalliance with the Damned.

For this volume to have a story as strong and interesting as the one in which Lucifer creates his own Garden of Eden and his own Adam and Eve is a shame, because the rest of it just doesn't rise to that story's level of excellence.

A few semi-standalones, such as the aforementioned Eden story, open up the volume, and they are, as noted, uneven at best. When they are good, they're outstanding, and when they're not they are entirely forgettable. (I can't even remember them now, and I only read them a few days ago.)

A three-parter set in hell feels like a space-filling diversion. Sure, the idea of a demon of hell taking a fancy to one of the damned is interesting, but we really don't care about the human character, and we certainly don't care about the political drama of the demons. Worse still, when Lucifer finally shows up in his own book, it's bland. About the only redeeming quality of this tale is that the human character may end up being interesting when all is said and done. Time will tell.

The final story is ... eh. What the hell was the point of the two human characters introduced here? Is it so we could see that Lucifer is a bastard? So that we don't get to like him too much? Whatever.

At least it ended on a nice cliffhanger that will hopefully set up some decent stories going forward.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Lucifer Vol. 2 - Children and Monsters

Lucifer Vol. 2 - Children and Monsters
By Mike Carey, Peter Gross, & Ryan Kelly

As with the first volume in Mike Carey's epic Lucifer series, the second volume contains two story arcs (2.5?) between its covers. They pick up where the first left off. Lucifer, as a reward for completing a task for God, has been given a gateway to an untouched void; a brand new realm in which there is nothingness; a place outside of creation.

This is, I guess, a big, big deal, because everyone wants it. And by everyone I mean EVERYONE, including the angels of Heaven, who are ready to mass an attack on Lucifer in order to get control of the gateway.

So Lucifer has some problems.

First we get Lucifer trying to regain his wings, which were torn off at his request in the pages of Sandman. This chapter has a nice Asian influence, cracking art and some good twists. It feels like a divergence, but it's an important step in building Lucifer back to the character he was before he left Hell.

Later we get some muddy stuff about an immortal girl and some such, a tangent that had me backtracking once or twice to be sure I was following the story. (As I will come to discovered later, this is not unusual for this series.)

And finally, we get the angels' attack on Lucifer's LA club, Lux, an attack that manages to take all that came prior (including in the first volume) and bring it full circle. Nifty stuff, and ultimately some very smart storytelling by Carey. He uses a number of elements introduced earlier, including some that seemed mere throwaways, and brings them into play for a rousing story.

All in all, Carey's writing is very good, at times excellent, and his plots are relatively strong. I have an issue with clarity, though. Maybe it's just me, but I at times find myself flipping back to double check on details from earlier stories or reminding myself who and what certain characters are. The art is fine, nothing to write home about, but it gets the job done.

Is this up to Sandman's level? Not after the first two volumes, no, not really. But then, what is? If the series improves for the third volume, it will be well on its way to excellence on its own terms. And really, that's the best thing a good comic can aspire to.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.

Lucifer Vol. 1 - Devil in the Gateway

Lucifer Vol. 1 - Devil in the Gateway
By Mike Carey

It goes without saying that most efforts to match Neil Gaiman's now legendary Sandman are destined to fall short of the mark. It also goes without saying that in writing a spinoff to Sandman, Mike Carey ended up in the unfortunate (and at times unfair) position of having his comic be relentlessly compared to Gaiman's landmark series.

And yes, I am going to further poke at the wound in this series of blog posts.

Two arcs (one from a miniseries) and a single issue make up the opening trade in the 11-volume Lucifer series, which is based on the portrait of Lucifer painted in the Sandman arc Season of Mists. Are the stories collected here any good?

Yes, they are good. Not great, but certainly good.

In the opening arc, Lucifer, who abandoned hell in aforementioned Sandman arc, is given a task to do. A task from God. The big guy has a problem, you see -- elder gods mucking with humanity in a bad way, and this will cause Big Problems -- so he goes to Lucifer to take care of the matter. An odd choice. Wonder what God is up to?

The watercoloured art in this first arc is great. The concepts are interesting, if vague, and the dialogue largely rings true. The resolution falls a bit flat, however, though it does feel as if it sets up future events. (As of this reading, I don't know if that's the case, but I assume so.) All in all, s solid start.

The second arc sort of picks up where the first left off, and involves a deck of cards filled with ... I dunno, spirits or demons or something. Carey obviously had some neat ideas he wanted to play around with, but I felt like this arc was unrefined and unfocused. You could see where he wanted to go, the themes with which he wanted to play and the ideas he wanted to seed, but it didn't quite click. A noble effort, to be sure, and certainly not bad, but clearly too early for Carey to start hitting his stride.

Not a bad start. I look forward to Vol. 2, in which (I'm pretty sure) the series' regular artist comes on board.

An earlier version of this review was originally posted at IMWAN.com.

Read my regular, everything-and-anything (usually on writing and music) blog right over here.