Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Skimming through my back issues of Lucifer, in an attempt to catch up with the plot, I've been reminded that I haven't written up any reviews of anything after volume 2. Well, I think it's about time I corrected the situation.

The first part of A Dalliance with the Damned follows Mazikeen and Elaine as Lucifer's involvement with his new universe allow them to head off in their own directions. In Mazikeen's case, this means returning to lead Lilim-in-Exile in search of a new eden, and in Elain's it involves an astral journal and a near fatal run-in with the devilish Lady Lys in the depths of hell.

The second part focuses on the hellish court of Lord Arux, currently caught up in a vogue for all things 18th century, where some of the dukes are conspiring in an attempt to get Lucifer to return. Unfortunately for the conspirators, Lucifer isn't all that interested in his old job and, with the help of Lys's human lover Christopher Rudd, the plot is confounded. Lucifer then returns to LA, safe in the knowledge that Arux will provide a place for his forthcoming dual with the seraph Amenadiel, to contemplate the disposition of his new world.

Thoughts? I liked the way that Dean Ormston's art bookended the middle sections by Peter Gross. I liked the nods to old friends like Brute and Glob, Duma and Remiel, and I thought that the intrigues of Arux's court were nicely captured. Christopher Rudd's moral dilemmas were interesting and Lys, with her Valmont like transformation from libertine to something more interesting, has definite potential.

It feels like it's been a while since I last wrote a comic review. I blame exhaustion. Now that I've more or less recovered, I think it's time to write about my latest read, Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway by Mike Carey, which astute and memetically aware readers will probably realise was spun off from Gaiman's Season of Mists.

The first story in the collection finds Lucifer, bored with his life as owner of the Lux Piano Bar, recruited by the Almighty to track down a rogue wish granting entity in return for a Letter of Passage. The Morningstar tracks the entity to Paul Begai, a mute kid suffering from Rett Syndrome who appears to have attracted the wish granter with his silence. Following Paul's death, Lucifer and Paul's sister Rachel head off on a pilgrimage to the First World — the primordial darkness where ancient and almost forgotten gods live, accumulating power through the granting of small wishes.

The second story follows Lucifer and Mazikeen as they travel to Hamburg to seek a fortune telling from the seraph Meleos and his creation, the Basanos Tarot deck, in an attempt to discover the nature of the trap hidden in the Letter of Passage. In a panic, Meleos releases the cards from their confinement and freeing them to travel across the city causing havoc, until they encounter and possess the cabaret magician Jill Presto. After allowing them to tire themselves out with a spectacular show of magic, Lucifer and Mazikeen overpower Jill and the cards, before compelling them to explain the one way nature of the Letter.

The third story is a murder mystery, focusing on junior mystic Elaine and her attempts to track down the murderer of her best friend and now ghostly companion, Mona. Acting on instructions from spiritual grandmothers — presumably the Kindly Ones — Elaine attempts and fails to summon the devil to assist her in quest, but after some old fashioned Nancy Drew work she eventually discovers that Mona's death was connected drug dealing and dodgy goings on at her school. Eventually, once the villain who threw Mona off the overpass has been unmasked and lies dying on the floor, Lucifer eventually shows up and saves Elaine, despite claiming that she failed to summon him, telling her that the Basanos suggested that he save her life.

I thought this was a pretty good collection of stories that more than lived up to Gaiman's original character. Lucifer is a suave and sophisticated lead character, superficially attractive but with the sort of ruthlessness that you'd expect from the former Lord of Hell, very much his own man with a refusal to be anyone's cat's paw — at one point, after being told by the emissary of Heaven that he will accept the deal, he says, "You'd think part of omniscience would be knowing when to stop, but still..." Very definitely not the sort of guy you want to pick as your surrogate father figure.