For a long time, Lucifer has been one of my favourite comics. I picked up the first couple issues, thought they were so-so, and didn’t continue; a few years later, I proved myself a whore for marketing by picking up #25, which featured Death on the cover. I was hooked then, even though I didn’t fully understand what was going on – it was enough to be aware that something big and impressive was happening, and that I wanted in. After a couple years, I stopped reading the monthly in favour of the trade paperback format. Even though it meant only one or two fixes per year, the epic-scale story worked much better that way, though there were still occasional instances of “wait… who is that? Oh, right, they last appeared 20 issues ago.”
After 75 issues, the story of the fallen angel and those whose lives have entwined with his came to an end last year, and the final collection was released last week. Evensong is largely an epilogue to the climactic events of Morningstar, a fine farewell to a book that brings back most of the characters and creators that made it such an enjoyable read.
Fireside Tales is a sweet story about storytelling, a self-contained piece about a human boy entering a centaur storytelling contest. While it took me nearly half an issue to place the name “Thole”, it’s still a fun story, the sort of one-off Mike Carey does so well; while Lucifer has been one big epic, it’s also been full of short, little stories. Smax artist Xander Cannon brings his light touch to three stories about awkward truths and little white lies that wouldn’t have felt out of place in Sandman.
Carey gets about the business of resolutions with the two-part Evensong: Lucifer says his goodbyes and settles some unfinished business before departing the universe. A visit to the realm of the Japanese goddess Izanami goes much more smoothly than his previous visit to the House of Windowless Rooms, in which he ended up slaughtering most of Izanami’s family. The high points of the story, though, are his farewells: First to Elaine Belloc, who is still figuring out her new place in the cosmos, and finally to Mazikeen, his servant, soldier, and lover. The latter scene is one of the highlights of the book, as the lord finally takes his leave of his faithful servant. It’s obvious that Mazikeen can’t get the happy ending she desires, so their parting is not entirely a pleasant one.
While Lucifer has been a compelling and dynamic character, he’s seldom been a particularly sympathetic one. Most of the series has been about the title character using and manipulating whoever he needs to in order to further his own plans. He’s not without compassion, but it’s always tempered with cold intellect and self-serving motivations. The ultimate story of rebelling against his pre-ordained place in the cosmos is a strong one, but not exactly an emotional piece. As such, much of the emotion of the series has come from the supporting cast: Mazikeen, Elaine, and Jill Presto in particular. It’s only in Lucifer’s final scene with Mazikeen that Carey brings the book back to a human level – such as it is in a scene between a demon and an angel – and as always, he does it well.
Before saying his final farewells, Carey takes another brief detour, this one with some more familiar faces: The Gaudium Option sees Elaine dispatching fallen Cherub Gaudium, along with his equally fallen sister Spera, to clear out an odd dimension full of forgotten gods and monsters. It’s a fitting farewell to the great comic relief of the series; Gaudium and Spera seldom failed to provide a few laugh-out-loud moments, yet never came off as Disney-style wacky sidekicks. They must deal with shrimp gods and Zoroastrian demon pits in their own barely-competent manner.
Perhaps more enjoyable than the story itself is the appropriate return of Dean Ormston, a frequent fill-in artist before leaving the series for a full-time gig on a book that was soon cancelled. His dark, Mignola-esque pencils provided the perfect mood to some dark stories, many of the single-issue stories that made the series so great. He’s particularly suited to the morbid and bizarre adventures of the fallen cherubs, so it’s particularly nice to see him return for one last hurrah on the series. Carey mentions in his afterword that he’ll never write another Lucifer story, but I’m holding out hope he’ll one day return for a Gaudium & Spera miniseries, ideally to be drawn by Ormston.
The book’s emotional core is tied up in Eve, in which Elaine gathers much of the supporting cast – Mazikeen, Jill, Spera, Mona, and Rachel Begai – for a girls’ night out. There are some happy endings, as well as some inevitable acceptances: Most touching is Elaine visiting her mother one final time, and the overall theme of goodbyes carries the issue nicely. There’s also surprisingly little bloodshed, given the tangled past of Elaine’s friends. There’s comedy – Mona complains that hedgehogs are taking advantage of her, and Spera manages to be blunt and fashionable – as well as a touching finale to the last of Elaine’s humanity. It’s a nice resolution to the human side of the book, without which it might not have been such essential reading.
It’s also worth noting for Ryan Kelly’s return as the series inker, after a few issues away (during which he was covered for by Aaron Alexovich, who added a darker, heavier touch to Peter Gross’ elegant and simple pencils). Kelly, who’s been busy illustrating Brian Wood’s excellent Local, seems to be adding more of a distinctive, personal touch now – there are some strong similarities to his pencilled work.
Finally – more or less – Carey leaves us with All We Need of Hell, perhaps the strongest, most in-depth portrait of the title character in the series. Lucifer’s thoughts and motivations were often kept close to his chest, and he was usually about planning. But now, when everything is at an end, there’s time for reflection: The past, as well as the present, courtesy of an unexpected conversation in the middle of nowhere. While Eve was the emotional finale to the series, this is clearly the thematic one, going so far as to revisit Lucifer’s “first” appearance back in Season of Mists. It’s about rebellion, and free will, how the extent of both are limited, even if you’re practically – or literally – God. “You cannot be your own maker,” is probably the truth of the series. Despite its lofty themes and epic scope, Lucifer has always been about something familiar to us all: Making your own place in the universe and escaping others’ expectations of you.
And that’s all there is. Except, of course, for the somewhat odd inclusion of Nirvana, an one-shot that came out several years ago but wasn’t collected until now. It’s a fine story with gorgeous painted art by Jon J. Muth, but it really doesn’t fit here, either chronologically or thematically. It was originally published in 2002, so there were multiple opportunities to insert it in a collection; even the penultimate volume would have been better than this, even if it would have made for a shorter finale. All We Need of Hell has such finality – complete with a farewell & dedication page from Carey and Gross – that it feels wrong to turn the page and see another story. There is symbolism, I suppose – Muth illustrated one of the final issues of Sandman – but this just feels like bad planning.
Lucifer must have been an intimidating gig: Take an epic literary character
and a supporting character in one of the most acclaimed comics of all time, and make him your own. To his credit, Mike Carey is probably the only writer I know who can write Neil Gaiman’s characters without seeming like a bad Gaiman impersonator. Lucifer found its voice early on, thanks to Carey’s epic vision and strong characters, as well as Peter Gross’ restrained yet magical art, Dean Ormston’s dark contributions, and Christopher Moeller’s gorgeous covers. It’s probably been my favourite book of the past several years, and it’s certainly sad to see it go. But it bows out having done what it set out to do, a testament to vision and dedication on the parts of both creators and publisher.
Saying goodbye is always tough, but this is really more of a “see you later” – those Lucifer volumes will have a place on my bookshelf for a long time.