Oh and, to any other metalheads looking into reading this: listen to Ghost, Slayer and Venom while reading this, it enhances the experience a bit I’d say! All stories are lies. But good stories are lies made from light and fire. And they lift our hearts out of the dust, and out of the grave. Unfortunately, I felt mostly bored reading this volume so I doubt I will continue on with this series to see if Carey does find his own groove. This book should have taken me not more than a couple of hours to read, but it took me all day to get through. Maybe, one day I'll give it another chance, but for now, I'm setting it aside.

This is not for the faint-of-heart (which I would normally consider myself), and a lot of the story is rooted in deep and terrible sadness. And yet I enjoyed this enough that I promptly put the next volume on hold and will be reading it soon. Hopefully it will stay on that edge of tolerably dark for me, without passing over to unbearable. The series paralleled The Sandman in several ways, with epic fantasy stories being told in arcs separated by one-shot episodes depicting a smaller, more personal tale. Unlike The Sandman, the series has had a consistent art team in Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly, with most of the odd issues illustrated by Dean Ormston. The title's 50th issue was penciled by P. Craig Russell, a homage to The Sandman #50. Structurally, the series mostly follows its own path. Numerous gods appear, with greater focus on Judeo-Christian religion (as viewed by Milton in Paradise Lost), Japanese mythology and Norse mythology than in The Sandman. As for the Endless themselves, Dream, Death, Delirium and Destiny appear, but their appearances are small and rare. Destiny, perhaps, plays the biggest role in so far as he represents predestination, which Lucifer of course finds "offensive as a concept", stating that Lucifer knows Destiny is "really just a SIDE effect of [Lucifer's] FATHER, or rather, his deterministic APPROACH to the act of creation." This is absolutely my favorite graphic novel, probably my favorite 'book' in general [if I'm allowed to count a graphic novel series as a single book lol], and definitely the standard to which I hold up any other stories I read about Lucifer [spoiler alert: they all fall woefully short, with the exception of Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer]. So strap in for the long haul of me just absolutely gushing over every single part of this. He is never without the formidable resources of his brilliant intellect and his unbending will or inner strength, which allowed him to defy and confront his Father, as well as many other formidable opponents, without fear or doubt. Although Lucifer's overt exercise of power is limited in the books, if he is provoked to violence, his preference seems to be to use fire and light as a weapon. His original role was as "God's lamplighter", in which he used his will to condense clouds of hydrogen into star-masses and set them alight. As terrifying as they are brief, battles with Lucifer usually begin and end with him drawing down the flames of a super-heated main sequence star and incinerating to ash anything in the immediate area. However, the true reasons why he favors light and fire are partially explained in the story "Lilith" (from The Wolf Beneath the Tree).

Note: The versions of Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, Cain and Abel in mainstream New 52 are not of the same continuity as the versions in the previous or later Lucifer comics and are currently noncanonical to the Vertigo Sandman- Lucifer- Hellblazer continuity, in which Lucifer is not ruling Hell and Cain has not been destroyed or banished to Hell. In fact, Cain (restored to his original / New Earth version) appeared in DC's Dark Nights: Metal #2 as a member of the Immortal Men with his brother Abel. Cain, Abel, Gabriel, and Lucifer (the Pre- Flashpoint versions) currently appear in the Sandman Universe Comics from Vertigo. Cain, Abel, Daniel Hall (Dream), and Lucien also appeared in DCs' Dark Nights: Metal in these forms, re-establishing their Pre- New 52 incarnations in both DC and Vertigo.

This is where Carey really begins to set up the story that will carry through the end of the series. Carey is excellent at planning ahead and building stories atop stories. It's what make this series so satisfying. The show is like candy land compared to the comics. Lucifer in the comic is cold, calculative, ruthless and committed in his hatred for heaven. He doesn't interfere unless it doesn't serve any purpose. One of my favorite comic series, and I've read it at least 2-3 times before this, so I'm rather surprised that I haven't made some comment about it here on Goodreads yet. I had concerns as I waded through the first few issues that this was a twisted version of Highway to Heaven (showing my age referencing a Michael Landon show? Yup!)—a monthly morality tale with a dark twist. That’s all well and good, but not something I’d have been willing to commit to for dozens of issues. Fortunately, an intriguing (and funny) visit to “The House of Windowless Rooms” changed the tenor and tone of the story—not coincidentally, that’s the point where Gross took over as penciler and the storytelling as a whole got better. The Carey/Gross duo, also responsible for the excellent (if occasionally frustrating) The Unwritten, is unquestionably greater than the sum of its parts (not unlike peanut butter and chocolate), and the book really hits its stride over the second half (though still had some uneven moments).Lucifer Morningstar, The Lightbringer, Satan, The Lord of Lies, The Devil, The Prince of the East, The Morningstar, The Sun Lighter of God, The Adversary, Old Scratch However, if you're hoping to see Morningstar traipsing around solving crimes with a cute cop you'll be sorely disappointed. Although, several of the storylines do involve Lucifer traipsing around with females. So. There's that. World: The art is solid, it’s not the best type of the era and the framing is fairly standard but it does it’s job. The world building is solid too as it continues the story that we saw in Sandman and we get to see the little piece of the world that Gaiman has created for Lucifer. The magic stuff is done well and pretty representative of the era of comics that this book is from. Turns out the book is NOTHING like that (both fortunately and unfortunately). There IS a sardonic humor underpinning the story, but it’s dark. Very dark. Like, homophobes sodomizing a guy with a broken beer bottle in dark alley dark. This is not light, fluffy pre-bed reading (as I discovered, reading it mostly right before bed). It’s heavy. Like lifting an elephant being ridden by an aircraft character. In the series, Lucifer runs a piano bar (an element introduced in The Sandman story " The Kindly Ones") called "Lux" in Los Angeles. Lucifer is portrayed as a sophisticated and charming man, in accordance with the stereotypical gentleman devil. [1]