Lucifer (2018-) Vol. 1: The Infernal Comedy

Great comic, son absolutely loved it.

What an amazing start this is gonna be a good series..!!

I thought that the artwork was absolutely gorgeous in this volume, but the story itself was pretty average. It deals with Lucifer, absent from Hell, trying to work out where he is and how he got there. Some of the plotting was quite confusing, particularly in the early issues and often felt a little bit convoluted. However, once the story really got going, I found myself more invested in the action and I really liked Sycorax as a character. As I said, the art here is just stunning, and the Bowie-esque early Lucifer style was perfect. Overall, I think that this could potentially become an interesting series, but this first volume was a bit lacklustre.I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

O.K., here's the deal as I understand it. There are four new series that are spinoffs of Neil Gaiman's Sandman Universe. Each shares and expands on the Sandman Universe and is set in the "evolving" world of the Dreaming. Don't know how much Gaiman is involved, (the books are claimed to be "from the mind of...", or "curated by"), but there seem to be more and more books out there that use Gaiman's name and stories but in which he otherwise does not seem that much involved.I've now read the beginning of the "Dreaming" series, (Volume 1, "Pathways and Emanations"), and the beginning of the"Lucifer" series, (Volume 1, "The Infernal Comedy"). Don't be confused. While each Volume collects the first 6 issues of their respective series, each Volume also starts with the same "Sandman Universe Special #1". This Special lays the groundwork for all four of the spinoffs. At first I thought I had the same book twice over, until I realized that they were different books, but just started with the same 48 page one-shot. It appears the two other spinoff series, ("Books of Magic" and "House of Whispers"), will open the same way. The Special follows the raven Mathew as he confirms that the Dreamer has abandoned the Dreamland, and introduces and sets the stage for each of the four new series. For what it's worth, so far the Special one-shot has been my favorite part of this whole project.Each of the series has a different writer; liking or disliking one won't tell you much about the others. So, with that background, (hah! I'm doing the same opening for each series review), let's turn to "Lucifer", the second of the four new Volumes. Our theme, if we need one, is "Hope and Suffering".MILD PLOT AND PREMISE SPOILERS.We open with Lucifer trapped in a strange village-like place. He's blind and destitute, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. The story is told through a narrative in the present and lots of flashbacks, which may be a bit showy but actually works well. Basically, Lucifer has to reunite his son with the boy's mother, and figure out which character from his past has confined him to this village prison. An entirely separate story thread follows an L.A. detective caught up in some shadowy satanic conspiracy. The threads do eventually merge in a suspenseful, and even thrilling, fashion.Lots of interesting things going on. Lucifer, when he isn't agonizing, has a deadpan sense of humor. Modeling young and powerful Lucifer on David Bowie has worked for everyone who has ever done it, including Bowie, and it works very well here. Making William Blake Lucifer's sidekick of sorts is a masterstroke, since Blake's actual poetry could be right out of the Sandman Universe anyway. There are lots of heavy throwaway lines and deep observations, but more of them make sense here than seems usual.For those of a literary bent there is a lot to work with here. William Blake wrote an actual book, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" that addresses many of the same "contraries" that arise in this novel's fictional "Annulment of Heaven and Hell". Sycorax, Prospero, and of course Caliban, are all taken from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", a play about justice and the superiority of forgiveness over revenge. That's all fairly heavy stuff, but it is fun to have real, instead of entirely fanciful, allusions in novels like this. (And "Jack Tales" are everywhere and essential reading for any folklorist. The Stingy Jack tale in this book is an exceptionally fine version of one of the foundational Jack tales.) And so it goes; slews of literary and folktale Easter eggs hidden throughout the book. Of course, you can skip all of that if you care to, since the double-threaded story is fine as is.My upshot was that I enjoyed this much more than the first spinoff, "The Dreaming". I don't know how Sandman Universey it is, but this novel was great fun to read, rewarding on close examination, and, it almost goes without saying, a pleasure to look at.(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)