Women In Lucifer

How many strong female characters in Mike Carey's Lucifer?

Rachel
Jill
the Child of the Basanos
Elaine
Mona
Mazikeen
Cestis
Erishad
Lys
Lucifer's Eve
Esa-Kira, the centaur
Zime'etnu
Beatrice
Lilith
Spera

One Or Many Worlds?

Fantasy writers know modern cosmology but continue to write stories in which extra-cosmic forces seem to focus specifically on just one planet:

when Neil Gaiman's Dream of the Endless enters the waking world, it is the waking world of Earth;

in the seventeenth century, Destruction of the Endless abandoned his realm because Newtonian speculation about the inter-convertibility of light and matter was the first step towards nuclear conflict, as he knew from his experiences in many other worlds - this implies that the Endless base themselves in one world at a time;

when Mike Carey's Lucifer creates a universe, he and others from his father's universe visit only a single planet in the new universe;

when Lucifer's protege, Elaine, creates a universe, she focuses only on a single planet within it and finds even that difficult.

However:

Death of the Endless says that she is simultaneously present for the deaths of organisms on an extra-solar planet;

the single Martian living on Earth sees the Martian Dream;

Gaiman's current The Sandman prequel at last shows Dream's interstellar journey which involves extraterrestrial aspects of Dream.

Mike Carey's Lucifer

Mark, the Lancaster Comic Book Guy, told me that he had received a set of volumes of Mike Carey's Lucifer. I advise anyone who has not read this series to consider buying Volume I. These eleven volumes depict what happens to Lucifer Morningstar after the ten plus volumes of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.

I say "ten plus" because The Sandman monthly series was collected in ten volumes but there are also:

two volumes about Death;
one about all the Endless;
an illustrated prose story about Dream (i.e., "the Sandman");
the graphic adaptation of the prose story;
an anthology of original prose stories -

- and a few other DC Universe stories or series by Gaiman, including direct sequels to Alan Moore's six-volume Swamp Thing. So, of course, read all that before Lucifer.

Carey, like Gaiman, has enough mythological knowledge and creative imagination to sustain a story for hundreds of pages despite the near-omnipotence of some of the characters. Lucifer differs considerably from The Sandman, as Rick Veith's continuation of Swamp Thing also differs from Alan Moore's earlier re-creation of that character, but the differences of style and content enhance the value of these interconnected Vertigo titles which far surpass in quality most of DC Comics' more voluminous superheroes continuity.

Lucifer: Evensong

A rebel angel hiding among the decaying alternative hereafters resists the new God, Elaine Belloc;

Elaine moves on the face of the deeps, ploughs Hell under, leaving only a small corner intact for the demoness, Lys, makes a place for her formerly dead brother in the new creation and has a farewell drink with friends before sinking into everything;

Lucifer leaves;

beautifully drawn art by Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly illustrates Lucifer's reminiscences about the War in Heaven and his retirement from Hell on the occasion of Morpheus' second incursion, also Lucifer's last meeting with the previous God in the Void;

art by Jon J Muth shows Lucifer in a Japanese Buddhist milieu.

Hail and farewell, Lucifer Morningstar, Prince of the East!

Lancaster Castle

Lancaster Castle has closed as a prison and re-opened as a tourist attraction with a cafe. We can now freely walk in and out of the gate. It is like visiting Hell after Christopher Rudd closed it near the end of Mike Carey's Lucifer.

However, prisons still exist elsewhere in England just as Hell continues to exist in other parts of the human imagination including John Constantine: Hellblazer, written a short while ago by Andy Diggle whose workshop is just below the Castle to the left of the attached image.

The Castle has several recent, well-attested, horrific ghost stories warranting both psychic investigation and graphic dramatization.

Your New God III

In James Blish's The Day After Judgement:

after the original God has apparently died or possibly withdrawn, the new God, Satan, addresses the last magicians in the great hall of Pandemonium in the Citadel of Dis.

In Mike Carey's Lucifer:

after the original God has withdrawn, the new God and Lucifer address the angelic host, the Hellkin and the Army of the Damned in a great amphitheatre of the fallen Silver City.

Despite the many differences between these two scenes, I have tried to bring out some parallels:

in both cases, the original God is no longer around;
but, also in both cases, He has been replaced;
His replacement addresses the main movers;
the Devil plays a key role - in the first case, he is the replacement whereas, in the second case, he has prepared her;
the address occurs in a suitable location, either in Hell or in the fallen Heavenly City.

Devil In The Gateway

In Lucifer, Mike Carey's imagination sustains a lengthy and dramatic story despite the near omnipotence of several of the characters. It is helpful to summarise the Luciferean narrative because its successive stages are difficult to remember after, or even sometimes while, reading them. The construction of such an intricate plot cannot have been as easy the author makes it appear.

Lucifer, retired as Lord of Hell, owns and runs the Lux night club in Los Angeles, supported by his companion, Mazikeen of the Lilim, and a human employee. An unknown agency begins granting human wishes and this process threatens to get out of control. Heaven wants neither to intervene directly nor to let the process continue. Lucifer is hired to intervene and states his price, a "letter of passage" - to be explained later (Mike Carey, Lucifer: Devil In The Gateway, New York, 2001, p. 13).

Lucifer, powerful but not omniscient, gathers intelligence by consulting various agencies. The first such is Briadach, Lord of the Lilim in exile, who, in return for some Lethe water to ease the pain of his lingering illness, informs Lucifer that the power in question surrounds a human being called Paul Begai. When Lucifer investigates, Paul, mute, immobile and confined to a wheelchair because of Rett Syndrome, has just choked to death because his sister, Rachel, wanted him to. Lucifer, examining the body, establishes, first, that someone has created a "velleity" (again, we must await an explanation) and, secondly, that, since Paul was mute, it is possible that "it" (the "velleity"?) is "...drawn to silence." (pp. 24-25).

This makes Lucifer consult Duma, former Angel of Silence. Lucifer knows that the pre-linguistic hominids created "voiceless gods," which are still sustained by prayers not addressed to any god in particular. It must be they that have woven the velleity, a wish-granting spell that is drawn to silence and that grows dangerously by accumulating power from human gratitude. Duma, although now presiding over not Silence but Hell, remains personally silent, answering Lucifer's questions only with gestures. Asked where Lucifer must go to find the voiceless gods, he points downwards. Asked how far down, he holds four fingers of his left hand horizontally in front of his downward-pointing right index finger. Lucifer understands and thanks him.

So far:

Amenadiel of the Thrones has had to negotiate on behalf of Heaven with Lucifer;
Lucifer has consulted Briadach;
he has examined Paul;
he has consulted Duma;
next, he will telephone Pharamond, a retired deity in charge of transportation;
he will also negotiate with Rachel after rescuing her from the Lilim.

Such plot developments continue to occur but I will close the current summary here. I would not have imagined that the voiceless gods of pre-linguistic hominids would be able to trouble Heaven and I would also have expected an omnipotent Heaven to deal summarily with such minor deities. However, Carey imagines a sequence of responses and counter-responses that keep the story going for hundreds of pages and that transport the reader through many interesting places en route.

Who Plays Whom?

The Ultimates Vol I (New York, 2005) by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch includes this excellent dialogue -

Pym: Who do you think they should get to play you, Nick?
Fury: Why, Mister Samuel L. Jackson, of course. That's not even open to debate, Doctor Pym.

The version of Nick Fury in The Ultimates is drawn to look exactly like Samuel L. Jackson and Jackson has since played Fury in the Marvel superhero films.

So my question is who should play the Neil Gaiman/Mike Carey character, Lucifer Morningstar? And, looking at the attached comic book cover image, I think the answer is obvious.

Angelic Ecumenicism

We are the heirs of all the traditions. I told a colleague that I would like to meditate in the Hindu Temple but that involves sitting on the floor whereas a Catholic Church provides benches. He looked at me askance. Clearly to him a Hindu Temple was still something strange whereas, in fact, we can now be as familiar with Krishna and the Gita as with Christ and the Gospel.

European mythology provides powerful material for fantasy fiction as the works of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey demonstrate. However, other traditions are equally there to be used.

Michael: Was it not the Buddha who heard a sermon in the thunder?
Lucifer: Actually it's in the Upanishads but I applaud your ecumenical impulse. (1)

Lucifer gets it right but remains unimpressed!

Even more bizarrely, when Lucifer meets his father in the void between universes, God recounts the story of the boastful Monkey King proving himself to the Buddha by leaping to the worlds' end where five columns of white stone hold up the sky - only to be shown on his return that the columns are the Buddha's fingers. Many people know this story but would not expect God to recount it to Lucifer although it has now become appropriate that he should do so. Our imagination need no longer be confined to any one tradition.

Thor shelters overnight in one of five chambers at the back of a large open hall, only to learn the following morning that the hall and its chambers were a glove dropped by a giant. The Monkey King writes on one of five columns holding up the sky, only to learn that the columns are the Buddha's fingers. So - a big hand for Thor and the Monkey King.

(1) Carey, Mike, Lucifer: A Dalliance With The Damned (New York, 2002), p. 149.

Your New God II

Appropriately, both James Blish's Satan Mekratrig and Mike Carey's Lucifer Morningstar refer to damnation when they express their attitudes to Godhood.

Satan:

"I, SATAN MEKRATRIG, can no longer bear
"This deepest, last and bitterest of all
"My fell damnations: That at last I know
"I never wanted to be God at all
"And so, by winning all, All have I lost." (1)

Lucifer:

"Someone has to be the Founder. The preserver. The arbiter. And I was damned if it was going to be me." (2)

However, Satan speaks literally whereas Lucifer speaks colloquially, thus ironically. Lucifer had known for a long time that he did not want the top job and had planned accordingly, preparing another candidate. By contrast, Satan was taken by surprise, winning supreme power only to realise at that late stage that he did not really want it.

This Satan is the conventional figure described by Dante, remaining off-stage until the end, whereas Lucifer, looking like a regular guy except when he manifests his wings, had resigned as Lord of Hell and has had time to develop an independent existence first in The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, then in Lucifer by Carey. He is not malicious but he is selfish, casually destroying billions of beings in a hitherto unknown realm of the hereafter in order to rescue one to whom he felt an obligation.

(1) Blish, James, The Day After Judgment (New York, 1971), p. 162.
(2) Carey, Mike, Lucifer: Morningstar (New York, 2006), p. 188.

Your New God

The Day After Judgement by James Blish and Lucifer: Morningstar by Mike Carey have parallel passages.

In Blish's work, Satan, having won Armageddon, summons to the Citadel of Dis those magicians whose conjuration had initiated the conflict. He hears their advice before informing them in Miltonic verse that he is now God but does not want to be, so Man must evolve towards that role. Four men stand before the huge form of the Dantean Satan, "...five hundred yards from crown to hoof...," with only his upper body reaching above the floor of the great hall of Pandemonium. (1)

In Carey's work, the situation is more complex but there is a similar scene. God is not dead but has withdrawn, leaving others to address the problems caused by his absence. Elaine Belloc, a British schoolgirl but the Archangel Michael's daughter, thus God's granddaughter, has absorbed Michael's demiurgic energy and created a new universe. Controlling such power also enables her to prevent the otherwise inevitable dissolution of the original, now God-abandoned, universe.

At last, Elaine and Lucifer stand before the remnants of the Hellkin, the Heaven-host and the Army of the Damned in a massive amphitheatre of the fallen Silver City where Lucifer announces, "You're looking at your new God," adding to her, "...I was damned if it was going to be me. For what it's worth, I think you'll be an improvement on the old regime." (2)

Like Blish's Satan, Carey's Lucifer doesn't want Godhood but, in this case, an alternative candidate is already in place.

(1) Blish, James, The Day After Judgment, New York, 1971, p. 154.
(2) Carey, Mike, Lucifer: Morningstar, New York, 2006, p. 188.

Kipling In Comics And SF

Mike Carey's The Unwritten features both Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling as characters and made me seek out a verse I remembered from The Jungle Book. When I emailed the verse to Mike Carey, he replied with another Kipling verse about "...the old grey Widow-maker."

Neil Gaiman described his Sandman story, "Hob's Leviathan," as "...me doing Kipling..." (Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion, London, 1999, p. 180). "Hob's Leviathan" includes an Indian king who becomes a mendicant as an Indian Prime Minister did in The Second Jungle Book.

Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy names Kipling in Volumes I and III and quotes without naming him in Volumes II and IV and the first quotation is "...the old grey Widow-maker."

Graphic Intertextuality

I compared James Blish's prose fantasies, Black Easter and The Day after Judgement, with the Justice Society, Justice League, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Sandman and Lucifer graphic fantasies by, variously, Roy Thomas, Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey (see here). All these works share the fantasy premise of the literal existence of supernatural beings. Such beings may be gods, angels, demons or new fictitious characters, in particular Gaiman's "Endless," who are anthropomorphic personifications of aspects of consciousness. Some of the Endless - Destiny, Death and Dream - have been personified before but never as well as here.

The graphic series listed are of two kinds: superheroes - the Justice titles; dark fantasy - the rest. Further, Hellblazer is not only dark fantasy but fantasy horror. Superheroes is a composite genre incorporating fantasy:

the origin stories of Wonder Woman and of Captain Marvel refer to classical gods;
Superman's origin is extraterrestrial, therefore science fictional, but he coexists with WW, Cap and other characters whose powers are magical, not scientific;
the earlier Hawkman's origin was not extraterrestrial but reincarnational;
the Spectre and Deadman are ghosts. 

In addition, Thomas' Last Days of the Justice Society of America features the Aesir and Millar's Justice League: Paradise Lost features the angelic host which is why these two works are listed here.

In Black Easter, we are told that the demons are winning Armageddon because God is dead. In The Day After Judgement, Satan has become God but offers Godhood to mankind. In Gaiman's Sandman, Lucifer Morningstar retires as Lord of Hell. Thus, both Blish and Gaiman show us the Devil after he has ceased to be the Adversary, although they are different versions of the Devil. Blish shows us the Dantean Satan, albeit in a changed context, whereas Gaiman's Lucifer, especially as developed in the sequel by Carey, is dedicated to self-will, not to malice.

Blish's two fantasies refer to the Bible, Dante, Milton and CS Lewis. Moore and Gaiman also make scriptural and literary references. Additionally, the publishing schedule of comic books generates an indefinitely prolonged narrative that can become merely self-referential. A single company publishes several interconnected monthly titles for many years or, in some cases, decades. In the few works mentioned here, a continuous narrative stretches from the Spear of Destiny, which pierced Christ's side on the Cross, to a new universe with no Hell. Hitler uses the Spear to conjure Ragnarok. The Justice Society, merging with the Aesir, endlessly re-fights Ragnarok, thus indefinitely postponing its expected outcome, the destruction of this universe. Or so they think. That is where writer Roy Thomas leaves them.

Gaiman reveals that the endlessly re-fought Ragnarok, with its versions of Odin and the other Aesir, is a simulation in a transparent sphere held in the hand of the Odin who co-exists with the title character of Sandman, Dream of the Endless. Lucifer has retired, expelled the damned from Hell and given the Key of this now empty realm to Dream. Odin and others want the Key. Odin hopes that Dream will exchange the Key for the miniature Ragnarok. He is puzzled by the intrusion of human heroes into the sphere but hopes that Dream will be interested because one of these heroes is the earlier, very different, version of Sandman.

In Lucifer, the retired Lucifer must cope when God also retires and is succeeded, after some confusion, by his granddaughter who abolishes Hell. Thus, a fictional continuity with three authors - Thomas, Gaiman and Carey - indirectly links the Spear to the new universe. However, it is not necessary that anyone notice this. The reader of Lucifer need not remember or even have read Thomas' story. Events of comparable magnitude, like an attempt to destroy Heaven in Moore's Swamp Thing or the Swamp Thing becoming God in Millar's Swamp Thing, have occurred between the Second World War and Carey's Second War in Heaven but these also need not be remembered. 

Each story is worth reading in its own right and they present an interesting sequence if read successively but that sequence is very much in the background and for immediate story purposes might as well not be there. I have summarised some interconnected narratives that I have valued but they have been left behind by subsequent events that I have not read. Lucifer has gone but there is a new Dream and something else is happening with Swamp Thing. Comics continue and I might revisit them in future but for now I am re-reading Moore, Gaiman and Carey whose stories at least are of lasting value. 

To And From Hell

Morpheus, the title character of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, condemns his former lover Nada to Hell because that is the sort of thing that mythological beings do. This Morpheus is a modern myth whose story incorporates all other myths. For example, Cain still dwells in the Land of Nod, Morpheus' realm, the Dreaming. Gods begin in Dream's realm and end in Death's. There is a Hell in the DC Vertigo universe because:

it is already part of the story;
millions have imagined it before us and have even believed it;
it expresses guilt and fear and synthesises experience with imagination. (1)

Hell's creator lets souls go there because they believe that it is appropriate. Some demons are former angels who fell with Lucifer. Others came from elsewhere. Yes, Judaism and Christianity adopted other ancient Middle Eastern demonologies.

The creator is infinite and eternal but only within his own story. Stories differ and change. That one story has more than one version we already know from Genesis, Kings, the Gospels, Greek mythology and the difference between the book and the film. We all know that Venus sprang from the sea foam but Homer, the most authoritative Greek poet, did not. From Venus' two origin stories, Plato deduced that there is a heavenly love and an Earthly love, an appropriate philosophical conclusion.

When, in Mike Carey's Lucifer, a sequel to Gaiman's Sandman, God's granddaughter, the former English schoolgirl, Elaine Belloc, is able to write a new story/create a new universe, she rightly leaves out Hell but it remains a necessary part of the parallel narrative, Hellblazer, which must now be set in a divergent universe. We don't have to like the idea of Hell but it is part of our collective consciousness. The guy who signed his letter "From Hell" was right. He wrote from the worst part of the human mind.

(1) Sandman, Lucifer and Hellblazer are or were monthly comic books published by DC Comics and collected as graphic novels.