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.