willhines.net

I finished a long comics series called Lucifer today that Kevin had recommended. It’s a spin-off of comics series The Sandman, which you may have seen lying around the shelves of various used-to-be-depressed girls and/or Will Hines over the years. Lucifer was very different than The Sandman, although similar in that lots of the stories had British characters casually explaining really obscure rituals to each other as they turn into trolls. “Oh this necklace? This is a POTLATCH. That’s a sort of gift that once received, is very hard to give up. Ask the old tree Yggrisil about those — he’ll have quite a tale to tell you. Just don’t ask him about music — he’s quite a snob, that immortal old tree.” That kind of thing. But I liked it! I sarcastically reduce it to a formula because I like it.

Lucifer is compulsively aware of its debt to The Sandman. Its series lasted 75 issues, the exact same number as The Sandman. It had its issue 50 drawn by P. Craig Russell, just like The Sandman. Which is better, you inevitably ask? I prefer The Sandman because it was sweeter and simpler. But you could argue the other way — Lucifer was more aggressive, and heightened insanely! I can’t believe copies of this book weren’t burned throughout the red states. Crazy stuff happens, like God showing up and then losing fights and people taking over for him and angels getting mean.

Although I bet that’s actually a cliche in fantasy/sci-fi: a story boldly has God admit he’s wrong and lose to the devil and the devil’s all smart and cool and better and doesn’t that make you think huh huh doesn’t it? It’s like stories about robots: each and every one of them has the robots take over. Even the first robot story ever.

Then I read the wikipedia entry on Lucifer and got creeped out because I was baptized Catholic and we are all scared of the devil. I even just added “comic” to the title of this post so that the devil doesn’t think I’m talking about him in my blog and comes to my apartment and makes me carry a boulder made of eyes for a thousand years.

| Tags: comics, devil, lucifer, robots, sandman