LUCIFER VOL. 1

There have been centuries of stories about Lucifer, and this graphic novel includes many of them.

Lucifer was a recurring character in Gaiman’s (The Dreaming Vol. 1, 2019, etc.) classic Sandman comics. But, of course, the devil has appeared everywhere from the Bible to Damn Yankees. The characters who show up in this collection include William Blake, figures from Shakespeare and—fleetingly—Robert Johnson. Several of them are trapped with Lucifer in an inescapable prison, and he seems too far from sanity to help them. Readers who aren’t familiar with all the allusions—not to mention the previous comic books—will be completely lost, especially when the story leaps backward and forward in time. They may keep reading, anyway, because the book is filled with haunting moments; in a scene that alludes to classical mythology, a group of witches pluck out and share a cat’s eye. Unfortunately, numerous digressions sometimes make the story feel unnecessarily fragmented. The artwork is also beautifully disturbing, with frightening noir shadows and distorted anatomy that, on occasion, nearly turns the characters into abstract shapes. Lucifer and most of the cast are white, but some characters are black, and one has a white father and Algerian mother.

A spectacular lesson in history and literature, but most people will need the CliffsNotes.