Lucifer: Children and Monsters

Synopsis: This was originally printed as Lucifer #5-13.

Lucifer travels to the house of Izanami, mistress of the Underworld, in order to retrieve his wings. He leaves Mazikeen to protect the portal he’s opened. While Izanami’s children do everything they can to keep Lucifer from regaining his wings, two members of the Jin En Mok descend upon Lux hoping to gain access to the portal. Mazikeen kills one of the Jin En Mok, but lacks the requisite power to keep the second one away, but Jill Presto, along with the Basanos, defeat the second demon. Jill has the Basanos heal Mazikeen, but in the process she also makes them heal her face to a human ideal.

A woman cursed with the gift of immortality—reliving the miscarriage of her baby every day for thousands of years—begs Lucifer for death. He makes a deal with her, and she is allowed to die.

Amenadiel gathers together the holy host to make war with Lucifer over his portal. Meanwhile, Elaine Belloc is warned of great danger when a man claiming to be her father shows up at her school. Lucifer sets traps for Amenadiel’s army, and manages to defeat them when he rescues the angel Michael and threatens to destroy him, ending all life. After the army has withdrawn, Lucifer manages to restore Michael to his former state, and we find out that Elaine’s real father is Michael.

Good Stuff: On the face of things, Lucifer is a comic I shouldn’t enjoy. I’m generally not a fan of comics that are heavily intertwined with mysticism and spiritualism (with the exception of the Courtney Crumrin series) as I find that they tend to take the humanity and characterization out of the story and wrap it up under pretentious thoughts and ideas about magic and demons. However, Lucifer is another story.

In this particular set of stories, we get to see quite a lot of Lucifer the schemer, as he prepares himself skillfully for the battle he knows is to come. It’s fun to see him pull together various allies in his preparations, and to see that he’s as well prepared as many other comic book protagonists as well. It’s also interesting here that one of the major heavies in this story is the angel Amenadiel, an unusual and likely controversial choice for a villain. Using Amenadiel in this fashion creates an interesting dichotomy against which to play the character of Lucifer, who comes across as neither villainous nor heroic, but simply fights for what appear to be his own gains.

Not so Good Stuff: Really, there isn’t much I can think of. I could maybe complain that Lucifer trades aren’t printed more quickly, but that’s it

I give this book 9/10.