Lucifer #3

[blackruzsa]

 I had a hell (heheh) of a time figuring out what to show in this one.

This is probably gonna bite me in the butt when it turns out the "side" story with the humans turns out important, but I won't be showing that for now. Long story short, Haitian girl gets adopted by abusive super-religious family and by many life-threatening circumstances ends up with the jar of demons from the previous issue. 

While on the mystic side, Gabriel and Lucifer travel to the Dreaming to meet with Lilith, to ask her what she knows about the shard that "killed" God (and is currently killing Lucifer). 

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They meet Matthew the Raven, who leads them to Eve, with Lilith.

Lilith tells them "a story about a shard," since that's what they asked for. 




Heh. 

Anyways, Azazel eventually hungers enough to slowly encourage the village to do misdeeds, to over-indulge, tempts them into sin. 

An old woman of the village tells them how to stop him: "An immortal can only be killed by another immortal." 

So in a long and contrived plot, a woman seduces Azazel and bears twins, the twins grow up together, then one of them is slaughtered and his blood is used to forge a sword, which the other twin uses to slay Azazel. 

But as Azazel dies, he passes all his sins on to his son, and the son kills the entire village. He becomes the new Azazel. Then he's punished, buried under the earth, crushed until only his essence remains, and escapes into the world (an essence which strongly resembles the demon in the jar from earlier). The sword remains buried. 

After the story, Gabriel believes Dream is hiding Azazel and tries to get the ravens to tell him where he is. 

He gets caught up in a torturous dream, the ravens pecking at him and claiming "We remember what you don't."





Between this scene and the last, Medjine, the Haitian girl, acquires the demon in the jar and brings it home.






Fun fact, I was at the comic store today and Lucifer #4 was sold out. When I asked when it had come out, the store clerk said yesterday. 

So apparently I'm not the only one super into it! 

Holly Black's style of writing is like someone writing a really good fanfic. It's faithful to the original, preserves what was good about it, keeps with the spirit and carries a deeply ingrained knowledge of canon, but with an exponential increase of hot guys, fashion, and snark. I am enjoying it immensely. 

Comments

[kamino_neko]

The stuff with the humans is definitely going to be important, since Azazel is at the centre of it.

[blackruzsa]

That's true. Though it'll probably show clearer with the next one (which I'm way too excited for honestly).

[kamino_neko]

Mm-hmm.

Sidenote...thank you for posting these scans...I'd completely forgotten this series was coming out and the scans of the first two issues reminded me to run out and grab them...and issue 3, of course.

[blackruzsa]

You're welcome! I didn't even know it existed until Issue 3 was already out, so mine was a mad scrabble to get them all. I'll definitely be getting the TPB . (I already downloaded issue 4, it's fantastic, but I won't be posting until I actually get to buy it so)

[blackruzsa]

I find the TV show to be both infantile and boring at once, which is a feat
BUT I won't deny it has its moments
Mainly the moments that were taken directly from the comics, like the wings, etc
(don't mind me, I'm just one of those bitter people who loved the original so much she rails against adaptations)

You'll DEFINITELY enjoy this though! Good art, lots of snark, on the spectrum between the original comics and TV show.

[wizardru]

I enjoy the TV show, even as I recognize that it has only the most superficial and cosmetic resemblance to the original comic or this one. Tom Ellis is a lot of fun in it, able to be incredibly smarmy and intensely menacing as the situation demands. I think the police aspects of it (and the detective) are the weakest parts of it, but that was to be expected.

The biggest problem it has is that, like most shows in this vein, it doesn't want to commit to its premise TOO deeply. But that could be more that it's a new show very early in its run. The show's mythology is not particularly deep on the ground, though it has made suggestions that it could be. They don't have a huge cosmology in place from day one like the Lucifer comic had, so that requires world-building (of which they haven't done as much as I'd like).

[timefire]

This is odd. I don't know if it's just because I'm judging by the scans here and thus missing some context, but from what I've seen this looks like an odd breed of continuation that excessively follow the letters of the original series while disregarding the spirit.

Case in point: Elaine Belloc. While it's true that a lot of her "growing up" happened off screen, during the few thousand years or so where she was a guardian spirit in Lucifer's cosmos, I daresay that by the tail end of Mike Carey's run Elaine has developed into a wiser and more mature character. The text certainly considers her enough to handle the mantle of Godhood. And while Elaine did angst about the loneliness at the top, there's a vast difference between acknowledging that the responsibilities are difficult, and "shrinking" from them. Reading the old and new series back-to-back will be such a jarring experiece, because It is preposterous to go away from the ending of the Carey series and think that its Elaine is gonna shrink from her duty. There is no "continuity errors", as such; the continuity is still so jarring anyway.

Also, the "Head" of the DC Universe is no longer a girl who worked her way though from literally being a pawn in someone's scheme, and back to some Crummy Old Dude? Can't say it feels like an improvement.

(I'm sort of wondering if the story can't still work with Elaine being unavailable because she's off being One-With-The-Multiverse like in the last series, and The Power of Belief was responsible for Yahweh filling in that God-shaped hole that's left? It might still be what happened, even - dream!Elaine could well be an unreliable narrator - although the narration boxes kind of throw a curveball to that theory.)

Also, are Lilith and Eve, like, Sarcastic Storytelling BFF now? That's a development I'd approve ;)

[blackruzsa]

That's not really Elaine, that's a dream Elaine conjured by Lucifer's own mind. Since I guess Elaine is the only person Lucifer can imagine having this conversation with, much the way Lilith is a dream Lilith (but more herself since she's powered by the belief of dreamers).

Rules in the Dreaming are weird, but we can safely say that Elaine is probably Lucifer projecting his own feelings through someone earnest, who he can trust.

And yes, Lilith and Eve are, and they're great.