Lucifer: Lost Souls
May. 10th, 2015 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luceanIt is time once again to return to the wonderous world of Mike Careys Lucifer. The next big arc shall be Children and Monsters, but before that there were two one-shot issues which both tied very heavily to that story arc, so I will be posting them now here before doing a post on that arc. Also, Fox officially picked up Lucifer which shall be a police procedural. While reading these stories, consider that the story Fox saw Lucifer police solve crimes.
Scans from two 22 page issues, with 7 pages per issue.
The first one-shot focuses on a new character Elaina, who will become one of the central characters of the whole comic and ends up having a truly beautiful character arc. She is also, for me, a really frustrating character because as a child, she is written as a beliavable child and ends up having certain convictions which made me scream at the page, but we will go deeper in to that in the future arcs. Anyhow, we first join the issue at a funeral.
This is a really effective introduction to our main character, as we understood a right away that she has supernatural abilities, but also that her view of it is just that it is.
So anyway, as Elaine goes to her room, she finds Mona's dead spirit waiting for her, looking like she was bleeding because it is her expectation what she should look like. At this point we learn that Elaine thought Mona killed herself because of her horrible homelife, but turns out that someone pushed her off a bridge in front of a car. Elaine comforts Mona and tells her that she is a restless spirit and assumes that she is there in order to have justice for her death. To do this, Elaine summons three spirits of old witches who have given her advice before in order to learn how to use magic to have their vengeance.
While searching for Mona's murdered, we find out that Elaine can essentially see shadows of previous actions and while the person who pushed Mona in front of the car only can be seen as a shadow, she is able to follow the shadow back to the school, realzing that the murderer followed her from schooll. We also learn that a black haired pale girl is stalking Mona, which Elaine knows to be Death, but tells Mona not to worry as Death doesn't hassle spirits near Elaine. Each page basically makes it clearer that Elaine herself probably doesn't realize how powerful she is truly is.
To cut the murder mystery itself short, the murderer turns out to be the headmaster of Mona's school, who used to sell drugs to Mona's dad. When seeing Mona as a new student at his school, he becomes fearful that Mona will recognize him although Mona herself had no recollection of him. Unfortunately, the headmaster catches Elaine snooping around his house and finding his drugs, beats her up and demands she tell him what she knows as she is already going to die, but how fast and painfully is up to debate. Elaine lies to him about Mona's hidden diary and while he is out looking for it, she bites through drug packages and manages to spit the drugs to his coffee. As the headmaster panics realizing what had happened and rushes to call the ambulance while Elaine loses consciousness, thinking she is going to die as well after having swallowed some of the drugs.
In this comic, Elaine is one of the character who Carey has act as the warmth and innocence in the story and I felt this first story establishes that. I will also just hint that her final role in the story is just mind-blowing.
Another thing I have to praise Carey on his how he approaches Lucifer's power. As mentioned already, Lucifer is beyond powerful in this world, but Carey constantly finds ways to approach that with subtlety while also really bringing across that there are not a lot of limits to what Lucifer can do.
Our second one-shot focuses on a woman called Paulina, who wakes each day at 6 AM and crawls to the bathroom to throw up. This one story I shall approach in a little bit non-linear explaining the character already here even though she is slowly revealed through the story. Paulina, real name long forgotten, was a priestess for the Sumerian gods, representing chastity and virginity, but ended up having a sexual relationship. The gods found out and she was summoned in front fo the God-King and as she expresses her repentence and willingness to do anything for forgiveness. The gods tell her to kill herself there, but she asks for some time as she is pregnant. The gods are enraged by this and curse her to live forever in the state of the next day. So for each day for the millenia, she wakes up to a miscarriage, drifting through the world, seducing powerful men and living an empty life of leisure.
However, now she senses something has changed with Lucifer's portal and makes her way to Lux, but is shocked to find it burned down and surrounded by people sensing something from there.
Again, notice here that undoing the curse would not really inconvenience Lucifer at all, but he won't do it because he has no reason to do so.
Pauline, real name Erishad, meets an old friend who is also immortal and gets a reference to a voodoo magician who knows magic unfamiliar to the old gods and thus is able to force the Sumerian gods to do his bidding. So Erishad goes to meet with the man, who lives in a run-down house at the edge of the city, there is something wonderfully mundane in it and he jumps at the change of forcing gods to do something.
The gods understand what is about to happen and plead for mercy, explaining they are not powerful as they once were and do not have the power to undo what was done. Their mercy is denied as she unleashes the spirit of her child in to the jar, that has been forced to die each morning for the past millenia. Turns out things like that make the spirit very strong and very angry.
Next time, in the Children and Monsters, we learn both what Elaine is and why Lucifer desired that spirit.
Scans from two 22 page issues, with 7 pages per issue.
The first one-shot focuses on a new character Elaina, who will become one of the central characters of the whole comic and ends up having a truly beautiful character arc. She is also, for me, a really frustrating character because as a child, she is written as a beliavable child and ends up having certain convictions which made me scream at the page, but we will go deeper in to that in the future arcs. Anyhow, we first join the issue at a funeral.
This is a really effective introduction to our main character, as we understood a right away that she has supernatural abilities, but also that her view of it is just that it is.
So anyway, as Elaine goes to her room, she finds Mona's dead spirit waiting for her, looking like she was bleeding because it is her expectation what she should look like. At this point we learn that Elaine thought Mona killed herself because of her horrible homelife, but turns out that someone pushed her off a bridge in front of a car. Elaine comforts Mona and tells her that she is a restless spirit and assumes that she is there in order to have justice for her death. To do this, Elaine summons three spirits of old witches who have given her advice before in order to learn how to use magic to have their vengeance.
While searching for Mona's murdered, we find out that Elaine can essentially see shadows of previous actions and while the person who pushed Mona in front of the car only can be seen as a shadow, she is able to follow the shadow back to the school, realzing that the murderer followed her from schooll. We also learn that a black haired pale girl is stalking Mona, which Elaine knows to be Death, but tells Mona not to worry as Death doesn't hassle spirits near Elaine. Each page basically makes it clearer that Elaine herself probably doesn't realize how powerful she is truly is.
To cut the murder mystery itself short, the murderer turns out to be the headmaster of Mona's school, who used to sell drugs to Mona's dad. When seeing Mona as a new student at his school, he becomes fearful that Mona will recognize him although Mona herself had no recollection of him. Unfortunately, the headmaster catches Elaine snooping around his house and finding his drugs, beats her up and demands she tell him what she knows as she is already going to die, but how fast and painfully is up to debate. Elaine lies to him about Mona's hidden diary and while he is out looking for it, she bites through drug packages and manages to spit the drugs to his coffee. As the headmaster panics realizing what had happened and rushes to call the ambulance while Elaine loses consciousness, thinking she is going to die as well after having swallowed some of the drugs.
In this comic, Elaine is one of the character who Carey has act as the warmth and innocence in the story and I felt this first story establishes that. I will also just hint that her final role in the story is just mind-blowing.
Another thing I have to praise Carey on his how he approaches Lucifer's power. As mentioned already, Lucifer is beyond powerful in this world, but Carey constantly finds ways to approach that with subtlety while also really bringing across that there are not a lot of limits to what Lucifer can do.
Our second one-shot focuses on a woman called Paulina, who wakes each day at 6 AM and crawls to the bathroom to throw up. This one story I shall approach in a little bit non-linear explaining the character already here even though she is slowly revealed through the story. Paulina, real name long forgotten, was a priestess for the Sumerian gods, representing chastity and virginity, but ended up having a sexual relationship. The gods found out and she was summoned in front fo the God-King and as she expresses her repentence and willingness to do anything for forgiveness. The gods tell her to kill herself there, but she asks for some time as she is pregnant. The gods are enraged by this and curse her to live forever in the state of the next day. So for each day for the millenia, she wakes up to a miscarriage, drifting through the world, seducing powerful men and living an empty life of leisure.
However, now she senses something has changed with Lucifer's portal and makes her way to Lux, but is shocked to find it burned down and surrounded by people sensing something from there.
Again, notice here that undoing the curse would not really inconvenience Lucifer at all, but he won't do it because he has no reason to do so.
Pauline, real name Erishad, meets an old friend who is also immortal and gets a reference to a voodoo magician who knows magic unfamiliar to the old gods and thus is able to force the Sumerian gods to do his bidding. So Erishad goes to meet with the man, who lives in a run-down house at the edge of the city, there is something wonderfully mundane in it and he jumps at the change of forcing gods to do something.
The gods understand what is about to happen and plead for mercy, explaining they are not powerful as they once were and do not have the power to undo what was done. Their mercy is denied as she unleashes the spirit of her child in to the jar, that has been forced to die each morning for the past millenia. Turns out things like that make the spirit very strong and very angry.
Next time, in the Children and Monsters, we learn both what Elaine is and why Lucifer desired that spirit.
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Date: 2015-05-20 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-23 03:24 am (UTC)