Customer Reviews

Lucifer Vol. 3: A Dalliance with the Damned

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Based on characters created and/or reinterpreted by Neil Gaiman's acclaimed "Sandman" comic book series, Lucifer: A Dalliance With The Damned is the third volume and is comprised of issues 14-20 of the Eisner Award nominated "Lucifer" comic book series, offering a graphic and full color tail of demon rivalry and motives at cross purpose. The monstrous children of Lilith, forever denied the Garden of Paradise despite their lack of relation to original sinners Adam and Eve, mount a war of rebellion and conquest in this dramatic and occasionally risque tale, suggested for mature readers. A fascinating page turner that presents supernatural creatures as all too human, sharing few virtues many vices with their mortal counterparts, Lucifer: A Dalliance With The Damned is a superbly produced and highly recommended graphic novel.

An amazing tapestry of stories, some small, some large, but all full of deep insights. Chances are, you won't notice all of them in the first reading, because the stories are so gripping. But read everything a second time, and you may find a lot of points, that you overlooked.

The longest story 'A Dalliance with the Damned' is among other things a fine hellish version of 'Dangerous liaisons' (pleasure and pain and all that jazz ...) but how Carey pulls off the final twist in this setting is truly amazing.

Nevertheless my favorites are the free-standing stories 'The ancestral deed' (how would Adam and Eve behave if the creator had a different set of rules?) and 'The Thunder Sermon' where the dark side of the Lightbringer is shown in truly terrifying grandeur. Rebelling against God may be hard, but doing a better job, now that's a completely different story ...

The secret of the nominally Christian Hell imagined by Neil Gaiman in Sandman and expanded upon herein by Mike Carey is that it isn't really Hell as we normally understand it: damned souls can leave at any time if they can stop believing themselves to be damned. But that rarely happens.

The three major arcs of this volume follow Lucifer, a magical little girl and the denizens of one of Hell's provinces as various plans and counterplans proceed apace. Very bad things happen. A human released from torment manages to outwit his tormenters. Lucifer continues to be his grumpy, sardonic self. And his companion Mazikeen, bizarrely maimed in a successful attempt to save its life, begins to rise up the ranks of the Lilim, those demonic beings born of the union of Adam's mostly forgotten wife Lilith and the demons of Hell.

As always, there's a nice mix of zany but 'real' mythological material and Carey's occasionally post-modern musings on gods, angels, redemption, and damnation. The demons and devils are loathsome, but so too are some of the angels opposing Lucifer. Strange, heady stuff.

Mike Carey, Lucifer: A Dalliance with the Damned (Vertigo, 2002)

And now it all opens up. Well, at least, it opens up a whole lot of new cans of worms. All the threads from issues one and two tie themselves together, but in classic Sandman tradition, there are far more threads involved in this knot than we ever saw coming. That's one of the things that made Sandman so wonderful, and Carey continues on in the tradition: nothing exists solely to advance the plot, but every action a character takes, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, has an effect somewhere else. A lot like life, really. I'm really looking forward to volume 4 (which is sitting here waiting for me to read it, which will happen soon after I finish writing this). ****

I began this series after reading "Sandman", wherefrom Luficer is a spinoff. For a very long time, this is the first spinoffproduct that really works. Actually I think that Mike Carrey is pulling this off so well, that its allmost wrong to call this a spinoff. Lucifer is balancing own its own.

I have read the first three books of Mike Carey's Lucifer, and A Dalliance with the Damned is the best so far. (Can't wait for the next volumes).
This is a great fantasy-mythology series that involves angels, demons and biblical characters such as Michael, Eve, Lilith and, of course, Lucifer! Carey really knows to write, the drawing is great too.
I recommend you to read books 1 & 2 and Neil Gaiman's Sandman Season of Mists first. That's the way to get the whole thing. You won't be dissapointed.

a good continuation of the lucifer series; not quite Sandman level but its getting there.

These Lucifer graphic novels are just reprints of the comic series by DC/Vertigo that ended a few months ago. Lucifer is the fallen angel, Satan if you will, who originated in The Sandmnan series. It features nudity and swearing, which are really pushing the limits in a still going comics industry that is famous around the world and known a lot amongst kids and teenagers. These are for mature readers because of that. I really like the idea of pushing boundaries in comics, enough to keep me interested as an adult in my mid 20s versus that virgin 11 year old reading Superman or Archie. I also read Ghost Rider and Batman, just because their costumes are dark and sinister. Comics drew some wrath by parents and moral groups- their almost modern near gothic outfits were really racey for the time. Death metal music has been called the musical equivalent of a comic book to aimlessly gloat over, or aimlessly brag about. These exist for a variety of literary tastes, and I would rather read freaking Lucifer than Superman any day. Glen Danzig and Verotik continue to sporadically turn out adult comics for mature readers much like Vertigo. Lucifer is not some fake super hero in spandex- he's a sypathetic lead character in an adult oriented comics series.