The rebel angel Mike Carey crafted for the Vertigo series Lucifer (1999 – 2006) in certain significant respects outshines his Miltonic and Byronic forebears. The effort to do so was already underway before Lucifer enjoyed his own spinoff series, as in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (1989 – 1996) Lucifer invokes the most famous line of Milton’s Satan—“Better to reign in Hell” (Paradise Lost, I.263)—only to deny its validity,1 distancing himself from his predecessor to improve upon his example.
Carey’s Lucifer is distinctly different from the Devil of Judeo-Christian tradition, the Satanic usurper who sought to supplant the Almighty and settled for establishing himself as simia Dei.2 That Lucifer not only proudly refused to bow down to God but enviously attempted to set himself upon God’s Throne was standard Christian thought, patristic writers citing the diatribe out of the Book of Isaiah as authority: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer.…For thou hast said in thine heart…I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation.…I will be like the most High” (Isaiah 14:12–14). Because Milton in Paradise Lost more or less stuck to Christian tradition with regards to the Devil’s self-sought apotheosis, critics of Milton’s Satan have often accused him of being a false prophet of freedom. Even certain Satan sympathizers have felt compelled to conclude that his “revolt is not against tyranny,” as William Flesch writes, but “against a tyrant whose place he wishes to usurp,” which Flesch feels “accounts for our ambivalent feeling about Satan: heroic in his rebellion against idolatry, he never gets beyond it himself.”3
Milton’s Satan “to the highth of Deity aspir’d” (IX.167) and “trusted to have equall’d the most High” (I.40), the rebel angels having arrived on the heavenly battlefield with their Prince’s ambition as their aim: “To win the Mount of God, and on his Throne / To set the envier of his State, the proud / Aspirer…” (VI.88–90). In Hell, when Milton’s Satan proves to be the only one bold enough to journey to Eden to conquer God’s new world, the fallen angels deify the Devil: “Towards him they bend / With awful reverence prone; and as a God / Extol him equal to the highest in Heav’n” (II.477–79). Whereas Milton’s Satan is awarded the honor of a god without request, Lord Byron’s Lucifer does request worship, and he requests it from a mortal. In Cain: A Mystery (1821), Lucifer promises to reveal to Cain the mysteries of the cosmos on the condition that he bows down (I.i.301–20), which Cain, in Byronic fashion, refuses to do, despite being a de facto Devil-worshipper by virtue of his refusal to worship God (I.i.314–20). Carey’s Lucifer is certainly no less prideful than either the Miltonic Satan or the Byronic Lucifer, but in contrast to them his pride does not take the form of seeking to transfer the worship of God to himself, but rather utter contempt for worship itself, which is a significant improvement upon the Miltonic-Romantic-Satanic tradition.
What Carey’s Lucifer envies is not Yahweh’s Throne, but the true freedom He possesses as God. When brooding over his heavenly discontent, the prelapsarian Lucifer contemplates patricide/deicide because he in his boundless pride longs to be unfettered: “I have considered — killing my Father.…It would set me free. I would stand alone, then.”4 The rebel Lucifer refuses to be a “tool” of God, scorning the notion that there is “some kind of nobility in self-abasement,” reasoning, “We are His children — His first-born. The freedom He enjoys is our birthright too.”5 When at one point in the series the angel Michael suggests that Lucifer merely wishes to become their Father, he is backhanded across the face for his insult,6 as Carey’s Lucifer prides himself on being unlike his Father, the fallen angel boasting, “I have nothing in common with Yahweh.”7
Lucifer, who is dismissive of the title “Lord,”8 proves himself true to his word, as he shuns becoming Yahweh’s successor when the opportunity presents itself. In Lucifer, Yahweh ultimately absconds, leaving the Throne of God vacant and Creation crumbling at the foundations. Someone has to take the Throne, but Lucifer refuses, insisting that Michael’s half-breed daughter Elaine Belloc do so. When Elaine asks why, Lucifer states plainly, “Because my priorities are different from yours. I’ll see Creation fall rather than sit in that chair.”9 Upon Elaine’s apotheosis and the announcement to all creatures that she is Creation’s new God, Lucifer explains that he simply would not become enslaved to such a position: “Someone has to be the founder. The preserver. The arbiter. And I was damned if it was going to be me.”10 Elaine comes to understand what Lucifer means when, at the series’ end, he journeys off into the void, alone: “He’s gone.…I suppose he’s got it now. The freedom he fought all of Heaven to win. That he would have unseated God for, once upon a time. Until he figured out that God is less free than anyone.”11
Carey’s Lucifer desires the absolute autonomy of God, not His cosmic train of faithful subjects, which Lucifer finds actually inhibits rather than enhances individual freedom, hence his abdication of the infernal throne. Essentially longing to be left alone, Lucifer cares nothing for worshippers or even followers. He disdains the obsequious impulse of angels (“Your willingness to grovel is what defines you. Your subordination of yourselves to another’s will.”12), and Lucifer will have none of it under his supervision. Indeed, thou shalt have no gods is Lucifer’s sole commandment to his own world’s human prototypes: “I will withhold death from you as long as you obey my one command. Bow down to no one. Worship no one. Not even me. Do you understand?”13 When Lucifer—spiting his Father, who has ordered the gateway to the Devil’s separate cosmos shut—shifts to “the free market model,” placing a portal leading outside of Yahweh’s Creation on every world (“Anyone who doesn’t like his party can come to mine.”14), the migrants receive a similar admonition from a titanic Lucifer in the sky: “You’ve been looking for a new world, and now you’ve found it. Congratulations. And a word of warning.…There are certain things I won’t tolerate. Don’t bring the habit of worship here with you. Graven images, anthropomorphized abstractions, cosmic principles; they’re all equally unacceptable.”15
Carey’s Lucifer cannot stomach the sight of genuflection, and he can only respect (or tolerate) those who, like him, relentlessly pursue free will—so long as they do not interfere with his own, of course. Whenever someone does dare to stand in the way of this Devil’s path, he proves that he can be all too devilish indeed.
Notes
1. See Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season of Mists (New York: DC Comics, 2010), “Episode 1.”↩
2. See Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and Literature (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, [1931] 1959), Ch. XII, “Diabolus Simia Dei,” pp. 120–29.↩
3. William Flesch, “The Majesty of Darkness: Idol and Image in Milton,” in Generosity and the Limits of Authority: Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 240.↩
4. Mike Carey, Lucifer: The Wolf Beneath the Tree (New York: DC Comics, 2005), p. 16.↩
5. Ibid., p. 13.↩
6. Mike Carey, Lucifer: Mansions of the Silence (New York: DC Comics, 2004), p. 42.↩
7. Mike Carey, Lucifer: The Divine Comedy (New York: DC Comics, 2003), p. 126.↩
8. Mike Carey, Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway (New York: DC Comics, 2001), p. 46; Lucifer: A Dalliance with the Damned (New York: DC Comics, 2002), p. 116.↩
9. Mike Carey, Lucifer: Morningstar (New York: DC Comics, 2006), p. 134.↩
10. Ibid., p. 188.↩
11. Mike Carey, Lucifer: Evensong (New York: DC Comics, 2007), p. 100.↩
12. Carey, Lucifer: Morningstar, p. 54.↩
13. Carey, Lucifer: A Dalliance with the Damned, p. 53.↩
14. Ibid., p. 155.↩
15. Carey, Lucifer: The Divine Comedy, p. 19.↩