Lucifer #3: Songs of Experience

The issue centers around the notions of prophecy, sacrifice, obsession, and the high cost of each of these. There are many partnerships and alliances revealed in this issues, but also many chances for betrayals. That things will become a game of who can survive whose knife seems inevitable, and the story is written in such a way that it is really difficult to tell who has the worse lot or the upper hand.

In general this issue is the same as the last two, but that’s a good thing! Great art alternating flavor, colors, and tone for each story and two interesting plots threaded together. Literary nerds will once again enjoy the tie-ins to real (and fictional) works, but if that’s not your thing it’s not necessary to follow the story along. I do love how Watters figures a lot of literary and historical lore seamlessly into his own narrative, giving a new fictional life to people long-dead that have influenced and shaped many of the popular images of Lucifer. It’s not always easy to weave classic literature into a graphic work without it seeming somewhat pretentious, but the choices so far in this series have been appropriate and well-incorporated into the story interpreting characters and history without reducing them in any way. I don’t know if “fun” is the right word to use for a book with such dark themes, but entertaining certainly is!