Inferno

From super-hot creator Mike Carey (Lucifer, Hellblazer), a rarely seen and never-before-collected slice of hell and damnation! When John Travis is murdered he finds himself in Inferno, a Hell with no fiery demons and satanic majesty, just an endless city alive with corruption, intrigue and despair. Yet being dead is the least of Travis' problems; he is actually Jacamo Terence, dead 800 years and the first man to escape Hell and live his life again. This did not sit well with the Infernal Powers and soon, aided by Nostradamus and a were-girl, he is at the centre of a vast power struggle. Inferno also features an all-new cover by Lucifer cover artist, Chris Moeller!

Publishers Weekly

Yes, it's that Lucifer Morningstar-former ruler of Hell, now a free agent dealing with the messy internal politics of his former domain-who is the protagonist of this Sandman spin-off comic book. Writer Carey is as irreverent as they come, but he also knows his theology inside and out, both Judeo-Christian and otherwise: King Solomon turns up, appropriately enough, in a hard-boiled detective role, and a few of the Norse gods put in memorable cameo appearances near the end of this volume. Lucifer himself is portrayed as a dapper man-about-town who can rip people's faces off when necessary. However, Inferno doesn't quite hold together as a book, since it collects three separate story lines, two of which are greatly indebted to other volumes in the series, and each drawn by different artists. (The third, "Bearing Gifts," is a short, stand-alone fable in which Lucifer doesn't actually appear, featuring the best art of the volume: squiggly, wobbly work by Dean Ormston that nicely gets across its sense of the uncanny.) "Inferno" itself is a mess of a story that picks up partway through with a cleverly metaphysical duel between representatives of Hell and Heaven, neither of whom are playing entirely according to the rules of their own side. "Come to Judgment," a cynical parable about the difference between justice and vengeance, features a witty twist on some fairy-tale conventions. The book has more than a few memorable moments, but new readers may be mystified. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.