Lucifer (DC Comics)

• 1. Introduction

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  Lucifer Morningstar ruled Hell for more than ten billion years, and the sentence that put him there lasted far longer than his crime. According to the comics, he rebelled against Creation for just three seconds. This version of the Devil first appeared in The Sandman #4 in 1989, in the pages of DC Comics. He is one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe. Yet the thing that made him famous was an act of leaving. In the middle of Neil Gaiman's story, the Lord of Hell shut the gates, handed over the key, and walked out. Why would the ruler of eternal torment resign? What does a devil do with freedom once he has it? And what happens when the most defiant being in existence picks a fight with his own Creator? The answers stretch across a supporting role in one celebrated series, a 75-issue series of his own, and several screen versions that look nothing alike.

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• 2. Milton's Shadow

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  Before Gaiman got to him, DC Comics had used the Devil in a string of familiar costumes, complete with horns and a pitchfork. Gaiman wanted something different. He built his Lucifer on the heroic, morally grey rebel from the English poet John Milton and his epic Paradise Lost. That meant a Devil with pride, wit and a grievance, rather than a snarling tempter. Gaiman also made a request about the look of the character. Artists originally drew Lucifer to resemble David Bowie, who was the musician of the moment. The result was a pale, elegant figure who could walk through a room of mortals without anyone suspecting what he was. That quiet refinement set the tone for everything he later did, including the decision that made him a protagonist.

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• 3. The Key to Hell

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  In the Sandman story arc called Season of Mists, Lucifer emptied Hell of its demons and damned souls. He closed the gates and gave the key to Dream of the Endless, the title character of the series. Gaiman's reasons for this are petty, human ones, which is part of their charm. Lucifer was bored, with nothing to do in his own kingdom. He resented the popular belief that he bought souls or pushed people into evil, since he claimed that was largely untrue. Most of all, he thought it unfair that one act of rebellion should chain him to Hell forever. With the realm abandoned, two angels took charge of it: Duma, the angel of silence, and Remiel, whose name means set over those who rise. Lucifer himself retired to Earth, first to Perth in Western Australia, then to Los Angeles in California. The series saved its final twist for its closing stretch. Hell, it turned out, had never been a punishment. Lucifer had declared that he would never submit to God, so he was sent as far from the throne of light as possible. Hell then simply formed around him, and he made none of it himself.

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• 4. Lux and the Problem of Free Will

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  Lucifer, the series, ran for 75 issues from June 2000 to August 2006, and Mike Carey wrote every one. A 1999 miniature series called The Sandman Presents: Lucifer prepared the ground. In the story, the former Devil opens a piano bar in Los Angeles named Lux, a detail that first appeared in the Sandman story The Kindly Ones. He plays the part of the stereotypical gentleman devil, with polish and charm. Carey described his hero as someone who ignores the safe path that most people follow. In his words: "We play safe. Most of us do, most of the time... but Lucifer doesn't know the meaning of safe, and he never bothers to look down at the tramlines." Underneath the cocktails, the series chewed on a hard question. If God planned the rebellion and the damnation that followed, was Lucifer ever free at all? He calls this the tyranny of predestination and rejects it. Even so, readers are often left unsure whether his defiance is real or just another part of the plan.

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• 5. A Devil Who Does Not Lie

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  One character in the series, David Easterman, considers himself a victim of Lucifer. He summed up the Devil's method this way: "When the Devil wants you to do something, he doesn't lie at all. He tells you the exact, literal truth. And he lets you find your own way to Hell." Tradition gives Lucifer the title Lord of Lies, but the comics turn that upside down. For this Lucifer, his word is his bond, and refusing to lie sits at the center of his moral code. He sees himself as a neutral or amoral facilitator, a mirror for whatever drives a person already. He can draw out someone's deepest desires, then leave them to choose whether to act. Honesty does not make him kind, however. He treats the loss of millions of souls as unimportant collateral damage, and he respects very few beings. Like other trickster figures, he will sometimes leave out the key detail that lets a mistake happen.

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• 6. Heaven's Enforcer and a New Creation

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  The series opens in 2000 with Lucifer's retirement disturbed by figures from his past. A chain of events pushes him to create a universe of his own, against the wishes of his father, Yahweh. Powerful mystical entities with a stake in that new world take notice, and the angelic host is drawn in. Lucifer's brother, the archangel Michael Demiurgos, and his niece, Elaine Belloc, both end up in the conflict. Heaven's hard, vengeful side is embodied by the angel Amenadiel, who hates Lucifer and attacks him in many ways. He criticizes, marshals the host, and demands single combat, often with no thought for innocent bystanders. Lucifer answers with contempt and with schemes that Amenadiel never sees coming. At the end, neither God nor the Devil remains in the universe, and Elaine Belloc presides over it. The fallen cherubs Gaudium and Spera describe the change as a kind of growing up. In the closing scene, God offers to merge their beings, which he calls a potlatch, so each can finally understand the other. Lucifer turns it down. Accepting would be the last act of his Father's will, so he refuses and travels into the undefined void beyond.

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• 7. Craft on the Page

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  The series echoed The Sandman in structure. Large epic arcs alternated with smaller one-shot issues about more personal stories. Unlike Gaiman's series, it kept a steady art team in Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly. Dean Ormston illustrated most of the odd-numbered issues. The 50th issue was penciled by P. Craig Russell, a tribute to The Sandman #50, and both series ended at exactly 75 issues. Duncan Fegredo, Christopher Moeller and Michael William Kaluta painted covers. The lettering followed its own odd path. Early on, characters such as Gaudium, Michael and God had established fonts, but most were dropped later, leaving Lucifer's own. The mythology broadened too. Carey leaned on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world seen through Milton, plus Japanese and Norse mythology. Most of the Endless appeared only in small roles, apart from Destiny. Lucifer called predestination "offensive as a concept" and a side effect of his Father's deterministic approach to creation.

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• 8. Starlight and Fire

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  Lucifer's power comes from his command of the substance and knowledge of Creation itself. He can shape matter, energy and even abstract ideas like time into whatever he imagines. Once, he shaped the Big Bang energies released by his brother Michael's death into a new universe. The catch is that he needs existing material to work with, or else the Demiurgic power of Michael or of God. Death does not apply to him, and he can give up his powers, immortality included, whenever he chooses. His original job was as God's lamplighter, condensing clouds of hydrogen into stars and setting them alight. That history explains his favorite weapon. When he is provoked, he pulls down the flames of a super-heated star and burns everything nearby to ash. Other abilities include flight, great strength, telepathy, and a devastating sonic cry. Instead of acidic blood, he bleeds willpower. He can also bring back anyone he has killed, which makes him a psychopomp. The version in the New 52 is far weaker.

  Gaiman's Lucifer was not the first Devil in DC Comics. One entry lists an early appearance in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #65 in 1962. Jimmy dreams of being sentenced to Devil's Island. A bald man named Lord L offers him freedom for his soul. Jimmy is saved when Lord L vanishes at the sight of cake, because Jimmy had memorized a recipe for angel food rather than devil's food. In Weird Mystery Tales #4 in 1973, a Lucifer looking much like the later version traded bodies with a man named Philip Burton, a swap similar to one in Season of Mists. In Blue Devil #31, a washed-up actor in a costume pretends to be Lucifer. A pre-Crisis Lucifer in DC Special Series #8 has a traditional devilish face and an advisory board of villains including Guy Fawkes and Nero. Garth Ennis introduced a rival Devil in Hellblazer, called the First of the Fallen, to avoid confusion with Gaiman's. Then in September 2011, The New 52 reboot produced a malevolent, sadistic king of Hell who actually sought human souls. A second Lucifer volume ran from 2015 to 2017. It begins with God dead and Gabriel accusing Lucifer of the murder. DC later said that this version did not count in the continuity of the Lucifer comics from late 2018, which picked up from where Carey stopped.

  The first live-action Lucifer appeared in the film Constantine in 2005, played by the Swedish actor Peter Stormare. In that movie he wears a white suit, has tattoos, and constantly produces black oil from his feet. Welsh actor Tom Ellis later played a very different version in the series Lucifer, which ran on Fox and Netflix from 2016 to 2021. Ellis also appeared in the 2019 Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths. English actress Gwendoline Christie then played the Devil in Netflix's The Sandman, which ran from 2022 to 2025. Gaiman said that Ellis's return had been considered. He explained that Christie's version was much more faithful to the original comics and that Ellis's would have been hard to fit into that universe. Michael Sheen voiced Lucifer in the 2020 audio drama of The Sandman. Critics rated the character highly too. In 2010, IGN placed him 68th among the greatest comic book villains. ComicsAlliance ranked him 38th in its list of the 50 sexiest male characters in comics. The Lucifer run has been collected in eleven trade paperbacks, and in two deluxe omnibus hardcovers released in 2019 and 2020.

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