Dear Mr. Adversary,
Did we make you what you are or did
you make us? Or help, at least. Irrelevant. I think it must be the
latter. You're supposed to be evil, but how could someone so
beautiful really be evil? It's unclear what you've even done to
deserve your reputation. Although that could be part of why you
deserve your reputation.
Besides, you wouldn't be nearly so
alluring if you hadn't gotten chucked out of the pretty cloudy place
with the angels and stuff. No one writes epics with Michael as the
hero, or at least not last I checked...
Since I'm finishing up a paper for a
class focusing on Paradise Lost,
I haven't been able to get Lucifer/Satan out of my mind. Why did I
take a class on Paradise Lost,
you ask? Because I kept seeing references to it all over the place in
other works I enjoyed.
There's something
oddly appealing about series that incorporate biblical mythology. I
think part of the appeal is a sense of otherworldiness like what you
get with some science fiction or fantasy, but minus the usual
cliches. Maybe it seems even more based in reality when you grow up
in a society where so many peoples' worldviews are rooted in
Christianity (even if you yourself aren't Christian.) The mythology
of heaven and angels can be exploited in a way that adds a lot of
beauty to a series, and there's something to be said for hellish
glamour, as well.
One
series I've encountered that does this really well on a visual level
is Angel Sanctuary by
Kaori Yuki, which I've already written here about, but oh well. Of
course, her character designs are pretty much always gorgeous, but
the excuse to go crazy with wings certainly doesn't hurt. In
addition, the story is original--she basically just appropriates
angelic hierarchy and mythology to create the world it takes place
in.
His Dark Materials
is also an excellent series that simultaneously glorifies and omits
the adversary. There is no actual devil (although Zaphania, Lord
Asriel, and Mary seem to take on the infernal trinity of his roles in Paradise Lost as rebel angel, prince of "Hell", and
tempter), but a postive interpretation of his attitude lives on in
the characters and events of the story. Lyra's world is also
extremely interesting in a vaguely steampunk way--it resembles our
world very closely, and yet is different in enough ways that it's
difficult to compare the two.
There's
also the quasi-DC interpretation of Lucifer and heaven/hell that
popped up in Sandman
and continued in the spin-off Lucifer,
which I thought did a good job making Lucifer a protagonist without
making the reader any less wary of him or turning him into a hero.
And of
course if you enjoy any of those titles (especially Lucifer
and His Dark Materials),
Paradise Lost itself
is certainly worth a shot even if the syntax and language can be
confusing. One of my favorite things about it is how the epic format
seems to emphasize all sorts of contradictions that aren't quite as
glaringly obvious in the biblical source material, such as showing
Satan in more detail instead of basically just a force that
influences humanity from the shadows--which means giving him some
admirable qualities like courage and persistance, which results in
him being appealing even though he's supposed to be the origin of all
evil.
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