Jack and Troy discuss the new Fox TV show, Lucifer. Lucifer is an American fantasy police procedural comedy-drama television series developed by Tom Kapinos that premiered on Fox on January 25, 2016.

Lucifer features a character adapted from the character created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg as a supporting character in the comic book series The Sandman.  He later became the protagonist of the spin-off comic book series Lucifer written by Mike Carey, both published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint.

The series focuses on Lucifer Morningstar, who is bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell and resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for the beauty of Los Angeles, where he gets his kicks helping the LAPD punish criminals.

Character background

Lucifer Morningstar is a DC Comics character appearing primarily as a supporting character in the comic book series The Sandman and as the title character of a spin-off, both published under the Vertigo imprint.

Though various depictions of Lucifer, the Biblical fallen angel and Devil of the Abrahamic religions, have been presented by DC Comics in their run. This interpretation by Neil Gaiman debuted in The Sandman in 1989.

Like many modern interpretations of Satan, DC’s Lucifer owes much to the character’s portrayal in John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, though Gaiman adapts the character to fit the fictional DC Universe where their comics are set, where the character exists alongside superheroes and deities from multiple religions.

Later, the character acquired an ongoing Lucifer spin-off series written by Mike Carey, depicting his adventures on Earth, Heaven, and in the various other realms of his family’s creations and in uncreated voids after abandoning Hell in the Sandman series. Lucifer also appears as a supporting character in issues of The Demon, The Spectre, and other DC Universe comics. Two angels, several demons, a human, and briefly Superman have taken his place as ruler of Hell.

In 2010, IGN named Lucifer as the 68th greatest comic book villain of all time.

Powers and abilities

Lucifer possesses nearly omnipotent supernatural power. He can shape the matter of Creation into anything he can imagine, including matter, energy, and more abstract concepts such as time. However, he does have certain limitations as he is still a creation of God.

He cannot create something out of nothing, unlike his Creator. In some ways this makes him the most disadvantaged, though not the weakest, of the arch-angelic host.

He needs existing matter (and where that is unavailable, the Demiurgic power of the Archangel Michael) to provide the foundation for him to shape. Only his brother, the archangel Michael Demiurgos, is his equal in power. Only God, his creator and father Yahweh, is his superior.

However, in certain dimensions, he is powerless and his mobility is limited without his angelic wings. He may choose to temporarily abandon his powers, including his immortality.

In the story titled “Lilith”, it is implied that God could destroy him at His own whim. Lucifer often wonders why he hasn’t dealt with him already.

He is never without the formidable resources of his brilliant, nigh-omniscient intellect and his unbending will or inner strength, which allowed him to defy and confront his father, Almighty God, without fear or doubt.

Although Lucifer’s overt exercise of power is limited in the books, if he is provoked to violence, his preference seems to be to use fire as a weapon. His original role was as “God’s lamplighter”, in which he used his will to condense clouds of hydrogen into star-masses and set them alight.

As terrifying as they are brief, battles with Lucifer usually begin (and end) with him drawing down the flames of some superheated star and incinerating to ash anything in the immediate area.

Lucifer possesses the common powers appropriate to an archangel of his position. He has incalculable physical strength that rivals the likes of cosmic beings such as Asmodel, Eclipso, and the Spectre. He also has nigh omnipresence, invulnerability, flight, acidic blood, a devastating sonic cry, telepathy, and the power to speak to and understand animals.

As an archangel, his powers are significantly superior to other angels.

In the New 52 reboot, Lucifer is shown to possess power over the human soul itself. However, he has no power over animal souls.

He can open and close magical portals to Earth from Hell and back again. He can use this power to either summon or banish demons, as he does with Etrigan.

He is clairvoyant, possessing a heightened perception or knowledge of time, even to the extent of being able to know the future.
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