By: Greg Rucka (writer), Michael Lark with Brian Level (art & letters) and Santi Arcas (colors)
The Story: Forever has to track down her traitorous brother!
The Review (with SPOILERS): This was an interesting issue that diverted slightly away from the main “story” of the series to give us more background and flavor of the bigger world.
The main story of the series seems to be that of political intrigued amongst the adult Carlyle children. We saw in last story arc how Jonah failed in his attempt to seize control of the Family and was forced to flee. This issue does pay some attention to that “main story”, but it is mostly concerned with letting us learn more about the dystopian future where the story takes place.
It was interesting to meet the forces of another ruling family: The Bittners. Two things that I love about the encounter between Forever and her Dagger Team and the Bittners… One is how completely bad ass Forever is. Not only is she scary as hell, you know that if she wanted to, she could wade across the river and kill all those redneck Bittner soldiers. But she doesn’t have to, she makes the Bittners execute their own man on the spot, which is somehow even more bad ass. Just the way that Michael Lark draws her shows how noble and above the fray she is. So much of the story of Lazarus is about this distinction between Family members, the Serfs (like the Dagger soldiers) and the “waste”. You can really see a visual difference. Forever is better than these soldiers – on both sides. She knows it, they know it. It isn’t even a question.
The other thing I loved about the encounter with the Bittners is how different their soldiers look. The Carlyle Dagger Team looks like a futuristic elite military team. The Bittner soldiers look like rednecks who are wearing Vietnam-era US Army surplus. I wonder why that is? Hmm… What I LOVE about Lazarus is that I know that Greg Rucka is such a thoughtful author that there IS a reason for this difference of appearance. He hasn’t told us yet – and he may never tell us – but you know he has it all figured out in his mind. I think what I enjoy so much about Greg Rucka is the sense that he builds his world from the bottom up. Instead of dreaming up characters and then plopping them into a barely realized world, he starts by building a world and then imagining what sorts of interesting characters would inhabit the space. Everything about the world in Lazarus seems to be coherent and solid. I doubt we’ll ever find a complete logical non-sequitur in the entire run of the series.
There are two other scenes in the issue worth commenting upon. One is the opening scene where we see young Forever have a heartbreaking encounter with her father. It’s really troubling to see a little girl treated the way Forever is treated. I mean, she’s forced to be a child-ninja at an early age and cannot even hug her father. Geez… But it is also this slight reminder that even in this dark, dystopian future where things have gotten really out of whack, people are still people. Petulant adult children like Jonah will still get impatient that the old man won’t die and let him have a turn; little girls like Forever still love their daddy even if he is a jerk.
That ties into the other scene in the issue that shows us this “waste” family losing everything in a flood. I’m not sure I directly care about this poor family, but it gives me some insight into where the story is heading. Rucka is too smart of a guy to think that a Lazarus-type reality is sustainable in the long term. You just cannot have a society that is THIS brutally dominated by the 1%. If you make poor people desperate enough or make them feel they have nothing left to lose, “The Waste” will realize that there are more of them than there are of you and they’ll rise up violently. I’m sure that will happen at some point in the series and I suspect that Forever will have some role as their leader.
The art is mostly good in this issue. There are a lot of panels that are muddier than I would like. I mean, go compare this to issue #1 and you’ll see there is no comparison in terms of crispness. But, it doesn’t really bother me because it seems like Michael Lark knows what panels are vitally important and he’s still nailing those panels. Obviously there is some kind of delay going on with this series because we haven’t had an issue in ~2 months, it looks like perhaps the art is struggling to keep up? Just keep nailing the important panels and we’ll be fine. Lark is still able to give Forever this kind of regal quality, which is the important thing for right now…..
Conclusion: Another very solid issue. I love learning more about this world with the confidence that Greg Rucka has probably got the whole thing already figured out.
Grade: B+
-Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion