Issue Review: Lazarus 3

Forever Carlyle is in Mexico on family Morray's lands.  One of the Morray troops tries to disarm her, but the Morray Lazarus, Joacquim, orders him to leave her alone, and when he questions the order, Joacquim kills him and escorts Eve to a meeting with his father.  Back at Family Carlyle's HQ, James, the family's chief medical officer, is questioned by Jonah about Eve's location, and refuses to tell him where she is.  James knows, but Malcom has forbidden him to reveal her position to anyone else. Jonah turns to Johanna, and the two discuss what to do about their Lazarus.  They decide to kill her as soon as she returns to Carlyle lands.  Meanwhile, down in Mexico, Eve negotiates with Edgar Morray, head of the Morray clan.  The Morrays agree to provide interdictor craft in return for grain and seed. They must also agree to stop collaborating with the twins.  Edgar agrees, and sends Joacquim back to the border with Eve.  They pause for a quick drink as they prepare to part ways, but are hit from the air by a missile.

This is another top-notch installment in the new Lazarus series by Rucka and Lark.  They story is complex and interesting, and the plotting of the Families is realistic and fun to read.  The dialogue is believable, and each character has a clearly delineated voice and personality.  Characterizations are strong throughout. And the world is deep and layered.

Probably my favorite aspect of this series so far is the main character, Forever.  Good writers know that the only way to keep you coming back for more is to make you care about, to like, the main characters, and Rucka is a master at doing this.  Forever is a complex character with many still-hidden layers to her personality, but with each issue we slowly learn a little bit more about her.  This time, for example, we discover that she's very young still -- only 19 -- and that she started working as an enforcer when she was just 14 years old.  We also get too see her calm, calculating behavior under threat, and one thing seems to be developing over these early issues -- although she certainly is willing to kill, Forever generally does not initiate the violence.  For example, when the Morray sergeant tries to disarm her, she doesn't pull her sword until after he aims his gun at her. Before that, she just stands there calmly refusing to give him her weapons.

 She's also very level-headed when dealing with the Morray family -- a calm negotiator who is capable of working out a deal and conducting diplomacy just as well as she can wield a gun or a knife.  Eve's complexity and honorable behavior make her someone you want to root for.  And then there is that hint of vulnerability deep down, that we only see in tiny glimpses, but makes her all the more human.


Rucka's characterization is so good here that I even like the villains -- or rather, I love to hate them.  Jonah and Johanna are conniving, nasty pieces of work, but very human and believable as well.  Johnanna is clearly the more ruthless of the two, and obviously the brains behind their plans. I would not be surprised to see a showdown between the two girls -- Eve and Jo -- in the near future, though I'm sure if that happens, Johanna will not fight in a straight-forward way, but would employ treachery and subterfuge.  And this shows what a great character-writer Rucka is. I've seen maybe 5 or 6 pages of material about Johanna,. mostly in bathtubs and swimming pools, and I can already picture how she would conduct herself in a fight.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Lark's artwork, which once again is absolutely outstanding.  His style perfectly complements the dystopian, bleak-looking future of Rucka's world, and he draws a strong and beautiful Forever.  I particularly love  how he draws her facial expressions.  Forever doesn't smile much, and it would be easy for him to draw her face the same way in panel after panel, but he doesn't. Instead, he makes subtle differences to the arch of her eyebrow or the look in her eye that tell you exactly what she is thinking from panel to panel.  Between his art and Rucka's dialogue, even though we have not one bit of narration from Eve's perspective, we have tons of insight into her state of mind and her personality.

Once again, Rucka and Lark hit it out of the park with this issue.  At a time when I have been very unhappy with the direction of the various DC titles I'm collecting, a time when I might have started second-guessing whether I really should have returned to, and spent lots of money on, the comic-book collecting hobby, along comes this excellent new title, to remind me why I loved comics in the first place. No, it's not a bronze-age styled series of the  type I grew up on -- it's far more grown up and "adult." But it has all the key ingredients that make serialized fiction worth reading -- an engaging, slowly developing, but easy to follow plot; great characters; snappy dialogue; and amazing art. This is one of the best series out there right now.

My score: 10/10