Review: Lazarus Volume One

In a dystopian version of North America, a feud between two rival families threatens to break into a war. To ease the tensions, the patriarch of the Carlyles sends his youngest daughter Forever – a living weapon known as a Lazarus – to offer an olive branch to the rival Morrays. What began as an act of peacekeeping becomes brutal when it becomes clear that someone within the Carlyle family is hellbent on inciting a war.

Lazarus Volume 1 collects issues #1-4 of Lazarus, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Michael Lark.

The Post-Apocalyptic world of Rucka and Lark’s Lazarus sets the tone for a nightmarish tale of medieval social inequality and science gone too far. From the word go, we’re introduced to a dystopic United States divided up into colonies controlled by what are known as Families. These individuals are few in number, but have the power and wealth necessary for keeping the rest of the population under their thumb. The Families each have Serfs – armies and scientists that work for them in their elite facilities. Everyone else, the poor and downtrodden, is classified as Waste. Forever Carlyle, the protagonist of the series, is a highly trained assassin classified as a Lazarus. She’s the youngest daughter of one of the most influential Families, but is shown to be increasingly aware of the oppressive regime around her and the differences between her and her siblings.

Lazarus is arguably one of the more stylized and complex comic books to come around in a while. Rucka, being a novelist, takes a decidedly literary approach to the title and writes it almost as if it were no different from straight-up prose fiction. He and Lark build a captivating world that stands on its own, which obviously necessitates quite a bit of explanation and exposition. For those observing the dystopic trend in young adult fiction, Lazarus takes a much darker and more mature slant. Rather than being injected into the lives of the disenfranchised, Rucka smartly positions the reader into the narrative of those in power. His heroine, the badass Forever, is part of the elite and her privilege impacts her in a way that differentiates her from the Katnisses and the Trises of young adult fiction.

Over the years, Greg Rucka has built a reputation for writing some of the most compelling women in the world of comic books. From his acclaimed run on Wonder Woman to his award-winning Queen & Country, he’s proven time and again that no one knows how to write a badass comic book heroine quite like him. Forever is no different. She’s the perfect mix of hard and soft, a gun-toting killer on one hand and a dutiful daughter on the other. She may be the ideal assassin, but there are still chinks in her armour. She plays a crucial part in the continued oppression of the Waste, yet she’s clearly unhappy with what is expected of her. The contradictions and introspective qualities to her character are what make her so interesting as a protagonist. Furthermore, the concept of her being engineered to be a living weapon, while unoriginal, helps to further distinguish her from the other characters in this world.

Lazarus has tremendous potential for growth. This first volume is brief, considering it only collects four issues, so the ball just gets rolling by the time the final page is turned. The characters are each very unique and all of them play an integral role in the dynamic to the book. From our protagonist to her scheming sister Johanna, Rucka’s cast is fascinating. Lazarus also features an abundance of memorable (and brutal) action scenes, deftly handled by artist Lark. It’s a great start to what appears to be promising work of dystopic fiction, one which has me itching to see what happens next.

RATING: A-

Review: Fatale Book One - Death Chases Me

In the smoke-filled streets of the 1950s, reporter Dominic Raines finds himself trapped in a web of secrets and ancient evils when he begins a torrid affair with the enigmatic Josephine. He is so completely mesmerized by this femme fatale that he fails to see that he has landed himself in the middle of a dangerous game of cat and mouse between Jo’s ex-lover and a group of demonic gangsters. Even if he survives, Dominic’s life will be forever changed.

Fatale Book One: Death Chases Me collects Fatale #1-5, written by Ed Brubaker and illustrated by Sean Phillips.

In Death Chases Me, Ed Brubaker does what he does best – crafts a complex and dark narrative featuring a memorable lead character, all while paying tribute to the noir genre. He had previously done this successfully with his relaunch of Catwoman from the 2000s, but does things a little more differently here. Instead of presenting his story as a present day homage to the genre, Brubaker takes his readers all the way into the past and earnestly treats the narrative as a piece of hard-boiled detective fiction – with a twist! To this highly stylized world of dirty cops and nosy reporters, Brubaker injects a healthy nose of Lovecraftian horror in the form of the immortal Jo and her demonic pursuers. This gives the material an added sense of terror, one which works perfectly to further build the mystery surrounding the book’s femme fatale.

Fatale reads like a novel. It’s complicated and is deliberately vague, which both heightens the mystery and disorients the viewer. In fact, some pages need to be read more than once just to absorb every detail. The payoff is an incredibly tense narrative that constantly keeps the reader on the edge of his or her seat, never certain of what horrors will await them when they turn the page or see the next panel. Brubaker achieves this not only through the action and dialogue, but also through some rather smartly written third person narration. They tell us just what we need to know and direct us towards how we should feel about characters without divulging too much information about their emotional state. As you can imagine, this aids in maintaining an uncertainty about the characters involved.

The character work is fairly impressive, if a bit expected at times. Brubaker is working within a very specific genre, one which has been revisited so many times that we feel like we know these characters already. At the centre of the narrative are a cop and a reporter, the latter of which comes across as more of a plot device than a hero we’re meant to root for. The former, however, is a little more complex. He’s heavily flawed, as most detectives are in noir fiction, but he’s much more accessible. It’s much easier to relate to a man dying of cancer, desperate to escape this terrible disease and resentful towards his dissolving relationship to a woman he once loved dearly. Nevertheless, the real star in all of this is Jo.

Whether it’s writing Catwoman or Sharon Carter, Brubaker has proven himself capable of writing compelling female characters. He continues that streak with Jo. He is careful so as never to reveal too much about who she is and where she came from, only giving readers breadcrumbs every so often. This creates tremendous interest and investment into her as a character. She’s fierce and capable of handling a gun in any given situation, while also possessing a seemingly unique ability to put men under her seductive spell. By the end of Death Chases Me, we’re left knowing little more about Jo than when we started, but that’s not a bad thing.

Sean Phillips deftly handles the art chores for Fatale and it’s really hard to imagine anyone but him doing the job. It’s moody, dark and indicative of the era it’s set in. It certainly feels almost like you’re watching an old film noir, so that speaks volumes as to how synergistic Brubaker and Phillips are as a team. That’s not to say there aren’t some chinks in Fatale’s armour. Where Brubaker was a little shallow with some of his characterizations, Phillips sometimes falls short in the detail department with his art. At its best, the art is incredibly expressive. At its worst, it’s muddy and this leaves many characters with weird anatomy and faces lacking in proper detailing.

For fans of the genres of noir and horror, Fatale is like a brilliant marriage that somehow works despite its odd coupling. It’s also ideal for booklovers, as it offers a narrative most often found in novels and operates in the moral grey area rather than the more common good versus evil conflict seen in most other comic books. Death Chases Me is a great start and lays down the groundwork for one hell of a good ride.

RATING: B+