My father is a butcher. I remember one cold morning, someone brought a whitetail buck that they’d killed to him so that the animal could be cut up. I watched as they strung it up from a tree on the top of hill near the old barn on our property. The knife carved the animal with precision, in fluid motions. More effort was required to cut through the bones, but it was done. As my father expertly went to work with his knife, I watched the animal lose all its ornamentation, all of its connection to the collective perception of what a ‘deer’ should be, and became something more essential, more primal. The heart and the memory of the beast were discarded, leaving behind the most basic echo of its will to survive: raw, red, bloody muscle. We had venison for supper that night. It was delicious.
Maybe Greg Rucka and Michael Lark have taken a similar butcher knife to humanity. They have expertly and cleanly cut away the frills, ornamentation and our beliefs about what the human experience should be about. They have sliced away at philosophy and psychology, exposing muscle, sinew and viscera; the things that give us weight and allow us to fight for our survival. Operating on instinct in a brutal world, the characters in “Lazarus” offer a devastating portrait of the most basic realities of our nature. The team has distilled the essence of the struggle into an easily digestible offering, and let me tell you, it’s delicious.
Written by Greg Rucka
Illustrated by Michael Lark“FAMILY,” Part Four The conclusion of the first arc. Forever moves to defend her Family with blood and steel as the Twins’ plot against their father is revealed.
As the first arc of “Lazarus” concludes in this fourth issue, Rucka and Lark turn their attention toward questions of power and agency, love and weakness, and the relationships between all these ideas. In this brave new world the team has created the goal is survival, and with that theme in focus, the question of what defines power begs to be asked. The trappings of domestic life have passed away, leaving only base instinct to protect one’s own and to stay alive. Each member of the Carlyle family responds to the challenges presented by this world in their own way revealing what they believe gives them power. Some hold to their sense of entitlement, others reach for facts and figures, some grasp at their plans and schemes. While the patriarch of the family clings to Forever, the Carlyle family Lazarus.The only member of the family who does not have an idea of the power they possess, or how to wield it for their own gain, is seemingly the most powerful character of all, Forever herself.
Despite her considerable physical prowess and seeming invulnerability, Forever has the least personal agency of any character. Programmed to obey her father and siblings without question, placed on a strict maintenance schedule and forced to carry out actions that she fundamentally disagrees with; she is continually victimized by her family. Some members of the family exploit her emotional investment in them. It’s heartbreaking to watch her struggle for autonomy and be denied at every turn. She’s spent her life being lied to, functioning as a high tech security system for the Carlyles and believing she is a member of that family. Throughout the previous issues the fact that Forever is something other than a full-fledged Carlyle, in this issue those allusions come to a head. This creates a complex conflict that is sure to be explored in an interesting way over the next story arc, beginning in “Lazarus” #5.
One of the visual and narrative highlights of “Lazarus” #4 is a cross-cut scene showing kinetic action sequences featuring Johanna and Forever. Though the women are miles apart, and their experiences are dramatically different the themes of the scenes are forced into focus by the careful construction of these pages. In some respects, both Johanna and Forever are being victimized in this scene. However, Johanna is the aggressor as well as the recipient of violence in her scenario. While Forever is the one doling out the hits in her portion of this scene, she faces the threat only because she is forced to do so. She is forced to fight, or become a victim. She chooses the former and survives the battle, though eventually she still falls prey to emotional subterfuge as a result of her loyalty and love for her family. Lark’s work provides stunning visual clarity and emotionally articulate poignancy. Beautifully rendered by Lark and evocatively colored by Santi Arcas the sequence is one of the strongest examples of cross-cutting since “The Godfather” set a baptism alongside a mob hit.
Continued belowThroughout this issue Lark’s art is emotionally charged, full of weight and gravity. The violent content retains impact with each hit, and the damage done to the protagonist hurts to see. His control and economy allow the characters and their struggles, be they physical or internal, to take center stage. The quality of these illustrations is undeniable.
Rucka’s sterile remove gives an air of authenticity to this world. While the characters are allowed their emotions, reactions and individual voices; the descriptions of the world and its operating order are conveyed in a way that makes them read as fact. The total commitment to this imagined reality functioning as reality sets this series apart.
A tale of family, survival and the search for self, “Lazarus” #4 brilliantly concludes the first arc of the series. Rucka and Lark have created a world that showcases instinct, and begs the audience to question what exactly defines the human experience.
Final Verdict: 8.7 – A beautiful high-concept examination of humanity’s most basic nature.
