Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Michael Lark with Brian Level
Release Date: 2nd July 2014

In Lazarus, Rucka’s created a world with a lot of buzz about it. A dystopia of financial inequality, where a handful of families, not countries, rule; served by a select few serfs, the best and brightest of the masses, the rest of the population are classed as waste. And in amongst this, is a Lazarus, a family’s unstoppable, unkillable assassin.

The plot centres on Forever Carlyle, the brooding female Lazarus for the ruling family of much of America; the first story-arc introduced the world and some family politicking (complete with incest – someone’s been reading GRRM); this concludes the second, about waste trying to achieve Serfdom or “Lift”.

Having read (and really enjoyed) 1-4, but missed 5-8, I was keen to get my head round this. The synopsis makes it a good jumping in point, but the plot (and even the subplot) is utterly predictable. They mention that this is a fat issue – the letters pages in Lazarus are a real highlight, where fans can engage and ask questions about the world – and to be honest there’s simply too much exposition. Tighter storytelling and scripting would’ve made a more satisfying issue. That said, Lark’s art’s tight and there’s some beautiful frames, with no sense of anything unnecessary there.

Going back and reading issues 5-8, my feeling are pretty similar. It’s a great story-arc, and we have to have time to bond with the characters – but it’s still resolved in a fairly contrived way. I enjoyed it, I’ll keep reading it, and I do recommend it – I just hoped for more.

Rating: 3/5.

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The writer of this piece was: Sam de Smith