Publisher: Image Comics
Story By: Greg Rucka
Art By: Michael Lark
Release Date: 6th August 2014

In the latest instalment of Rucka’s dystopia, we get the Meanwhile… of the failed coup from the first storyline. We’re treated to glorious cinematic widescreen panels in this issue, and a great set of colours from Santi Arcas, once again using a subtle set of distinct palettes to give us a firm sense of the different locations.

Visiting Manhattan is always a gamble in any medium, comics especially, because we’re so oddly familiar with it that we can find ourselves being equal parts complacent and judgemental. Here, flooded and farmed in equal measure, it’s a brutal – and to be honest, slightly overstated – Orwellian vision, although well realised in the main.

The plotline is interesting, if slightly frustrating. Because we have so little sympathy for Jonah after his actions in the first storyline, when we see the world from a different perspective that challenges his, we can almost find ourselves writing him off as being merely naïve. His actions reinforce this, and we don’t share any of his surprise: whilst it’s genuinely a thrill to delve deeper into Rucka’s mind, there is a definite inevitability to the way the storyline unfolds. And this is the source of the frustration: in a grinding dystopic setting, you have to have hope as a reader, even if that hope is a source of heartbreak as the story unfolds.

We’re roughly a year into the publication history of Lazarus, and it’s certainly hitting a lot of the right notes. It just needs a bit more oomf to push it into the big leagues.

Rating: 3/5

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The writer of this piece was: Sam de Smith
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