(Editor’s Note: Michael Lark’s name was misspelled twice and the actual release date is June 25. AIPT regrets the errors.)
Even an unkillable assassin has to one day call it quits.
Launched in June 2013 by writer Greg Rucka and artist Michael Lark, Lazarus felt like a big, bold action series like few others of the era. And given the shape of the world over the last decade or so, you could see why Lazarus was both so popular — and so prescient. In a world dominated by the feckless feudal politics of 16 oligarchical families, protagonist Forever Carlyle’s bloody mission of truth and freedom is the pipe dreams of your average reader. Lazarus didn’t ‘t just span 26 monthly issues and a series of spin-offs (including 2019’s Risen), but also a role-playing game and a (possibly still?) in-development TV series.
Now, though, the end comes at last as Rucka and Lark prepare the release of Lazarus: Fallen. Here, Forever has finally broken free of the Carlyle family and no longer serves as their Lazarus (effectively, each family’s super badass bodyguard/killing machine). With her destiny finally her own, Forever will take the final steps to burn down this unjust system for good and give the world a chance to finally shape its own destiny. Whether you’re a long-time Lazarus fan, or returning after the “main” story, Lazarus: Fallen is a deeply satisfying end to a long journey exploring very real political abuse and social unrest.
Lazarus: Fallen #1 drops on June 25. (The FOC is Monday, June 2, FYI.) Ahead of that, we got the chance recently to catch up with both Rucka and Lark via email. There, we discussed some of their favorite moments, things they would’ve done differently across the whole of Lazarus, what to expect from Fallen, and other topics and tidbits.
If you’d like a Lazarus refresher, the very first issue is available to read via Image Comics.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
AIPT: Now that Lazarus is wrapping up, how do you feel about it as a whole? Is there anything you’d change or something you wish you’d done instead?
Greg Rucka: Oh, there’s plenty. Hindsight is 20-20, right? Off the top of my head, I’d absolutely change the Jonah/Johanna dynamic that’s established at the start of the series — the strong implication that the relationship is incestuous. That was just a mistake on my part, even though I’d had a fairly solid scaffolding of logic that got me to it — that the Families, being as greedy and desperate to hold onto what they had, wouldn’t want to share.
And that for Carlyle, with longevity and their effective (if limited) immortality at play, they wouldn’t need marriage to create a “new generation.” Never mind that apparently Game of Thrones (which I’ve never seen and never read) was going nuts on the incest front at the time. It was just…a wrong choice for the characters, for who Jo and Jonah were, and who I wanted them to become. So, that’s a mistake I made right at the start, you know?
As a whole, though? I stand by it, despite the occasional missteps. I think my biggest regrets are the moments — the scenes and beats — that we just didn’t have the time and space to share. I’ve tried to write complex people at every stage, and I think I’ve mainly succeeded. But the flipside of that can be that their motivations aren’t always clear — that people have taken what they’ve said and done at face value. But when I look back at all we’ve done — and I am extraordinarily proud of what we’ve done — it’s those missed opportunities that sting the most.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
For better or for worse, I write with the belief that the audience is not just smarter than I am, but more sophisticated, as well, and that they will almost always get to where I’m going ahead of me. But sometimes this means they’re taking what a character is saying or doing at face value, rather than in the context of the entirety of the character. I’m thinking of James Mann right now. James was always, always, always a quisling — he was always, always, always looking to save himself, and the way he intended to do so was by being indispensable and ultimately loyal to Malcolm Carlyle above everything else.
Some people were surprised by his actions at the end of Lazarus: Risen, but to me, that was always who the guy was, you know? He was a coward and an opportunist at his heart, even if he was also capable of kindness and empathy. People are never just one thing.
Michael Lark: That’s an impossible question to answer, because, when I look at my art, all I see are the things I wish I’d done differently. I think it’s important to just think of it as a snapshot of that moment, and to know that I was doing the best I could at that moment.
AIPT: I feel like this story predicted a lot of modern society/politics with the “rise” of Trump. Would you agree, and is that a source of pride or anger?
GR: I talk about this a bit in the backmatter to Lazarus: Fallen #1. I’ve been writing professionally for over 30 years. I had a terrorist attack in one of the Queen & Country novels, a piece of fiction, that came to pass almost precisely as I’d described it just weeks before the novel was released. When I wrote Bravo, the second Jad Bell novel, I described the currently-being-executed conspiracy to take over the U.S. government, and that was back in 2015.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
And I’ve said elsewhere that Lazarus itself came out of the financial crisis that started under Bush the Lesser and that the Obama administration, for better or for worse, brought us back from the brink of. I still remember talking to people in finance who, quite sincerely, though the whole global economy was about to collapse, were stockpiling supplies and ammunition because they feared what was coming. The writing was on the wall, and if you go back and look at our first issues and look at the backmatter there, I talk about a lot of relevant topics, like the wealth inequality ratios, and how the divide is only growing.
And how there’s an end-point where there will simply be nothing left to own, because a very small handful of people have bought everything of value. Look around, right? Look at the photos of the recent inauguration, look at who was there who had nothing to do with the Federal government and yet were up on the platform. That’s Year-X.
There were plenty of people who saw this coming. I can take pride in my ability to read the trail signs, to know where we’ve been heading, but I’m not proud that I was so right about so much. Mostly, I’m angry as hell that I guess I didn’t see it in time, didn’t do more to stop it. Angry at myself and angry as hell at our so-called elected representatives for not doing fuck-all about it. The fix was in. That’s what I get angry about, honestly: the fix was in, and I didn’t realize it myself until far too late.
ML: Nothing about the current occupant of the White House is or should be a source of pride. We started this book before 2015, so it really is a reflection of the rise of unregulated capitalism and oligarchy, of which the current occupant is just a symptom. Greg didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see what was happening, so the fact that so many people—especially the U.S. media—chose to ignore what was obvious, even to us, is a source of anger and frustration.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
We often “joke” (it’s very much gallows humor) that our book started as science fiction and ended up as a documentary. But it never should have gotten that way. The fact that it has should be a source of shame for those who didn’t try to stop it.
AIPT: What is your favorite or standout moment across the whole of Lazarus? Something that speaks to the true power of this book? And why that moment/page/etc. specifically?
GR: Oh, there’s so much. Sincerely, there’s so much. I still — to this day — get a thrill when Michael’s pages come in, when I see what he’s done. If we’re talking about the “power” of this book, it’s from Michael’s pen, and that’s not me blowing smoke. He is capable of capturing such subtlety of emotion—he can break your heart with a panel, with a pen-stroke. The fourth Lazarus hardcover collection, which was just released, begins with two issues from the original series, finally being reprinted; I’d held off on where I wanted to share those two issues specifically because I knew their relevance, and I wanted them to drop in relation to a moment in Lazarus: Fallen, which is coming out June 25.
But those two issues, which are amongst Michael’s favorites, are just, to me, masterpieces of his storytelling. Just a beautiful, human love story — a tragedy. I look back at the reveal of Eight and I can take pride in that, in having executed a particularly neat bit of storytelling misdirection. But at the end of the day, it is always those human moments that win for me. When Forever is hurt, scared, and alone. When Michael Barrett stands tall. When Malcolm bends under the weight of his burdens only to return to full asshole mode. Those moments when we were able to reveal to the reader something more about the characters — something they didn’t necessarily see.
There are some moments coming — especially in the first arc — that flip the script in interesting ways. Some readers are going to think it’s out of character, I imagine, but…trust me, this is who these people were the entire time.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
ML: There are so many moments. But the journey of Forever’s brother Jonah is really a standout for me. In the latest hardcover collection, there’s a sequence when he sees what the families have done to him — the pain and horror that these oligarchs have caused in the world. And the page at the end of his little two-issue story — when he is standing on the hill watching as the world around him burns to the ground — is so meaningful to me.
In that panel, he is changed completely. I didn’t see it coming, and at the time I drew it, I don’t think I realized how significant it would become to me. But it is now my favorite part of the series so far!
AIPT: Fallen sees Forever “free from her father’s control” and ready to enthusiastically dismantle their system. What can we expect from this ending? Is it going to be all sword fights or will you play with the audience’s expectations?
GR: Hah! I mean, for a series about badasses with bladed weapons, we don’t actually have all that much hacking-and-slashing. There’s definitely gonna be a lot of blood on the ground, yes. We’ve depicted a world where the only means of resistance is violence. We have established a world where the system is broken, corrupt, immoral, and patently vile. Some minds can be changed, absolutely. But some motherfuckers, yeah, they’re gonna have to die.
What can we expect? Revelations, if not of mythology or the world, of who people are. Romance. Humor — yeah, I know, but there’s at least one bit coming up in the first arc that is genuinely funny. Heartbreak. Nobility. Craven cowardice, selfish indulgence, and misplaced righteousness.
Courtesy of Image Comics.
The series has always been, at its heart, about Forever’s journey. And Forever’s journey is, in many ways, the story of surviving abuse. It’s not easy to get through the kind of emotional and physical abuse she’s experienced and find a healthy life, let alone happiness. At the end of the day, Forever has always been a good person at heart. So, I suppose the question is whether or not a good person can change the world for the better, or if she’s doomed to fail.
ML: Oh, there will be sword fights! But there have been many moments, just in the first couple of story arcs of Lazarus: Fallen that have taken me by surprise. One issue in particular actually made me sort of gasp when I read the final page of the script. Greg does that to me all the time — the characters change and grow in ways that I didn’t expect them to. But at the same time, it never feels unnatural or forced. It’s always a case of getting to those moments, and looking back, and thinking “Of course this is how he/she is responding.”
I love it when that happens. I love it when he makes me love and sympathize with a character that I hadn’t really cared for up until then. It keeps me coming back for more — and I hope that most of our readers feel the same way.
You must be logged in to post a comment.