Review: Lazarus #13
Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Lazarus. As before, if you’re keen on an insight into the creative process, you can find our interviews with the creators of Lazarus here, here and here.
Although the word “review” is bandied around, this isn’t the place to come for an assessment of whether or not you should buy the book – indeed, if you’re reading this without having read it already, you’re in, at the very least, for some significant spoilers. We aim, instead, to provide an “enhanced” reading experience, touching on details, thematic connections and other areas to read and explore – sometimes with comments from the creators themselves.
As always, spoilers abound for the current issue within! Enough chit-chat! On with the book!
Opening Bids
How much skin do you have in the game? Do you go all in? Are you bluffing? Can you read them? Do they have an ace up their sleeve? Are they cheating?
It’s no accident that much of our language that describes relationships borrows from the world of games in general, and the world of poker in particular. Poker, more than most games, is about given and take: how much you hazard, and how much you hold back. Are you willing to get burnt today in the hopes of your luck changing by tomorrow?
Chess is used as the metaphor for war – the sacrifice of pawns, gambits and strategies, the taking of positions; and for enmity, where two opponents sworn to each other’s destruction face off, like Professor X and Magneto meeting in the park. Chess has forever been the ruler’s proving ground – a symbol as old as time for the martial prowess, for in chess, all troops are perfectly loyal, all confrontations decisive and all elements of chance removed.
Cards, however, are used as a metaphor for love. Ask the best card players, and they’ll tell you that’s because the element of skill in chess is how you use the board – the element of skill in cards is how you use yourself and your opponent.
If this is demonstrated anywhere, it is demonstrated in Issue 13’s poker game, where even through a detached act of ratiocination, the Li Lazarus proves that it his knowledge of people, as much as his knowledge of numbers, that makes him unbeatable.
Game Theory, a branch of applied mathematics dedicated to modelling strategic decision-making on when to cooperate and when to compete, has revolutionised institutional decision-making, found everywhere from economic forecasts to models of evolution to sports drafting.
It is no surprise that Malcolm’s fields of expertise are economics and biology – the two fields most revolutionised by Game Theory, fields where academic dividends have been reaped from treating decision-trees in a mathematical fashion have most yielded insights. The world Malcolm has shaped is one that worships rather than utilises Chicago Economics, where traditional special pleading to higher purpose have been replaced with enlightened self-interest and a balance of economic powers are held out as an objective good, rather than necessary impositions on our natural way of organising society.
Game Theory is at the heart of the Conclave’s operation – Morray shift to Hock, while Bittners prepare to join with the Carlyles and so on, despite generations of allegiance or enmity, because enlightened self-interest is meant to rule the day. There are few recriminations amongst all these realignments because there is no expectation of good faith outside so-called ‘rationality’.
The problem is that Game Theory flies in the face of our instincts. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is the most famous piece of Game Theory in part because the correct answer – to cooperate and compete alternatively and reactively – is counter-intuitive to our sense of morality and self-preservation alike. We as a species are often tribal and emotional, driven not by our long-term self-interest but instead by our loves and hates, essential to us but statistical noise from the perspective of optimising our interests.
The alternative, our story-tellers advise us, it to go with your heart. Love conquers all, and when cold numbers-men meet true love, they fade away like nightmare apparitions. If you have love, you have everything, and only love can break the heart. So says Neil Young, and Gene Pitney, and Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare and George R R Martin and Suzanne Collins, and a dozen others you might care to name. It’s a truth so universal as to become an unassailable part of the human condition. When you love, you have something beyond your specific interests to win and lose. We are told by our storytellers that we love because life is empty without it, because the price for never having anything or anyone that can wound you is that you spent your life insulated from everything that might really bring it meaning. This as an indelible lesson of our culture, from the low to the high.
Flowery metaphors aside, it is absolutely true that we are all meat computers programmed to love. The elements for love are dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenalin and oxytocin, which control our behaviours with a grip far stronger than that of our rational, conscious mind. Heartbreak, in turn, is the painful withdrawal of the drug cocktail withdrawn. The pitter-patter of the heart, the restlessness preoccupation, the yearning to be close to family in times of crisis, the tribal desire to defend insiders from outsiders – these are measurable instincts arising from neurochemistry, born to inculcate an instinct for altruism that delivers species- wide ‘survival of the fittest’ dividends.
In Lazarus, the relevant neurochemical sciences are appropriately advanced enough to render this (viable) speculation into actionable formula. Our instinct to love has been hijacked by those playing a game of houses where, as noted above, love has little weight. Hock’s entire kingdom are addicted to loyalty, and Eve has been imprinted with her duty right down to the cells of her body. Eve’s capacity to love is part and parcel of the speculative fiction elements of the story, and the strong implication so far has been she has been designed to love especially well, and particularly wisely. The tragedy, writ all the way back into Jonah’s shoddy attempts to “reinforce the bond” in Issue 1, is that neither she nor we as the readers can ever really tell where that love is truly reciprocated. So while going with your native instinct can deliver happiness, and purpose and clarity, it also risks being a parochial, manipulated tool, leading with your jaw and ultimately falling hard.
Spock and Kirk all over again.
This tension is perfectly captured by the argument between Li and Mueller. Mueller speaks an intuitively comprehensible view of tribal loyalties, of a simple vision of the enemy and the ally. It is noted that his adjustments have given him a short fuse, and it equally seems a reasonable supposition that Hock’s pharmaceuticals, the source of Mueller’s strength, have instilled loyalty and obedience. He wishes to feel a world with simple meanings, where his hatreds – driven by the choices made by his superiors – reflect a moral order to the world that he can comprehend. Fraternising with the enemy is confounding.
Li’s perspective stands in direct opposition. The robotic assessment machine he has become ultimately makes him more conscious of humanity: he is aware not just of how he will behave, but who Mueller is, and in the same way, who his de facto brothers and sisters in the room are. That ability, clearly, induces him to greatly enjoy poker as an exercise of his capacity for assessment and manipulation and guides him to take a more aesthetic, abstract view of loyalties and drivers than Mueller is comfortable with.
Eve is clearly placed between these two poles – she has been altered both with greater insight, with strategic training and tactical implants, and with chemical and genetic tweaks to increase her tribal and instinctive loyalties. The genetic loyalty, the programmed position, can and must be at odds with what the human experience is teaching her. Is there a better summation of the conflict that drives Forever’s entire character, and the story?
Full House
In response to increased geographic and social mobility, shrinking family units and slowly growing social acceptance of rejecting those we hare blood with but treat us poorly, we are told that family is something you choose. We are taught in this modern age that we share love with key people in our lives, and that those people become our closest relationships. And as much as this is a narrative device of the television (because how else to build a cast around five or six actors), it is also a truth, one that reflects how we live. We build our social groups, as much or more than we are born into them – the people we would follow into the dark are elected. You can’t choose your blood relations, our fiction alternately whispers and shouts, but you can choose your family.
The world of Lazarus is not the world of Friends, Buffy or Cheers, and clearly the reversion to simpler, less flexible units is the norm. At the top of society, the oft-discussed feudal restoration of the dynasty has in theory cemented that inflexibility. And yet, of course, the one royal family we know is riven with conflict and betrayal and the one Waste family we know opened their door to their neighbours. Eve, insofar as she has grown as a person, has grown distant from the family that may or may not be hers, but cannot understand her. In its place, what does she have? Page 11 of Lazarus #13 is as close as one might get to the definition of that concept of surrogate family.
Even though the word used is “friendship”, Sir Thomas’ speech is clear – we’re not dealing with friends here, not entirely. They know their purposes may set them at odds, but to each, the other is the closest that they’ll ever have to true companionship, true understanding. Because the Lazari aren’t just loyal soldiers, they are new beings: a different order of being that can only be fully understood in the context of each other.
Understanding that relationship, yet knowing you can be arrayed against each other, must necessarily be a blessing and a curse. You must study your enemies, but the more you come to know them, how can you not like them, particularly when they’re the only ones like you? Lazarus has always been a comic about family. For all that it brings an unwavering gaze to bear on the problems of the modern day, our story began with a girl struggling to understand what family was, and what that really meant. The question was posed by a dying father in the first issue, has come to haunt Forever through a traitorous brother and a mysterious warning,but, with issue 13, she is given the first inkling of an answer – though the cost is dear. As the world moves closer to a crisis point, the speculation as to the future that underpins the affection becomes more foreboding – for all they are able to sit and be together, blood is likely to follow.
Ace of Hearts
This issue is a pulls in from the exploration of the sf coolness, political drama and ensemble exploration back to the heart of the story – the distance between Eve’s heart and her head, and the labyrinth of loyalties that Eve must navigate to find safe ground. We have, in fact, never seen as many people as Forever cares about in a single issue as we do this month. The defining feature of everyone we see is that Forever cares about each of them. Note how Hock, the ostensible villain of the piece, is kept entirely off-screen. This story is about the people Forever cares about, and how they could and do hurt her. It’s not just about politics, or risk, it’s about how much you’re willing to put in the emotional game, and how much you can lose, even when you play your hardest.
Joacquim seems the star-crossed lover, pulled from her by circumstances beyond his control. When Sonja breaks the news of the Morray defection, Forever is careful not to show emotion, but thanks to the elegance and precision of Michael’s pencils, we know how much this change in circumstance hurts her. Her youth and reserve is more telling in the confines of the enhanced vulnerability of intimacy. Bethany in turn seems the harridan sister, outraged and revelling in the family dramatics of how Eve dresses and who she dances with, while Malcolm the caring patriarch, sending her to play with her friends.
And yet there are alternate readings for all of this, the messy, organic spontaneity of these tragedies replaced instead with eerie, cold ploys. We noted last issue that the timing of Joacquim’s invitation to dance was at best unfortunate, especially given the Morray’s changing allegiances. Could his kissing her (and with the delicate, “I may not want you to stop”, maybe, possibly more?) be a gambit for psychological warfare or a hunt for biological samples? The precise nature of Joacquim’s machinery is not entirely known – as much as he is a metal warrior, there is nothing that prevents him from being a scanning device. A kiss, a strand of hair, any of the lingering forensics of an intimate embrace, might arm the Morrays (and their potential new allies) with significantly more data about Forever Carlyle than they’ve had before.
Similarly, Bethany was dancing last issue, pulling James onto the floor. There, she seemed enthused by the developing party atmosphere, whereas here, her rage is a deep and ugly thing. Mere hypocrisy? Or is Beth’s hypocritical overreaction staged, as so much of her family life must per force be staged, setting Malcolm up to play the heroic father to ensure Eve’s loyalty for the big mission?
We are not saying either of these particular constructions are especially likely. At the end of the day, if everyone is scheming and duplicitous through their on-screen appearances, you are not left with much of story to invest in. Instead, the reason our minds whir in circles, unable to wrestle with the possibility for stacking towers of schemes, plots and counter-plot, is because we empathise with Eve’s essential position that all or none of these possibilities could be true. She has reason to believe her family is a lie, and must surely know her feelings are carefully crafted through science. Her highly artificial political environment means duty and enmity alike have little meaning – her brother betrayed her father, who in turn shows little empathy for his son, even as lifelong enemies and allies change seats out of expedience.
But Eve is not purely reactive in this issue either. After all, Forever loves her brother, too. Her traitorous, brutal brother. She has been conditioned to love him, and even as she hates him, she hates him because that love has not entirely gone away. When betrayed by a loved one, we aren’t the only ones hurt by them. They hurt the image of the beloved, the platonic form that we had of them, the expectations and understandings that comprised who and what we thought they were. Forever is angry at her brother, her jaded, selfish brother, because she loved him despite those faults, on the understanding that he loved her in return. The supreme, brutal and tragic irony, is that in the moment when she is forced to turn on him, Jonah does love Forever. Look at the rapture on his face, the gratitude and abject apology in his words and posture. He asks for nothing. He does not even beg for rescue. His only thoughts are his joy in seeing Forever, and how sorry he is for hurting her and the family. And then, without giving Jonah warning, his brotherly embrace of her is used by Eve as a delivery mechanism for whatever was in that vial, because that is her role as Lazarus. Even without grasping the full context, it is portrayed, in her eyes in the panel, as a betrayal that will weigh on her.
The problem is that neither Game Theory nor simple tribal instinct are enough to describe or resolve the existential crisis each human faces. Great storytelling allows characters to travel in unexpected directions, all the while underpinned by the fact that for who those characters are, certain actions are inevitable. The audience spins with each turn, but the arc of the characters, under the hand of their creators, move on an arc like celestial bodies.
Issue #13 is another of those great issues that is, at once, part of a greater whole and a masterclass in transition based storytelling: the Forever who begins this issue both is and isn’t the one who ends it. We start with a girl embarrassed by an enemy at a party, reconnecting with a lover, desperate to serve and save the Family who sent her there. We end with a woman who has seemingly lost that love, whose obedience to that Family forces her hand into acts she finds hard to condone or accept, that will likely array her against her only friends even while betraying her emotional connection to the very family she is sacrificing to serve. Never have the dictates, the virtual imprisonment, the heavy toll of Forever’s whole existence, been as sharp, as sad, or as clear.
