Review: Lazarus #6

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 three-part catch-up with Greg himself here.

We’re a little later this time around than we’d ordinarily like to be, but it’s been an eventful little stretch: Robert had to have his cat put to sleep, and David’s getting married next week! (Congratulate him!) We’re very pleased to be able to present our look at the latest Lazarus issue now.

As always, spoilers abound for the current issue within! Enough chit-chat! On with the book!

LAZARUS #6

Family above all.

Those are the words that Greg Rucka has used to sign off each issue of Lazarus. The comic leans into the ironic paean to familial fidelity and political obedience, subtly encouraging us to think over the events of the comic past in much the same way “Blood for the Blood God” or “Be seeing you” encourage a wry subliminal awareness of the contradictions and complexities that their respective media dig around in.

For Lazarus, “Family above all” echoes the ongoing focus on the dynamic of the Family, the Carlyle dynasty and the remainder of their aristocratic breed. It also resonates with the comic’s structure as a dynastic struggle, that reified varietal of the ‘family drama’ model that underpins countless plays and stories. The narrative of the family drama is one of looking inwards, of shrinking the character’s world by preventing their escape. The key themes rely on the fact that no matter how disruptive, how toxic the influence of your family may become, as family is an integral part of yourself, it can never be escaped.

But such focus raises a corollary question of what family is. Culturally, it’s a label with a muddied history. Couples make a new family when they start a life together, or expand an old one. We talk about single parent families, foster families and adoptive families. People ascribe the word family to their social media cronies and their social groups, but “Focus on the Family” (or “Family First”) carry connotations that try and force prescriptive notions of the family on others. They say that “home is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in”, but the real world teaches us that families can, and do, become irretrievably broken.

The Carlyle family is, first and foremost, a dynasty – a family weaponised into a political force, leveraging ties of blood to ensure participation and unity even as it devalues and taints those instinctive ties. The very underpinning of the idea of a blooded aristocracy is that by making its tenets part of who someone is, you can, from birth, secure their loyalty to an agenda and an organisation. Aristocracy is, for aristocrats even more than for the suffering serfs, programming of the highest order, and its approach has been borrowed by everyone from corporations (“Don’t go home to your family: they’re right here”) to cults like the Family International.

In Issue #1 of Lazarus, Samuel Rosales, about to die, told Forever she didn’t know what family truly meant. Not only did this serve as effective foreshadowing, but it also worked as a simple home truth. Now, grappling with the assertion that her family is not what she thinks it is, Eve must go back to first principles and try to reason out what it truly might be. What is it about the idea of a family that we find so evocative? What is it about that idea that can bring people to the ultimate heights of loyalty and self-sacrifice, or the ultimate depths of cruelty and despair? Up until now, the Carlyle family, like the families from The Magnificent Ambersons, The Corrections or even Dynasty, are seemingly the natural culmination of their instincts as children, reflecting their formative years, but with additional power to wield. How they interact, how they jostle for parental approval and validation, is fostered by hopes and resentments fostered over a long period of years. Malcolm’s thoughts have been kept deliberately close and the mother, Abigail, has been kept entirely off-screen. What it means to be a parent, rather than merely have one, what opportunities and obligations it imposes, have largely been informed, even assumed, values rather than portrayed ones.

All that changes with this issue of Lazarus. The world continues to unfold in important, involving ways. David punched the air wildly when we first heard of the Free. The conditions of poverty, exploitation and loss are prevalent and the break-in sequence alternates between curious, tense and tragic, so we could have plenty to talk about with those sorts of beats – but Issue #6 is not best defined by twists or revelations (indeed, the issue has almost a transitive feel, carrying us across to the next point in the series) but instead for the evocative and touching moments within.

The essential truth of Lazarus #6 is contained in its two temporal poles of perception – Forever’s backwards-facing dreams and memories of the past, and the Barrets’ hopes and fears for the future. This tension between looking back at our parents and looking forward for our (well not our – we’re still young – but the collective ‘our’) children is family at heart and these scenes, perhaps more than any in the book thus far, devote themselves to family above all.

Marisol and James

To young Eve, Marisol is her substitute parent – authoritative, supportive, invested. One might think, given the fragility of the Little Forever, and her lonely place in the world, that it would be easy for Marisol to fall into the role of Sir Ector or Alfred. Greg made clear in our interview that Marisol is one of Forever’s go-to support points, someone she trusts, and that’s certainly been borne out by what we’ve seen of her in the narrative.

Sadly, the Lazarus team makes it clear enough that this is Little Eve’s misunderstanding of the world, an early failure to apprehend the complexity of her relationships. Marisol makes it clear to us that she does not, will not, cross that line to accountability for Eve’s wellbeing. She cannot usurp the position of a true parent. No matter how much affection Marisol may feel for Eve, no matter how much she might think things should be done different, she remains fundamentally a vassal of the Carlyles, her actions in raising Eve remain an extension of Malcolm’s will.

This is borne out in her conversation with James about Malcolm’s parenting techniques: she disapproves, but only behind closed doors. Marisol is likely best categorised by her formal in-text description: Eve’s teacher. We’re not suggesting we know Marisol’s fate or where her feelings take her, but from Marisol’s perspective, Marisol was never Eve’s parent.

It is all too common in media to present teachers as surrogate parents. Dumbledore takes in loco parentis to a whole new level, Giles from Buffy is more father than trainer and the entire structure of Wuxia is to place the sensei as the ultimate filial allegiance. In truth, as anyone who has been a teacher or known a teacher can tell you, the job of the teacher is less melodramatic and far, far harder. Like being someone’s lawyer or doctor, being a teacher carries a requisite degree of professional detachment, and unlike a parent, teachers are often forced to grow attached to dozens, if not hundreds, of children and then watch them pass beyond their sphere of influence forever.

This isn’t to devalue the importance of the teacher’s role, far from it. Teachers can be some of the most important relationships children ever have. Nonetheless, the subtle distinction between teacher and parent is at the heart of Eve’s struggle. It is the contrast in the teacher relationship that informs the parent relationship. By showing us what the relationship between Eve and Marisol is not, Greg and Michael simultaneously draw the alien environment of Eve’s training dojo and enclosure into something instantly recognisable as part of one of the most prolific professions in the world and uses that familiar structure to deliver a pointed critique on Malcolm’s parenting (at least regarding Eve – one assumes his treatment of his other children was differently flawed).

If that was where we left the analysis of these few pages, however, we’d be ignoring the parental beat that does appear to exist in those pages: that between Marisol and James. Consider: we know that Marisol is significantly older than she appears, and we don’t know James’ age. Servitude in a Family household appears to pass by blood. James is solicitous of her welfare, concerned regarding the particular details of her health. Marisol clearly feels great affection for him, but the kiss on the forehead is neither casual nor erotic. There’s no undercurrent of a lover’s intimacy there, but rather the solicitude of a carer. No greater credit, by the way, can be paid to the emotional details of Michael’s pencils than to note that he can capture nuance between kinds of kissing, particularly between two adults who appear to be the same age.

So two possibilities leap to mind – that Marisol could well be James’ biological mother or, less likely, that Marisol is an earlier iteration of James’ work, a daughter by way of the Lazarus programme. We feel the former is better supported by the art. Greg and Michael even emphasise this by bestowing an identical kiss between Dennis and his granddaughter at the end of the issue. Whatever their relationship, an unguarded moment of closeness is captured at that moment, throwing the relationship between Marisol and Eve into sharp relief.

James and Eve

To begin at the ending, the interaction between James and Eve ends with the older Forever waking up, in the present, clearly alarmed. The narrative device of cutting from an unfolding scene to a startled awakening is a storied one, and traditionally signposts the character waking up from dreaming a scene the audience has just witnessed. Vision, memory or fantasy, the technique conveys knowledge coming to the forefront of the sleeping mind.

Here, this tradition is supported by the textual transition – “Now, close your eyes… get some sleep.” – smoothly linking Little and older Forever, just as James looking into the light in Forever’s room links Marisol and James to the interaction between James and Forever. The absence of clear demarcations is included so the change in venue and the subsequent change in time don’t make us feel like the scene has ended, instead presenting the whole as embraced within Forever’s sleeping mind. This is interesting, because Forever cannot be remembering the entirety of the scene as presented. She’d only know the vaguely brotherly supervision she receives from James as he comes to say goodnight (the Latin, for the folks playing at home, is the various conjugations of “command” and “guard”, a nice little Easter egg), not the earlier conversation between James and Marisol which reveals home truths that she is clearly not in a position to deal with.

We might be reading too much into the transition, or it could be a minor error of not reasoning things through to their ultimate conclusion, but Eve’s face strongly suggests something is being portrayed here. James’ last words carry across the pages and Eve is unquestionably startled awake thereafter. From the presence of the haunting message in the bathroom, we know her mind is certainly on the portentous denunciation of her false family. Her eyes are wide, her face tense. There is an alarm going off, but that’s not enough to explain that kind of shuddering out of repose, particularly for a trained warrior with a biologically gifted smoothness of reaction. That’s a classic traumatic awakening – if we were watching a film it would be paired with a sharp intake of breath as the character jolts to consciousness.

If we’re right, then we are witnessing Eve have the rug pulled from under her in a big way. Little Forever is happy in the past. Beaming smiles, textbook friendly affection. The horror lies in reconciling her memory with the new, impossible revelation. There’s no implication she overheard the exchange between James and Marisol, but at the same time the kind of knowledge that conversation represents to the reader, and the kind of conclusions that can be drawn from it, must, on some level, be apparent to Eve. Forever’s coming to realise things that she’s previously not known, or not wanted to know. This creates an additional layer of meaning to the reading of the message on her phone in the bathroom, and her response. “You’re wrong” isn’t just a flat statement of denial, it’s a protestation to herself, a renunciation of her own unconscious thoughts. Why else say it aloud when no-one else can hear you?

Of course, the relevant set up of that panel contains an incredible double meaning. Eve’s protest isn’t phrased in specific terms. She’s staring at herself in the mirror, her face an icon of consternation. For a character struggling with questions about her own identity, and questions of her own humanity, self-interrogation, and self-castigation are an equally valid construction. Eve could be (but isn’t necessarily) saying to herself that whoever, whatever, she is, she is wrong.

Eve’s denial is an elegant way to capture the value that family has for us, the idea of roots, of support, of home that a family can represent. Eve’s not willing to believe that she is without this structure because it is so important and so vital, but we, burdened with the knowledge of how she is, gain the added pathos of the knowledge that despite the fact that these people are the closest people in the world to her, none of them really meet the definition of family.

The Barrets and the Western

The Barrets, with the destruction of their homestead and their riding out to an uncertain tomorrow, borrow liberally from the iconography of the Western, and the legend of the pioneering West. Though the bandits and lawmen of late period Westerns focus on apocalyptic and tragic visions of the end of eras, the Western as a genre owes as much to the wagon train settlers of the classic Westerns, the ‘heroes’ of the American odyssey seeking out a better world. The fact that the uncertain future to which they aspire relates to a process part medieval apprentice’s day and part American Idol audition process doesn’t strip these scenes, set against the wide, high country, of their links to this narrative. In their final scene, the Barrets jury-rig a defacto wagon and set out on horseback, guns in their hands and hats on their heads.

Although Western stories cross a variety of different narratives and tropes, the idea of family is often central to their construction. The West stands in for the harshness and uncertainty of the world, and into this uncertainty, characters are forced to find ways strive and survive to build a legacy, something to pass on to future generations. Westerns suggest the creation of something out of nothing (ahistorically, obviously, and very unjust to Native Americans, but critical to depictions of the fictive West). Broader declarations about a ranch, farm, homestead, town or way of life are all intended to mark the passage of time from where something was not, and could not be, to something of permanence, something that will outlast the quick death that the uncertain world is all too ready to provide. (Don’t get us started on Little Bill building a house in Unforgiven… or do, it’s a good riff).

Why is this idea important to the interactions of the Barrets? Because for the first time in the series, we genuinely see parents investing in the future of their children. Samuel Rosales may have died a hero, but his daughter is a grown woman with her own form of security and Samuel could be said to be interceding just as much for other innocent civilians. Not to take away from this, but it’s a different challenge and a different question to providing for children. Here, the Barrets risk everything, and indeed, to some extent explicitly throw everything away, to gamble on a roll of the dice so that their children might have better lives.

Bobbie’s anger here at the destruction of their home is, in this context, all the more justifiable. The destruction of their house is a tragedy too deep to contemplate, but it pales in comparison to the wider, more diffuse injustice of how their society responds to that tragedy. It can be argued that it’s a force majeure that results in the Barrets losing their home and the opportunities for their children, or that the seeds of that destruction were sown in the an earlier generation’s attitude towards environmental management. It could also be argued that the tragedy is the combination of the worst elements of feudalism and capitalism, where obedience to the throne receives no requisite offer of protection but only more commercial depredation in the form of a cripplingly mercenary loan. These factors though, true as they may be, do not absolve the Barrets’ of the immediacy and agony of a choice in the circumstances.

Regardless of the justice of these arguments, the personal heart, the experience, of the Barrett’s story is that they have a choice. The crushing debt promised by the Carlyle system leads down a path where there is certainty of a kind for next year and the year after, but at the price of leaving the kids worse off than they started (and, like the role of teachers in protecting at risk children, the issue of debt and housing affordability is a critical contemporary problem). At the same time, a single, hotly-contested, audition process and the arduous journey to get there represents incredible dangers for the Barret children (and parents), with no guarantee of a favourable outcome. On the one hand is the clear path that will enable them to stay in a certain environment, in the knowledge that it would make things worse for their children, and the other is risking everything on that roll of the dice.

It is part of our current cultural narrative that any parent would give up that sense of safety and personal comfort for their child, but the world would sadly call you a liar. Parents – and not just the easily condemned ‘deadbeats’ that dipped into college funds or turn a blind eye to abusive spouse, but nominally good parents – have, for generations, despoiled the environment, encouraged stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, hocked themselves into debt and penury and spent money on instant pleasure and gratification. These problems are present and prevalent, and feed into the social problems that Lazarus presents in unforgiving terms. Still, by presenting that in an ideal family, a “true” family, there is no prospect worse for a parent than the idea that you may do your children more harm than good, that not only might you fail to protect them, that the world might get the better of them (which is still bloody frightening and still all too common) but that you might, through your own actions, make their lot in life worse, the Lazarus creators provide hope that within the family unit there is still a chance and a motivation to fight for a better future. It’s a sad fact of life that even when a considered approach shows an option as completely unpalatable, people don’t always take that moral high stance, but Lazarus presents us with characters that show it can be done.

Lazarus doesn’t shy from the fact that many don’t by casting it as an aberration or blackest villainy. It’s a book with too much integrity to do so. Dennis, a clearly reasonable man, is shown to be unwilling at first to make that gamble. He’s a grandfather, not a father. He’s an older man, so the journey for him has higher risks and he has more to lose. His situation is less immediately perilous than the Barrets, even if in the long run it can be said to be just as ruinous. The choice to stay, to settle, to excuse must be all the more tempting for him, but even for Bobbie and Joe, that impulse to push their heads into the sand is still there. Michael puts in on their faces. Greg puts it in their words. It’s the fact that they don’t do so, that Dennis doesn’t do so, that gives meaning to the idea of family.

We opened this article talking about what constituted family. The constant tug-of-war between “blood is thicker” and “family is earned, not inherited”, dividing the biological and categorical lines. For our money, if “family” lives anywhere, it’s in making that choice to risk everything to build your people the hope of a better future. Most of the time, fortunately, we’re not faced with that choice in stark terms, at least those of us comfortable enough to sit around reading comic books about it. The times that try men’s souls come ‘round but rarely, and we’re not usually called upon to give up everything, to lay it all on the line for the people that we love. If, though, you’re asked about family, the burden laid down is that when that call comes, you answer it. The best in us makes that choice, not in the apocalyptic sense, but in little sacrifices and miracles every day.

Comic books are replete with heroes, but heroism therein is all too often defined by applied violence of self-assertion – taking a stand for what you want the world to look like with gunfire and fisticuffs. The heroes of Lazarus play against a backdrop where such things are possible: we’ve seen hands sliced off and snipers shoot men, we’ve seen a cyborg leap from an explosion and a woman rise from the dead. But the most heroic moment we’ve witnessed so far is when five people who love each other look out at an uncertain future and declare “time to get started”.

It’s this choice that Malcolm hasn’t made for his children and that, for all the clear pangs of residual affection and mutual-self interest, they won’t (yet?) make for each other. The Carlyle’s may have declared themselves a family, as the only family, but until they make that choice, they’ll never be worth of the title that they claim. For Eve, things are more complicated. Until now, she has been denied the choice, stripped of the right to not sacrifice for the good of her kin. Perversely, she has been shaped as a child by irresistible forces to be the sacrifice, a Judas goat for a family that gives nothing back to her.

That might make this issue sound like it is all too bleak for our hero. To deny that the issue is melancholy in respect of Eve would be to do it a disservice, but that melancholy contains the tension of the choice Eve faces. Like the Barrets, Eve faces a choice about what family means to her. If blood is all, and her mysterious source doesn’t lie, Eve may have another family out there somewhere. If, however, family is something you choose, then Eve must, for the first time in her life, make that choice – a value judgement – about the people in her world. And there lies the rub. Maybe it is up to Eve if the email is wrong. Maybe, in the ultimate analysis, the truth of Eve’s family it is not a question of fact, but a matter of choice, and that choice contains within it the hope of Eve finding something better for herself.

Dennis is a grandfather. He isn’t part of a nuclear family unit. His biological role is even later superseded by his interactions with the Barrets: “take care of my girl” is as explicit a request to put Casey as part of the Barret family unit as anything. Maybe families can be made. They can take on others, and come out of component parts, and can even sneak up on you when you don’t know you have them. Forever doesn’t have that yet, but despite her name, nothing in this life is permanent.

 

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