SNEAK PREVIEW: Rucka and Lark’s ‘Lazarus’ No. 1
Post Game Report is gone. Long live Post Game Report!
On Wednesday, we will be bringing you a renamed blog: The New York Post’s Parallel Worlds. You’ll still find plenty of stories on videogames – but we’re broadening our scope to include the worlds of comics, sci-fi and even tech.
Here, then, is a sneak preview of the type of coverage you can expect to see, starting Wednesday: Writer Reed Tucker’s first look at one of the comics industry’s most anticipated titles of the year — Lazarus, by writer Greg Rucka and Michael Lark. Complete with exclusive art!
Tomorrow catch another Sneak Preview – about a certain Dark Knight, at www.nypost.com/parallelworlds.
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Take it away, Reed:
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Welcome to Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s future, and in it, the 99 percent have lost. Badly.
So much for all that Occupy business.
In Lazarus, the duo’s new ongoing sci-fi series launching from Image Comics on June 26, the world of the near-future is run by a handful of filthy-rich families. The rest of the population, known as The Waste, struggles to survive.
At the center of the story is Forever Carlyle, a 19-year-old genetically modified woman who serves as one of the wealthy family’s “protectors.” She’s handy with guns and blades and most helpful of all, she apparently cannot be killed. As issue #1 opens, she’s been shot multiple times and appears to die, only to get up again.
Writer Rucka, who is reuniting with the artist from DC’s critically acclaimed Gotham Central, which ended in 2006, says the series grew out of his fear that the future won’t be all hovercars and smiling people in aluminum foil jumpsuits.
“The overwhelming preponderance of evidence suggests that, yeah, the future is going to suck,” Rucka says.
“Lazarus” was formulated at the height of the Occupy movement and spun out of a single disturbing question: “What happens if the economy never gets better? What if it just gets worse and worse and worse and we see less and less distribution of wealth?” Rucka said.
The answer should be revealed in about five years. Rucka says Lazarus is ongoing but finite. He has the ending planned for around issue #70.
In the meantime, check out this exclusive art preview, and come back later this week for much more with Rucka, including an update on new “Queen and Country” comics and a potential movie, as well as his thoughts on work-for-hire.