Lazarus vol. 6

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from this world of Families, their Lazarii, the Serfs which support them, and the Waste which are below all.  This return is… surprisingly upbeat coming after vol. 6 which had Forever and company suffering a brutal defeat at the hands of the Russian Lazarus, the Zmey, in addition to betrayal by the Morrey Family.  It starts off with Forever and acting Family head Johanna Carlyle attending to an incursion on the Family’s northern territory, continues to a smashing 2v1 battle between Lazarii, and wraps up with Forever and Sonja getting their first rematch against the Zmey.  These threads are where the main action is, but there’s also plenty of drama bubbling under the surface to intrigue as well. We get to see what kind of physical and mental toll Forever’s successor is undergoing as part of her training, Bethany Carlyle’s imposition of said training and her own issues living up to the Family legacy, and Family head Malcolm Carlyle’s regrets involving his wife who hates him SO MUCH.

That things go well for Family Carlyle is the result of good planning and strategy, along with the assumption of a lot of risk.  It also makes for thrilling reading thanks to how writer Greg Rucka establishes and builds on the tension of each scene and expertly choreographs each encounter as a battle of words or bodies.  Both types of conflicts are expertly rendered on the page by artist Michael Lark as he makes the physical drama appropriately painful, and the emotional kind — like the encounter between Malcolm and his wife — hurt just as much.  These things make vol. 6 a more satisfying read than vol. 5, but maybe not as much as “X+66” which served as a reminder that while Family Carlyle may be the best of the Families, they were still running a very fascist regime.  So it’s a neat trick then, getting us to root for them here. I’d be concerned if it weren’t for the fact that Rucka has had Johanna talk about reforming the whole system in the past.  So vol. 6 is a good return for the series, though I have a feeling its most interesting moments are ahead of it.