Lazarus

Greg Rucka and Michael Lark launched Lazarus at Image Comics on 26 June 2013. Its near future is divided among powerful Families who control resources and people. Forever Carlyle protects one family's holdings as its Lazarus, an enforcer expected to absorb violence on its behalf.

The story follows political maneuvering through Forever's position inside the system. She has access and power, yet her role is defined by the family she serves. The comic's action is therefore inseparable from questions about loyalty and ownership.

Lazarus gives a feudal structure modern technology and corporate reach. Image's opening description reduces government to a fading concept and names the dispossessed as Waste. Those terms make inequality an organizing rule of the world, not incidental background.

Forever's centrality keeps that rule from becoming abstract. She is both beneficiary and instrument of a ruling house, and her changing understanding of that position gives the wider political conflict a personal edge.

The speculative future is built around extreme concentration of resources. Borders are less important than family domains, and survival depends on where one falls in the hierarchy.

Forever's role adds a bodily dimension to power. A Lazarus can survive and fight for a family, but resilience does not equal freedom. The science-fiction device intensifies an old question about who may treat another person as property.

Lark's grounded figures and controlled pacing suit a world where violence is administered as policy. Conversations can feel as dangerous as confrontations because the staging keeps rank and distance visible.

The art makes the near future recognizable. Its spaces feel occupied and governed rather than purely futuristic, reinforcing the idea that the setting grows from existing structures of wealth and force.