#michael lark

Daredevil: Born Again 2x08 - The Southern Cross (2026)

Daredevil Vol. 2 #83 (2006)

Daredevil

Lazarus is a dystopian original comic series that has been going on in fits and starts for something like fifteen years now, across at least three different titles. Despite the creative team’s questionable project management skills, they are very dedicated to the project, and Fallen is to be the grand finale of the whole saga. The first arc of it feels like it’s actually living up to that promise, even if it requires some abrupt shifts in characterization and focus to make the story work.

The story picks up after genetically engineered super-soldier/bodyguard/assassin Forever Carlyle went rogue, rescuing her younger sister/upgraded future replacement and destroying the facility they were both created and raised in. Much of the volume is spent effectively dramatizing the three year time skip that follows, for both Forever and her father’s efforts to capture her. The result is, at least for the first issues, (I think intentionally) abrupt and disjointed, before finally refocusing on a new ‘here and now’ for both central plots. Even then, and even with the massive reveal upon the final page, this is still mostly a couple hundred pages of table setting – well done table setting that does feel like it’s setting up for an explosive climax, but still table setting.

The notes at the end of every issue throughout Lazarus’ entire run have always been consistent that there really is a grand plan and that the broad strokes of what’s going to happen were known from day one. There are enough neat reveals and connections that I basically do believe this, but the shift between the last series and Fallen to get on track for the final confrontation feels very abrupt. A lot of previous plots and areas of focus are tied off as quickly as possible or just forgotten about, and a great deal of use is made of the time skip for convenient off screen character development (Casey especially, and to a lesser extent Abigail and Malcolm – though the book never really figured out what it was doing with or how to integrate Abigail into the story to begin with). Personally I find pivoting to focus on the Free and actual rebellion against the oligarchical families far more interesting than their decades-old personal feuds and melodramas, but for how much they were the overwhelming focus of the story so far it’s odd to see how sharply they’ve been abandoned. The way his story’s tied off also just cements Hock’s identity as an incoherent plot device of a character.

The other reason to think the pivot to a plot focusing on guerrilla revolutionaries is happening more quickly or more completely than might have been planned is the degree to which current events seem to have radicalized the author. Not that the notes and letters at the end of each issue weren’t fairly political beforehand, but every one in Fallen so far is somewhere between a cry of despair and a manifesto. Not incredibly hard to draw a line between this and the portrayal of Carlyle and its allies going from ‘better than the alternatives, and also look at all these cool super-badass Delta-Force-ish spec ops action sequences’ to the straightforwardly horrific villains they always ostensibly were in the lore.

The Amazing Spider-Man #623, May 2010. Michael Lark cover pencils, Jody Wynne inks, Andres Mossa colors.

Original Art - Golden Age Secret Files Pin-Up (2001) by Michael Lark

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