Veil #3

written by Greg Rucka
art by Toni Fejzula

Cormac, the practitioner of dark magic responsible for the spells that brought Veil into this world, is a self-impressed ass.  Holed up in his dilapidated cathedral, he is as convinced of his control of the situation as the conspiracy of suited rich men are of theirs.  They are foolish men.

Through all its occult magic and urban apocalypticism, Veil is a gender fable.  The threat of exploitation and ownership is a palpable for Veil as her namesake the legendary Salome, and she is just as dangerous.  Men squabble for her, whether they are the thuggish would-be rapists who would have her, or a corrupt cop who would exploit her, or the boardroom conspiracy who would own her, or Cormac who would chain her with supernatural shackles.  But Veil has resiliently resisted their violations, again and again proving she belongs to no man.  And she has forged a strange and fraught friendship with the one man who doesn't attempt to take anything from her.

But now that she and Dante are separated, she finds herself perhaps more vulnerable than she might have expected.  Veil is quite spartan in its spare dialogue, but Fejzula's has again proved itself a compelling narrator.  Nowhere in Veil #3 is this more true than the surprisingly affecting and bloody brawl between Veil's familiar, the friendly rat from the subway station, and Cormac's red brute.  The red rat's triumph as Veil sleeps unaware of her companion's slaughter and the victor's subsequent whispering in her ear are the issue's most unnerving moments for the future of its heroine, surpassing even her final transformation.

Rucka's tale continues to be a teasing and darkly intriguing apologue, but its characters continue to lack definition and detail, a feature that is further exacerbated by the absence of Dante.  Veil is compelling, a supernatural creature from another world still discovering who and what she actually is, and so she gets a pass.  But the other human characters are equally archetypal.  The story continues apace, but if Rucka intends his world to sustain longevity beyond the most immediate tale, it needs further nuance.

Veil #2

written by Greg Rucka
art by Toni Fejzula

And so we get something of an explanation...with no explanation at all.  We do meet the architects of Veil's summoning, a power-hungry suit Scarborough—a politician perhaps—and shady practitioner of the arcane Cormac.  Following a ritual with five human sacrifices, one for each of the five points of the pentangle, the occult circle luminesces a little under Cormac's boot, an indication of success, but the woman summoned may have arrived in another place or time, a disappointing result for his employer.

Veil is intriguingly opaque about the temporal sequencing of events, and structurally of panels.  Like the opening of a Nicolas Roeg film, Rucka and Fejzula present an impressionistic collage of visual details with little information to contextualize them.  Veil is fueled by suggestion and often unspoken possibility.

Rucka's mysteries may be the lure, but the increasingly complicated and increasingly close relationship between Veil and Dante is the hook.  She is simultaneously innocent and yet entirely equipped to protect herself against an unrelenting series of predators in various guises.  He's simultaneously aware of his own more predatory instincts even as his better nature and sincere kindness guide his actions.

Dante:  "You come walking down the street, anyone with a pulse likes you!  You do it naked, what'd you expect?"

Veil:  "That's not my fault.  That's...that's just how I was.  It's just what I am."  (Veil #2: 7)

Her understanding of his attraction is incomplete, but she shows some signs—and not just declarations perhaps unintentionally pregnant with sexual potential—that it is reciprocated.  In the moment she knows and rejects unwanted physical contact and recognizes the difference between innocuous and violating touching.  As he becomes entangled in her conspiracy and she escapes after killing a predatory cop, theirs is a partnership worth sticking around for.

Veil #1

written by Greg Rucka
art by Toni Fejzula

Veil #1 bristles with innuendo, not necessarily cheap, crude, and low-hanging fruit that masquerades as wit or, here, doubles as threat, but pregnant suggestion that piques the reader's curiosity.  It's this curiosity, ours and Veil's, that carries the momentum of the issue.

Veil is mythic, a chimerical echo of gods, heroes and monsters.  It is an occult birth among underground shadows, candles, and an ominous pentangle scrawled on the floor.  She is awakened, red glints in her eyes, by an army of rats, a retinue of beady red-eyed guides to the world above, the subway stairs her gate from the Underworld into the land of the living.  Upon surfacing she finds herself in the guidance of Dante, himself seemingly an allusive mirror of the Italian poet who himself imagined a journey into the realms of the afterlife, led ultimately by his muse Beatrice into Paradise.

She is raw and wide-eyed.  She is a blank slate walking, as though having drunk from the Lethe, but her comprehension comes quickly, if in hitches.  Like a myna bird she imitates, calls back and only sometimes flashes a wry smile of understanding.  And her name, Veil, whether retrieved like a distant memory triggered by the neon sign or merely another mimic, yet another half-comprehended reflection of the world around her, rings of allusive and allegorical potential.  It is the proverbial shroud between the living and the dead, a figurative analogue to the veil of the altar or tabernacle.  "Seven Veils": one of two allusively specific neon signs in her new world's red-light district—the other "Casa Rossa," a nod to Amsterdam's famous club—and a dark reminder of the lethal potential of a beautiful woman, in popular lore the dance of Salome before Herod for the head of John the Baptist.

Fejzula's artwork is sublimely, and a little alarmingly, sensory.  It's gorgeous, no doubt, a delicate, dramatic play of watercolor chiaroscuro, but it's also tactile, auditory, and sometimes olfactory smorgasbord.  As Veil awakens on the floor of the abandoned subway station, it's easy to feel the wind gusting around the oncoming train, the coarse rat whiskers against your fingers, to hear the snuffing of the candle, the scratching of the subway rats across the tiled floor, the squeal of the electric breaks, and to smell the acrid, neon urban tartness that sticks in the fog.

Lazarus, Volume 1

Family
written by Greg Rucka
art by Michael Lark with Stefano Gaudiano and Brian Level
colors by Santi Arcas

In the indeterminate (yet eerily immediate) future the ballooning gap between the wealthy and everyone else has reorganized the social, political and geographic structures of North America.  Nearly all wealth—and consequently, power—is monopolized by a handful of families, plutocracies governing their near-feudal states of serfs and non-citizen "Waste."  Each family is guarded by its Lazarus, a member who is given every advantage, access to the best resources, and physical enhancements by the most sophisticated technology.  They are physical specimens and, even if nearly stripped of their power of choice, quite clever.  And they are tasked with defending their own families against the others or any who would threaten their political hegemony and economic stranglehold.  Meet Forever Carlyle.

Lazarus masquerades as a dystopian fable, the logical (if extreme) consequence of systematic and institutional privileging of money and advantage.  And, certainly, it doesn't lack Marxist tones in its class struggles and social hierarchy.  But Lazarus is more as much a conspiracy noir as a class drama.  For now, at least.  The Carlyle family is a nest of vipers.  Its patriarch may be a reasonable and pragmatic man, invested in responsibly governing his (admittedly enthralled) citizens, but his children are something else entirely.  Jonah is a warmonger, conspiring to incite a bloody conflict with the neighboring Morray family to wrest control from his father, but Johanna, with whom he is seemingly engaged in an incestuous affair, may very well be his puppetmaster, a cunning and ruthless woman far more adept at deception and Machiavellian machinations than her loud and hot-headed brother.  Stephen is perhaps less vitriolic and seditious but still self-interested and without moral misgivings.  Beth, charged with the keeping and maintenance of Forever, is distant and cutthroat, perhaps even literally, if not thus far in the company of Forever.  Then there's Forever "Eve" Carlyle, the Lazarus who believes she is their blood relation, but isn't really.

And Forever is Lazarus's finest achievement.  She may not even be human (or completely human), but she is the series' most humane character.  We find her at a crossroads of sorts.  She beginning to see things for what they are and to ask just the right questions, despite not knowing the truth about her past.  She's also beginning to mistrust her family and her keepers.  Within the first issue alone, she's learning how to lie to her physician James about her unease with killing.  Bound by a programmed compulsion to obey family orders, Forever must carry out their instructions, but she's subtle, perceptive and pensive.  She recognizes Jonah's treachery—though not Johanna's—and the self-sacrifice of a serf to save his family.  She even offers him some minor consolation, informing his daughter that he loves her:  unnecessary for him, but telling for Forever.

 

However, it's her friendship (and flirtation) with Morray family Lazarus Joachim, rewarding even in itself, that offers the greatest promise for the future of the series.  It's a quiet, honest reunion of soldiers, who share more with each other than with their respective "families".  Most of all, they share a bond, an understanding, that may ultimately supersede their family allegiances, no matter what their pharmaceutical programming.

Collects Lazarus #1-4

ISBN: 978-1607068099