Lazarus #1 (2013)
Written by Greg Rucka
Artwork by Michael Lark
Colors by Santi Arcas
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Chef’s Note: This is our first introduction to Forever Carlyle. I think it is quite significant that this introduction shows her killing people trying to steal food, simple bread and water, and, also significant, that she has… misgivings, shall we say?
She doesn’t feel actual guilt or shame or sorrow over the killings. Her training and education as a family gladiator precludes such indulgences. And really, why should she? They killed her first.
Still, she just knows that she doesn’t feel right, punishing someone who is just trying to eat.
On a bitterly cold day in February 1846, the French writer Victor Hugo was on his way to work when he saw something that affected him profoundly.
A thin young man with a loaf of bread under his arm was being led away by police. Bystanders said he was being arrested for stealing the loaf. He was dressed in mud-spattered clothes, his bare feet thrust into clogs, his ankles wrapped in bloodied rags in lieu of stockings.
“It made me think,” wrote Hugo. “The man was no longer a man in my eyes but the specter of la misère, of poverty.”