Warren Ellis & D'Israeli Lazarus Churchyard (2001)
As you may recall, Lazarus Churchyard was approximately the main feature in Blast!, a monthly anthology comic which lasted for seven issues back in 1991 at the height of the hoohaa of the comic having grown up - meaning Batman was suddenly allowed to say rude words and kill the occasional paedophile. Blast! had replaced Speakeasy, a mag about comics rather than specifically featuring them, which pissed me off because I liked Speakeasy, and Blast! wasn't actually that good. Lazarus Churchyard sounded like something which couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to be in either 2000AD or Deadline, and even the name seemed to be trying far too hard to be weird, like one of those lazy steampunk juxtapositions - Jedediah P. Mainframe or whatever; plus it's Warren Ellis. Apparently his work is amazing, except for the stuff I've tried to read, which is weird.
Anyway, Nick Sweeney seemed to rate this thing and suggested I give it another go, and then a week later I happened across this collection in Half Price Books, which seemed too timely a coincidence to ignore.
To be fair to Warren Ellis, Lazarus Churchyard is pretty much him finding his feet as a writer, learning on the job, so to speak. It's more or less a list of shocking or startling juxtapositions like one of those Sigue Sigue Sputnik songs which is just a tally of futuristic sounding things - dead man butterfly effect sex toy foetal heroin and so on; and Lazarus Churchyard - Keith Richards reimagined as that Sisters of Mercy album which no-one bought, the one with Tony James on bass - moves from one startling thing to another, then to another, and that's the story. I'm a little cynical regarding this narrative technique because I was once involved in an unfortunately similar enterprise, so I can tell when a comic book writer is trying to distract from the possibility of his having no fucking clue what he's doing. The ability to gift one's characters with sardonic or ostentatiously edgy observations is not the same thing as being able to tell a story.
However, none of this takes into account the art of D'Israeli, which is rich, angular, and absolutely breathtaking, and so much so as to take up most of the slack; and some of what we have here is surely sufficient to warrant his canonisation in one of those greatest of all time lists. Therefore, unless I'm just making excuses, the problem with Lazarus Churchyard may actually be to do with expectations, specifically my expectations. It seems to present itself as something profound and revealing when actually it's just a Ramones album which ticks the boxes you would expect it to tick, and ticks them very well. It's nothing deep - it's simply a list of things which seem cool or interesting, and I guess maybe that's enough.
As you may recall, Lazarus Churchyard was approximately the main feature in Blast!, a monthly anthology comic which lasted for seven issues back in 1991 at the height of the hoohaa of the comic having grown up - meaning Batman was suddenly allowed to say rude words and kill the occasional paedophile. Blast! had replaced Speakeasy, a mag about comics rather than specifically featuring them, which pissed me off because I liked Speakeasy, and Blast! wasn't actually that good. Lazarus Churchyard sounded like something which couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to be in either 2000AD or Deadline, and even the name seemed to be trying far too hard to be weird, like one of those lazy steampunk juxtapositions - Jedediah P. Mainframe or whatever; plus it's Warren Ellis. Apparently his work is amazing, except for the stuff I've tried to read, which is weird.
Anyway, Nick Sweeney seemed to rate this thing and suggested I give it another go, and then a week later I happened across this collection in Half Price Books, which seemed too timely a coincidence to ignore.
To be fair to Warren Ellis, Lazarus Churchyard is pretty much him finding his feet as a writer, learning on the job, so to speak. It's more or less a list of shocking or startling juxtapositions like one of those Sigue Sigue Sputnik songs which is just a tally of futuristic sounding things - dead man butterfly effect sex toy foetal heroin and so on; and Lazarus Churchyard - Keith Richards reimagined as that Sisters of Mercy album which no-one bought, the one with Tony James on bass - moves from one startling thing to another, then to another, and that's the story. I'm a little cynical regarding this narrative technique because I was once involved in an unfortunately similar enterprise, so I can tell when a comic book writer is trying to distract from the possibility of his having no fucking clue what he's doing. The ability to gift one's characters with sardonic or ostentatiously edgy observations is not the same thing as being able to tell a story.
However, none of this takes into account the art of D'Israeli, which is rich, angular, and absolutely breathtaking, and so much so as to take up most of the slack; and some of what we have here is surely sufficient to warrant his canonisation in one of those greatest of all time lists. Therefore, unless I'm just making excuses, the problem with Lazarus Churchyard may actually be to do with expectations, specifically my expectations. It seems to present itself as something profound and revealing when actually it's just a Ramones album which ticks the boxes you would expect it to tick, and ticks them very well. It's nothing deep - it's simply a list of things which seem cool or interesting, and I guess maybe that's enough.
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