Lazaretto is published by BOOM! Studios. It is written by Clay McLeod Chapman
with art by Jey Levang.
This has been one of my favorite new comic titles of 2017. I’m honestly really bummed there’s only 1 issue left. The build up for the finale has been so real though. This issue alone built up the intensity like crazy.
We were left in the last issue with Tamara ready to jump off the dorm roof after hallucinating her deceased mother calling out to her. When we return, she is laying in a bed having fever dreams and Charles is desperately trying to find medicine for her. Which he succeeds in, but is also attacked by what is essentially a zombie at this point and is forced to kill it.
Similarly to many zombie troupes, this is a disease and people will attack other people. But unlike with zombies, they aren’t seeking to eat people and they aren’t trying to spread the disease either. Instead, they are simply going insane. They don’t attack those who aren’t infected, rather, they are just raving mad and kind of just launch themselves at other people. However, the disease does cause slow decay. It’s different though. These people aren’t dead. Yet. So when Charles has to stab a guy who looks to be already dead despite his moving, he is truly still alive…until Charles stabs him.
Charles’s roomate, Louis, has managed to get sleazier. I mean, he’s always been a drug dealer, but now he’s pretty much forcing attractive (at least, in compared to having a face that’s rotting off) female students to have sex with him for medication. I mean, no, you don’t see it, but it’s pretty obvious. His nice room and status are both maintained by Henry, who has basically decided he’s God of the dorm. He decides who gets to come to the fourth floor, hell, he has even begun to torture and kill students who disagree with him. And he’s still very much obsessing over Tamara’s rejection. Obsessed to a point where he recruits Louis to find Charles and Tamara and bring them to him, or else he will suffer a much worse fate than this disease.
I feel like I say it in every review, but I will continue to sing the praises of Jey Levang’s art. Especially now that people’s’ skin is literally just falling off of them. Levang’s art style is gritty. Not dark. It’s gritty. These decomposing faces look super gross. And his attention to subtle details are fantastic. Things as little as blood starting to leak from Charles’s eyes so the reader knows how far the disease has actually progressed within him without slapping us in the face with it.
Clay McLeod Chapman has done an amazing job with developing Tamara and Charles as well as building their bond without forcing a romance between the two. They want each other to survive because they care about each other because they’re friends. It’s as simple as that. They don’t have to fall in love for them to matter to each other. Oh and Henry is great too. Although he’s just the worst kind of person, he finds himself feeling some weird sense of superiority as well. He’s that guy who read Atlas Shrugged and now he’s way more enlightened than you could ever be. We ALL know that guy. Or girl.
OVERALL SCORE: 9.5 / 10
