Lazarus Planet: Alpha 1 launches DC Comics' next big event as a global catastrophe alters both magic and science. Read our full review here:
Save for the story spinning out of the recent Batman vs. Robin series—specifically Batman vs. Robin #4—Lazarus Planet: Alpha #1 is a book that comes seemingly entirely out of left field. The Lazarus Volcano has erupted and as a result is spewing something into the Earth's atmosphere with devastating effects on not just magic but science-based things as well.
If that introduction to the story sounds like a lot and it doesn't exactly make sense, you're right and that is very much the tone that Lazarus Planet: Alpha unfortunately sets almost from the first panel. Writer Mark Waid offers readers no opportunity to acquaint themselves with what is going on or even why they should care. This is very much a situation where one is dropped in media res and while that's not always a bad narrative choice, it's one that simply does not work here.
Also jarring is how this issue definitely reads like exposition. Because there's no real previous story—for most readers—to hang it onto, this issue has to do all the set up. That means we're getting everything at once and that means a lot of switching around between different characters and their various challenges.
But just when you think you might be getting a story that is going to dig into a lot of different characters, Waid whiplashes it back to being something else yet again, leaving the issue on a cliffhanger of sorts with a"transformation" for one character that chucks everything back to Batman. In the end, there's a lot going on, little of it makes sense, and it all somehow comes back to Batman and a story that is barely referenced that many readers may not even know.
The bottom line for Lazarus Planet: Alpha is that this is what it looks like when what might be an interesting idea isn't given the proper space to develop. Instead of something with strong connections to narratives that readers already know, understand, and have some investment in, they get a batch of wild ideas, a hope it is heading somewhere, a mildly-interesting premise, and great art — and the artwork is really what's worth writing home about.
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