Lazarus Churchyard: The Final Cut

By Warren Ellis

Immediately reminiscent of Transmetropolitan, Lazarus Churchyard watches a lady looking like a fella get fucked at the bar whilst someone else bleeds from their mouth, perhaps from drugs. Lazarus meets up with a skull-headed fella offering to kill him and get him wasted whilst they discussed the details.

This dude offers a high quality death, Laz being for centuries old and wanting to go feet up by now. the deal was he must locate a missing scientist who had the most knowledge about datasea, a VR which apparently was exploding some people's heads. On top of this, the scientist was already dead, Laz taking the job from PJ Proby, who was with Isis-Elek. As PJ takes him through the Headquarters, he states how there was a VR "heaven" for those they couldn't move forward with their projects without.

PJ then shows Laz's incentive, the machine scary-looking. Laz is attempting, a quiet lie-down when he must kick some hindering asses who'd walked themselves in (Holy fuck, the violence!). He's escorted by PJ to another fella, who updates what'd occurred to those programmers who'd gone searching for Bruckner. Then, Laz deduces they planned to stick in in the datasea, he pretty much only needing to go in and wonder to himself why he wasn't seeing the heaven-like program, Bruckner interrupting his thoughts and taking him to a different part of the sys, assumably, "to talk", which she does.

Once they see what PJ had done, she helps him back into his body and Laz spares PJ, for a short time until deciding to let Bruckner mess with him, instead. By the end of it, Bruckner accidentally screws him over, destroying the kill machine before Laz can do the deed. Laz has been stuck underground for more than 2 months, and when he breaks surface, a hoor greets him looking to party! She immediately leads him along, she catching Laz up on what he'd missed, the police disbanded and everyone living it up, since Isis-Elek blew.

Laz knocks her out when he denies her further advances. She wakes up in time to explain her lil "pet", it killing her, then apologizing and offering to explain, Laz curiously allowing this, and by the end of the monster's diatribe, dreams of whether crazy ho's deed for the club was lying around. He discovers it, since he's now owned the club over a year. He's convinced by the monster book to tell his origin story, involving a 12-year-old looking plastic girl called Lucy.

One of the scientists gets creepy screwy with her and by the end, she's burned in a bed, but survives, even after being dumped in the sewer, she developing a way to cry for help, her message becoming the name of the club. Once she was found round about 40 years later, they put her down properly, making Laz much more durable than his predecessor. Laz enters his club to be met by Angel Hellequin, who Laz was excited to get drugs from as she attempts to catch up with him, he sprouting big breasteses. As he's investigating his other bits in the bathroom, the toilet is inquiring about his pooping needs, on the wall, graffiti, "women need men like fish need bicycles."

He goes upstairs to consider how to reverse his lady bits when a vengeful lady, Justine comes in, Laz getting scary tits, not amused by her, at all. She ignores this to mention how Isis-Elek was still active and she'd joined, planning on keeping him captive within their experimental fancy, but he's saved by Angel, more IE crew waiting downstairs. They mess with the barman, though and it starts a fiery bar-fight. Laz is almost tricked into believing he'd killed his last ex, which leads to a memory when he'd been getting a beating by a trio of brothers.

He turns the table on 'em once they want to set him up for bonfire status, taking out all 3 due to they not being bright boys. 4 centuries later, an old woman watches the news and is eager to implement revenge. Laz is then shown viewing a lady's man-like body lying on the bar, he recognizing the name on the knife after the body was removed, an Inspector Sleep arriving and impressed Laz'd be so calm as death approached him. Laz finally becomes impressed when Sleep starts throwing punches at him, they making ouchies and realizing this fool was reinforced not as strongly, but still impressively, as himself.

He beats him til Sleep flees, Laz's boobies gone by now, he knowing Sleep'd be back if his final shot hadn't killed him, which he realizes is the case when the fool comes back in a fly ship with guns strafing. This doesn't save him though, Laz shooting him in 2, but fella survives, so Laz has his barman store him in the cellar. He then has the ship take him to it's home base in Spain. When he meets the Lizaran organization mostly nakie weapon-toting crew, he tries out his memory-gathering skill, realizing the old woman had been pretty much leaching off of the fam's parts as well as empaths. Laz doesn't make her feel placated when noting how stingy she'd been when giving her 3 sons a single grave.

He continues with how she'd done terrible things to the empaths for her own longevity, he reaching her, and she ready with a bomb about to go off, it decimating the area to rubble and sand, Laz wandering his way back quite nakie, himself. 30 years have passed and Laz is in Iceland talking of his mother to a stripper. Laz's hometown is in Germany and his pop was a perv from London, he reminiscing how his parents had met and they being the perfect fit for each other, but his pops being found by a London cop ready to kill his girl and him. He makes it back to her in time to plant lil Laz in her, then croaking, Laz telling this sad, disgusting love story to a dead girl. Fucking grand! Ellis is the bomb!

**Warren Ellis should be held accountable for his decades long power-wielding grooming tactics, listed here: www.somanyofus.com. If someone is showing these signs, I can only hope the person is able to get themselves away from the behavior as quickly as possible, since some people don’t have to answer for their actions, and hopefully he has learned not only how to evade, but truly develop in a healthy way from rape culture. Anyone can get stuck in bad situations, but if it’s being hidden or brushed aside, one can easily be gaslit. He’s still a talented artist, but being aware helps context with any art.