press release 2003
Lazarus Ledd was launched in 1993 after two years of preparation. Since then, the title has constantly been one of Italy’s best selling comics. No.120 of the regular series (and no.18 of the special series) will be released next summer. This monthly outgoing series is set in our present time and in our reality, but episodes can often take a fantastic twist, relying on cutting-edge technology and cyber-SF settings. At the same time, though, the author’s attention to everyday details, to the small dramas and pleasures which we all experience, gives these stories a real-life feel.Some have defined LL as a “crossover”, rather than a “single genre”, comic book. Others have compared it to an action-adventure American TV series, almost a movie on paper, due to the pace of its storytelling and its dialogues, but also to the energy of its art. It is not by chance that LL’s main artists, many of whom started their professional career on the title, are now among Italy’s best known young pencillers and inkers. Adding to the cinematic feel is LL’s “soundtrack”, excerpts from famous pop-rock lyrics (from U2 to Dire Straits, from Metallica to Freddy Mercury) which Ade inserts here and there in the stories he writes. The references he makes are not confined to pop music, though, but span the whole of pop culture: famous ad billboards and personalities appear in the background, other comics, novels or movies are quoted – but without any concession to mannerism.
Who is Lazarus Ledd?
He used to be Ronald Gordon: a soldier, a member of a covert Special Force of the US Army. Now in his early thirties, he has changed his name, his face and his life, leaving behind a past full of deceptions and betrayed ideals. But one can never escape the past and this man, who only wants to lead a normal life as an ordinary cab driver, is pushed back into action by a covert organization headed by the mysterious Mr. Garrett. In order to help them fight crime in all its aspects, Lazarus goes back to being a soldier, albeit now in civilian clothes, accepting a job as a freelance journalist as his cover. Torn between his thirst for action and the longing for an ordinary life, between a past only partly unveiled and a future with no certainties apart from danger, Lazarus embodies a character for the new millennium, neither hero nor anti-hero.
And Eroi [“Heroes”], the aptly named issue #41, was not surprisingly one of the best-loved episodes ever in the series: a love story suspended between past and present, adolescence and adulthood, which also becomes a deeper reflection on the true meaning of heroism. It is the same reflection which lies at the heart of issue #46, Battesimo di fuoco [“Baptism of Fire”], another LL classic. There, readers and characters alike cannot help but ask themselves whether it is ever possible to distinguish clearly between good and evil .
Lazarus’ doubts become our own because, aside from the fictional context he inhabits, he is exactly like the rest of us. And in the end, this is the reason why the title has gained such a cult following among boys and girls of any age. It might also be worth noting how Lazarus was the first leading character in an Italian comic book to use the Internet for his investigations (and very likely one of the first in the world). He has been doing so since the first issue in 1993.
Ade Capone, who is very interested in cyber-culture, has thus added a further cutting-edge dimension to his stories, in the same vein as some of TV’s greatest hits, from The X-Files to 24.
In 2003, Ade Capone has signed an important agreement with Wind s.p.a., one of the three biggest Italian telcos, to bring Lazarus Ledd on cellular phones.
A Lazarus Ledd mobile game will be released in spring 2003. Ade wrote and edited the script and the structure for this Java game produced by Trecision s.p.a., the leading Italian mobile games producer (www.trecision.com).
LAZARUS LEDD
DANGEROUS GAMES
(LL no. 75-78)
GENRE: TECH-THRILLER
LOG LINE
Eight-year-old Kate Brennan is a lonely and introverted girl. She has a natural talent for computer science, but her experience of the world is filtered almost exclusively through videogame characters. To add realism to her virtual friends, one day she tampers with the AI code of a videogame.
It then becomes self-conscious and starts spreading ominously through the Web. Kate is the only one who can stop it… but now she is too busy running from those who want to exploit her genius for their own twisted purposes.