Lazarus is a comic series, created by writer Greg Rucka and illustrator Michael Lark, and published by Image Comics.
I serve as the series' publication designer—I handle layout chores on the covers, indicia, letter column, and so on (as well as providing designs for various computer screens or signage incorporated in the comic art, as needed).
ABOUT LAZARUS
Lazarus is set in a dystopian, not-too-distant future, in which the world's economy and political systems have fallen into decay and are ultimately taken over by sixteen corporate/industrial/crime families.
The Families run the world; if you have skills they need, you may—if you are very fortunate—be "lifted" to Serf status.
If not, you're Waste, scratching out a marginal existence and trying to survive in this post-economic world.
The story focuses on Forever Carlyle, the 'Lazarus"—more specifically, the Carlyle Family's genetically enhanced "unkillable" warrior—who protects her Family. There's violence, sex, political intrigue, trenchant social commentary, and an amazingly cool heroine who kills people with a sword.
THE "FAKE ADS"
As part of my work on the series, I create fictional advertisements for each of the sixteen Families, culled from some point in their history. (As such, I digitally "age" the designs, so they appear as long lost but familiar "artifacts.")
Shown here are a few of the designs, and I'll be updating them as they go.
HOCK AD
HOCK is a pharmaceutical company, run by the very unpleasant Jakob Hock, and the primary enemy of the protagnist's Family, the Family Carlyle.
The ad was created--through a combination of stock photography, and digital "aging" (more or less handpainted/assembled in Photoshop—to look like any of a number of pharmaceutical adverts found in any given issue of Time or People.
The medicine is a visual acuity enhancer (injected gel shot directly into one's eye, if you read the fine print); the list of insane side effects may seem like a joke, but most of them are actual side effects of contemporary visual acuity drugs currently on the market.
These ads are designed to enhance the verisimmilitude of the setting, but also to inject a slight note of black humor into the proceedings.
CARRAGHER AD
The Carragher Family is based in Australia, and began as an 19th Century mining company. Over the decades, it evolved into a shadowy international holdings company.
MORRAY AD
Family Morray is based in Mexico and, prior to the fall of world government, was a hugely successful Latin American telecommunications company, Mundo Morray. In the post-collapse world, they are among the few remaining heavy equipment manufacturers.
ARMITAGE AD
Britain-based Armitage began as an early personal-computing success in the UK and Europe, moving into videogames, and later cutting edge technology. This ad, for The Armitage Group, is Armitage's forray into "couture wearable computing," creating lifestyle brands.
VASSALOVKA AD
Family Vassalovka is Russian; this is a "contemporary" ad for their credit-card-and-financial-services-for-the-ultra-rich company, ONYX. The name on the credit card (which was created in Adobe Illustrator) is also the name of the young woman who translated our ad text into Russian.
D'SOUZA AD
Family D'Souza dominated the meat production and processing industry across South America for decades. This ad, designed as a Portuguese advert from the mid-1960s (with the sinister tagline, "Serve D'Souza"), involved a great deal of digital manipulation in order to shape a stock photograph of a steak into the shape of South America, which is possibly the weirdest item on my resumé.
