Jackson "Lazarus Jack" Pierce shares Houdini's passion for magic, particularly the art of escape. But Jack, competing in the 1926 market for public prestidigitation, naively dabbles in real magic and summons a dark force in his quest for greater power.

The spell goes awry, and Jack's house -- including his beloved wife Angeline and his three young children -- is sucked into an extradimensional vortex. Jack is left behind, alone and broken.

Cut to 1996, and Jackson is a fading shell of a man, barely existing in a nursing home. Then a young man visits and offers him a chance at restored youth and vitality ... and the opportunity to rescue his family from another dimension.

Lazarus Jack is a pulp action-adventure in a classic style, written by Mark Ricketts and illustrated (in a popular cartoony style) by Horacio Domingues. It's rollicking good fun that harkens back to a former age, much in the same way that the Indiana Jones movies did.

My only complaint is Ricketts' apparent rush in getting it done. Perhaps he was working to meet strict space requirements imposed by his publisher, Dark Horse, but both parties would have done better to let him ease back just a bit, relax into his story and expand more on his characters. Jackson encounters some very interesting people during his dimensional hops, but we scarcely get a chance to know them before he's off somewhere else.

Lazarus Jack would have worked better as a longer book, perhaps even a 12-issue maxi-series. As it is, it's a tantalizing taste of what Ricketts could have done -- and I hope he (and Domingues) are back soon with another, less hurried adventure.

- Rambles
written by Tom Knapp
published 8 January 2005