Lawful #1 Review: Law and Order Politics in High Fantasy
Lawful #1 presents readers with a fantasy world filled by monsters both literal and metaphorical.
Serialized comics offer both tremendous potential and notable risks for the fantasy genre; even as it provides tremendous opportunity for visual wonder, it restricts how well that world is built with the tightly-measured space of every issue. Writer Greg Pak and artist Diego Galindo's new urban fantasy series Lawful addresses these challenges admirably in a debut issue that effectively establishes the miniseries' premise, even if it lacks depth that may still develop.
Lawful #1 introduces readers to Eris and Sung, two childhood friends raised in a walled city but separated by their places within it. In a familiar dynamic, Eris is the wild child who urges straight-laced Sung to break a few rules. However, in this place there are immediate and obvious consequences for breaking the law as otherwise ordinary people are made monstrous piece-by-piece. Many of the city's inhabitants are marked by their misdeeds and Eris already sports a feline tail as a child. The stakes only grow greater when the two re-encounter one another as adults.
It's a premise and dynamic set to appeal to readers of various sub-genres of fantasy (urban, romance, YA), and one that's appealing for its own promise. The thematic implications of every trespass immediately being met with a visible handicap in a highly stratified society are wide-ranging with questions of policing, oligarchy, and even healthcare addressed in the first issue. What's more is how effectively it frames the dynamic between Eris and Sung as two sympathetic protagonists possessing two very different worldviews.
And the conceit of transformation provides artist Diego Galindo ample opportunity to affect readers with a wide-array of minor and grievous transformations portrayed. It's the most wondrous part of a world largely composed of familiar towers and architecture beyond its striking moat.
The design of these transformations raises questions about the core concept that go unanswered in this issue, at least. Hows and whys behind the severity, inconsistency, and judgment of these misdeeds and their magical punishments is central to understanding the conflict. Unless the goal is to make them seem entirely arbitrary, the first issue has posed sufficient questions to overwhelm the premise's charm.
Eris and Sung are able to revive the miniseries' story as lively figures who fully inhabit themselves throughout the issue. Sung is self-serious and determined, but even in a mostly dour mood he strikes a sympathetic note. Eris is left from the outside looking in and readers lack the context to understand why she has found so much punishment in this place. Yet they only receive sufficient space to provide readers with broad archetypes in Lawful #1. Sung's parents offer motivations but little specificity.
There's only so much space for story in 24 pages, but when the cliffhanger for Lawful #1 arrives it's difficult to feel too concerned. The concept and characterizations both lack sufficient detail to effectively define this conflict. Perhaps Lawful will read splendidly when all 8 issues are collected, but based solely on Lawful #1 it seems ready to deliver on both the promise and pitfalls found in so many fantasy comics.
Published by Boom Studios
On June 12, 2024
Written by Greg Pak
Art by Diego Galindo
Colors by Imra Kniivila
Letters by Simon Bowland
Cover by Qistina Khalidah
