Blade Runner: Black Lotus: Leaving LA: Plot & Characters

Blade Runner: Black Lotus: Leaving L.A. is a four-issue Titan Comics series written by Nancy A. Collins and drawn by Enid Balam, published from August to November 2022 under the title Blade Runner: Black Lotus. Set in 2032, just after the Blade Runner: Black Lotus anime, it followed the replicant Elle as she rode out of Los Angeles on a spinner bike and was stranded in the desert town of Fracktown. There she was caught between a fracking boss who had lost his replicant workers and a clean energy co-op led by a former blade runner, while the Wallace Corporation searched for her.

Plot Summary

Bushwhacked In The Desert

Somewhere east of Los Angeles in 2032, Elle rode her spinner bike through a desert canyon until an electrified snare knocked it out from under her. The bandits who had set the trap were surprised to find a working spinner bike, something they had not seen since the Blackout. They planned to sell her to the Golden Garter, a club in Fracktown, although one of them doubted she was worth much there, since the club only used pleasure models. When their leader decided to kill her instead, Elle fought back, beat all three of them and drove off in their truck.

Junkett's Salvage And Retrofit

Elle drove the truck into Fracktown, a smoky industrial town in the desert, and stopped at the garage of Junkett Jones, a red-haired mechanic. Junkett found that the bike's relay board was fried and recognized the machine as a type the police had used for crowd control during the Famine. Elle explained that a friend had built it for her shortly before he died. She had no money, so she traded the bandits' truck for the repair. Junkett promised to fix the bike once she found the right part, and Elle was left waiting in a town she knew nothing about.

Boss Barnes

Before long, Emile Barnes, the boss who ran the town's fracking plant, arrived with his men and offered to buy the spinner bike. Elle refused, and Barnes insisted that everything had a price, until a group of workers stepped in and backed her up. Among them was Miguel Roman, who led a co-op outside town. A messenger called Barnes away to trouble at his rig, and he warned Miguel that he would deal with him later. Miguel noticed that Elle was bleeding from a shoulder wound left by scavengers and offered to take her to his wife, who was a medic.

On the drive out, Miguel explained that his people came to town a couple of times a month to drop off charged batteries at the Energy Xchange and collect empty ones. The co-op grew its own food and sold its extra crops to the frackers, which kept Barnes off its back. Barnes, however, kept trying to divert the valley's water to his plant, and Miguel said he believed he deserved whatever he wanted. When Elle mentioned heading on, Miguel warned her that Las Vegas had been off-limits since a dirty bomb hit the city.

The Inland Empire Co-op

The Inland Empire Clean Energy Co-op stood on a mesa crowned with wind turbines. Miguel told Elle that it had been founded in the last century to capture energy, and that when the Blackout wrecked the grid, the wind and sun had kept it running. People fleeing Los Angeles had joined it over the years, and it accepted anyone willing to live naturally and do their share of the work. Elle told him little about herself, only that her father had not been close to her, that she had no mother and that she had grown up quickly.

In the co-op's medical dome, Miguel introduced Elle to his wife, Nyoko, and their young daughter, Kaja. Nyoko cleaned and closed the wound, which had gone straight through the shoulder, and remarked that the city was no place to raise a child. She insisted she was only a medic, since everyone at the co-op worked according to their abilities. Later, while Elle washed in a guest hut, Kaja slipped in with a football and asked about the black lotus tattoo on her back. Elle said her father had put it there, and agreed to play.

The Wallace Corporation Recall

At the Golden Garter, which Barnes called an employee recreation center, he met Mr. Menzes and his aide Tatsuo from the Wallace Corporation. Menzes explained that Wallace now owned what was left of the Tyrell Corporation, including its service contracts, and that Barnes had benefited from exemptions to the ban on replicants on Earth. Tyrell's records showed that the plant had leased 32 Nexus 8 replicants, including a dozen pleasure models, twelve years earlier. Only 20 remained, and Menzes showed him a pleasure model so badly damaged that it broke the terms of the lease.

Menzes ordered every remaining replicant returned to a Wallace facility in Los Angeles for processing. When Barnes protested that his workers needed relief and that it was written into their contracts, Tatsuo crushed his hand. Menzes reminded Barnes that his word might be law in Fracktown, but it meant little against Niander Wallace. Later, in a Wallace spinner above the rig, Menzes reported to a woman named Ms. Tyler, who told him that Elle had been seen leaving Los Angeles toward Las Vegas. Their employer wanted her brought back alive if possible, and dead if not.

Watchers In The Desert

Back in his office, a drunken Barnes raged that the Wallace Corporation had taken all of his replicants, when one laborer model had matched the output of five men. Fracktown did not have enough women to replace the pleasure models, and his men were threatening to walk out. He blamed the head of his security, his cousin Ivan Kozlov, whom he had hired after Kozlov's discharge, and warned him to fix the problem. At the co-op, Kaja taught Elle to play football, while a man on the rocks watched them and learned from a mole inside that everyone would gather for dinner.

Dinner At The Co-op

The co-op ate its meals together, and Elle was amazed to be served a real potato. Kaja proudly told her father that she had taught their guest to play football, and Miguel rose to propose a toast to Elle. Before he could finish, a laser shot from a drone hidden outside struck him. Nyoko rushed to him while Elle grabbed a knife from the table and hurled it at the drone, destroying it. Out in the desert, Dixon, one of Kozlov's men, admitted that he had hit Miguel but could not say how badly, and the raiders began their advance.

The Raid

While Nyoko tended to Miguel's wound, a lookout radioed that the attack had to be Barnes's doing, though no one understood why he would risk an assassination when the co-op grew his food. Moments later a rocket destroyed the lookout tower. Raiders on motorbikes and armed buggies poured into the settlement, setting it on fire and capturing people with bolas, nets and catchpoles. Elle told Kaja to stay with her mother and went to help, and when one raider caught her with a catchpole, she snapped it and knocked him out. She then disarmed a red-haired raider and a masked man named Donny.

Nyoko And Kaja Taken

Nyoko ran to fetch her medical kit, Kaja ran after her, and raiders surrounded them both. Elle seized a laser pistol and shot one of the attackers, but Kozlov grabbed Kaja and held a gun to her head until Elle stood down. The raiders drove away with their hooded captives, leaving the co-op burning, and Elle held her fire for fear of hitting Nyoko. Elle helped the wounded Miguel to the clinic. At Barnes's place, Nyoko named herself as Nyoko Kojima, Miguel's wife, and demanded to know where her daughter was.

Barnes explained that since the Wallace Corporation had taken his replicants, he needed the co-op's people to take their place, keeping his men happy and the plant producing. He wanted Nyoko to serve as the captives' doctor, keeping them calm and dealing with any accidents. With Kaja held as a bargaining chip, she agreed and held her daughter close. Back at the co-op, the survivors began repairing the damage, and Miguel, his arm in a sling, sent for Elle. His people had captured one of Barnes's men, and the prisoner had explained the reason for the raid.

Dixon's Confession

The prisoner was Dixon, the man who had flown the drone. He told them that the Wallace Corporation had cut Barnes's workforce in half, and that the raiders had been meant to kill Miguel so that no one would be left to fight back. The assassination, he said, had been Kozlov's idea. Miguel then took Elle to the house he had shared with Nyoko for more than ten years, the place where they had started their family. There he asked Elle what she would do about an angry dog that had wrapped its chain around a stake and was choking itself.

The Chained Dog

The dog could be untangled at the risk of being mauled, left to strangle or shot. Elle called the question meaningless, and Miguel told her he knew she was a replicant. Years earlier he had been a blade runner in the city, retiring Nexus models for good pay, but the killing wore on him until he decided to retire himself instead. Meeting Nyoko had changed his life. He gave Elle a katana, an heirloom from Nyoko's side of the family, and asked her to save his wife, his daughter and his friends and to make Barnes pay.

Barnes's Ultimatum

In Fracktown, Junkett finished repairing the spinner bike and drove it out to the co-op, where Miguel told her about the raid. The team learned that Barnes had lost the Nexus 8 workers who had quietly run his plant and was desperate for cheap labor to meet his fuel quota. Barnes then called on video, showing Nyoko and Kaja and demanding that the co-op disarm. He argued that the valley had room for only one energy company. When Miguel asked for 24 hours to consult his people, Barnes gave him 12, and Kozlov took the hostages back to the old pleasure model quarters.

Miguel reasoned that a 12-hour deadline left them six hours to strike first. Junkett provided PKD-9, a nano-plastic explosive used for prospecting and demolition that stayed inert until a remote detonator set it off. The co-op also had Dixon's security pass, which would get Elle through the plant's doors. Miguel trusted Elle to carry the co-op's answer to Barnes, noting that Kaja adored her and judged people well. Elle then rode out alone with the katana, the explosives and the stolen pass.

The Ride To The Fracktory

Elle raced the repaired spinner bike through the canyons toward the plant at sunset. On the way she spotted a canyon filled with dead replicants, the bodies marked and discarded, and she knew at once that it was Kozlov's work. She rode on and reached the fracking plant at dusk, climbed its wall and used Dixon's pass to open door 7B. Inside, she knocked out a worker, took his hooded jacket and checked a map of the site, which showed the route to the Golden Garter and its loading dock.

Inside The Golden Garter

Elle slipped past a miner and knocked him out, then hid from two armored guards. In the security office, Kozlov noticed that Dixon's pass had been used at door 7B and wondered whether Dixon had made it back. While the guards boasted that real women could not compare with pleasure models, Elle dropped from the ceiling and knocked their heads together. She found the captives eating synthetic food in the old pleasure model quarters, struck down their guards with the katana and its scabbard, and Kaja ran to hug her. Nyoko recognized her great-grandfather's sword.

Elle handed over the explosives from Junkett and led the captives to a robot van waiting at the loading dock. No one knew where the van was programmed to go, so they agreed to jump out once it slowed down. Nyoko and Kaja had slipped away, and Elle went back for them, telling the others to leave if she did not return within two minutes. She found Nyoko, who said she had some last-minute business to tend to, but before they could leave, Kozlov and his armed guards cornered them.

Escape From The Fracktory

Kozlov regretted not deleting Dixon from the security database. He had known that Elle was a replicant from the moment she arrived in the Bushwhackers' truck, and he compared her to the turncoat replicant that had cost him an eye off-world. Elle said she was tired of killing and accused him of dumping the bodies in the canyon. When she attacked, Kozlov used one of his own guards as a shield, and her blade killed the guard while Kozlov fled. Kozlov had already cancelled the pass, so Elle kicked door 7B open and reached the bike.

Under fire from the guards, Elle lifted off on the spinner bike, and Nyoko jumped on with Kaja. When Kaja fell, Elle dived and caught her in midair. Nyoko then asked her daughter to press the detonator. Across the plant, Barnes was in the middle of a massage when Kozlov called to tell him that a replicant had freed the hostages. The plant exploded as the three flew away. Kozlov crawled out of the rubble with half of his face burned away, exposing his implant, and vowed war on Elle and the co-op.

Preston's Betrayal

Elle brought Nyoko and Kaja home to Miguel, and Nyoko told him that Barnes would never trouble them again. The freed captives had climbed out of the van in a canyon to walk home, but after watching the plant explode, they were gunned down. In Fracktown, Kozlov blamed the blast on the co-op and called its people eco-terrorists, and the crowd turned against them. Junkett drove out to warn Miguel and found a wounded co-op man in the desert, who claimed that a man named Sancho had worked for Barnes and shot the others.

At the co-op's medical center, the wounded man told Nyoko that he had always loved her. He was Preston, and he revealed that he had worked with Barnes and Kozlov to earn enough money to escape the valley and take Nyoko and Kaja back to Los Angeles. Nyoko realized that he had arranged her husband's assassination and her own kidnapping, and when she refused him, he began to choke her. Kaja ran for help, Elle struck Preston with the katana, and Miguel had him taken to the brig for the co-op council to judge.

Kozlov's Truce

Soon afterward, Kozlov called Miguel on video and proposed a truce, claiming that his cousin was out of the picture and that he was now in charge. He asked Miguel to meet him alone at the Fracktown saloon at sunrise. Dixon warned that it was a trap, but Miguel believed that open war would ruin the whole valley. Elle, who had lost a close friend who had been just as reckless about doing the right thing, would not let it happen again. At dawn, gunmen took positions on the rooftops, and in the saloon Kozlov told his men that Miguel had fallen for the trap.

Showdown In Fracktown

The truck that rolled into town carried Elle instead of Miguel. She told Kozlov that she had returned the katana to its rightful owner, and that if he wanted revenge for Barnes and the plant, she was the one he wanted. Miguel arrived anyway with Nyoko, Kaja and Dixon, while Junkett flew in on the spinner bike. Miguel told the townspeople that the plant would still be standing if Barnes and Kozlov had not tried to have him killed and taken his family hostage, and Dixon confirmed that Barnes had ordered the raid.

Kozlov dismissed the pleasure models as disposable machines, and Elle vowed to make him pay for the replicants he had murdered, whom she called her sisters. She beat him in front of the town, and when he drew a knife and threatened to carve his initials into her, she disarmed him and held the blade to his throat. Kozlov confessed that Barnes had attacked the co-op after the Wallace Corporation took away his replicant workers, and that Wallace had done so because Kozlov had tortured the pleasure models to death. Elle drove the knife into the ground beside him.

The Ronin Leaves

With the truth out, the townspeople turned on Kozlov. Miguel offered the frackers work at the co-op, where they would be treated as partners instead of being used, and Dixon agreed to discuss it with the men. Elle finally answered the chained dog question, saying she would set the dog loose even at the risk of being bitten. Miguel invited her to stay because she was family now, but Elle replied that her presence would never be safe for them. Nyoko pressed the katana back into her hands, saying that it was hers now and that she recognized Elle as a ronin.

Elle told the family that she still had answers to find in the desert and rode away on the spinner bike while Kaja cried for her to come back. At the Wallace Corporation, Menzes presented degraded footage salvaged from the plant's surveillance cameras. It showed that Elle had survived the explosion and had caused it. His employer, Mr. Wallace, ordered that her head be brought to him. The series closed with the promise that Black Lotus would return, a story Titan continued in the 2025 sequel Black Lotus: Las Vegas.

Key Characters

• Elle was the replicant combat model known as Black Lotus, who left Los Angeles after the anime. She was stranded in Fracktown, rescued the co-op captives, defeated Kozlov and rode on with Nyoko's family katana.
• Miguel Roman led the Inland Empire Clean Energy Co-op. A former blade runner who had retired himself, he survived an assassination attempt, recognized Elle as a replicant and armed her with his wife's family sword.
• Nyoko Kojima was Miguel's wife and the co-op's medic. Taken hostage with her daughter, she was forced to doctor the captives at the plant, helped plant the explosives and gave Elle the katana at the end.
• Kaja was the daughter of Miguel and Nyoko, who taught Elle to play football. She pressed the detonator that destroyed the plant and ran for help when Preston attacked her mother.
• Junkett Jones was the Fracktown mechanic who repaired the spinner bike, supplied the PKD-9 explosive and warned the co-op when Kozlov turned the town against it.
• Emile Barnes was the boss of Fracktown and its fracking plant. After the Wallace Corporation recalled his replicants, he ordered the raid on the co-op and died when the plant exploded.
• Ivan Kozlov was Barnes's cousin and head of security, who wore an implant after losing an eye to a turncoat replicant off-world. He murdered the plant's replicants, was disfigured in the explosion and was beaten and exposed by Elle.
• Dixon was Kozlov's lieutenant, who flew the drone that shot Miguel. Captured by the co-op, he revealed the plot, gave Elle his security pass and stood with Miguel against Kozlov.
• Preston was the co-op man who secretly worked for Barnes and Kozlov. He killed the freed captives, attacked Nyoko and was wounded by Elle and locked in the brig.
• Mr. Menzes was the Wallace Corporation man who recalled the plant's replicants. He tracked Elle and reported her role in the explosion to Mr. Wallace.
• Tatsuo was Menzes's aide, who crushed Barnes's hand when he objected to the recall.
• Ms. Tyler spoke to Menzes by video and told him that Elle had been seen heading toward Las Vegas.

Behind The Scenes

Titan Comics published the series with Alcon Publishing as its first comic continuation of the anime. The four issues went on sale on 10 August, 7 September, 5 October and 2 November 2022, with cover dates running from September to December. Nancy A. Collins wrote it, Enid Balam penciled it, Bit inked it, Marco Lesko colored it and Jim Campbell lettered it, with David Leach as senior creative editor and Jeff Conner as Alcon's editor. The story also drew on the original Blade Runner, since the Wallace Corporation's claim on the plant rested on contracts it had inherited from the Tyrell Corporation.

Each issue carried several covers. Issue 1 had covers by Junggeun Yoon and Mico Suayan plus a concept art cover, and issue 2 had art by DaNi with Brad Simpson, John Gallagher and V.V. Glass. Jeff Spokes and Fernando Dagnino drew issue 3, while Jesús Hervás and Veronica Fish drew issue 4. Titan collected the series on 21 February 2023 as Blade Runner Black Lotus: Leaving L.A., a 112-page paperback with Yoon's first cover. Each issue opened with a recap page and closed with a cover gallery, and the last one announced the collected edition.

The story tied into the wider franchise. The co-op had survived the Blackout seen in Blade Runner Black Out 2022, and the Wallace Corporation that recalled the replicants went on to dominate Blade Runner 2049. On the Blade Runner timeline, the comic falls in 2032. The issues also advertised The Art of Blade Runner: Black Lotus by Roland Kelts. Titan returned to the character in the 2025 series Black Lotus: Las Vegas, which sent Elle into the irradiated city that Miguel had warned her about, and the comic is listed among the other Blade Runner comics.

Conclusion

Blade Runner: Black Lotus: Leaving L.A. carried Elle from the anime's Los Angeles into a desert western, where a fracking boss and a clean energy co-op fought over water, labor and the replicants that the Wallace Corporation had taken back. With a former blade runner's katana, she rescued the co-op's hostages, destroyed the plant and exposed Kozlov as the man who had murdered the replicant workers. She refused the family that offered her a home and rode on alone, while Wallace's people learned that she had survived and ordered her death.

External Sources

• Blade Runner: Black Lotus #1 at Titan Comics
• Blade Runner Black Lotus: Leaving L.A. at Titan Comics
• Leaving L.A. review at Publishers Weekly
• Blade Runner Black Lotus: Leaving L.A. at the Grand Comics Database
• Blade Runner: Black Lotus #1 preview at First Comics News

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