zwolanerd

I haven’t bought comics in years and all of a sudden I’m committed to buying two a month.  That doesn’t sound like much, sure, but it feels like a lot, mostly because it’s way more than I was buying. Make sense? Good.

Both comics are written by Gail Simone, which is why I’m getting them. I’ve talked about Gail before, so suffice it to say here I kind of want to read everything she’s ever written. Someone should make a Gail Simone Omnibus available, because it’s hard to track everything down, you know? I’m curious if I’ll still read Batgirl and Tomb Raider if Gail ever stops writing them, but hopefully I won’t have to find that out any time soon. The Tomb Raider series has been my favorite videogame series for a long time, so putting Gail Simone on writing duties for this series means I’m down for it twice before I’ve ever cracked it open.

This is a revamp/reboot/re…something of Tomb Raider, and it follows the recent game. Like, immediately follows, as in “based on those events and what happens thereafter.” I don’t know how a person would react to this comic without having played the game, but it seems unlikely someone interested in one wouldn’t be interested in the other. The game reboot gave us a just-starting-out Lara, more of a human than a superhuman, but one who finds the strength to accomplish super things. Her reaction to being forced to kill someone who is trying to kill her was powerful and meaningful, and it’s a gaming moment I’ll remember for a long time.

So the Lara we’re given in the comic is that Lara, and she’s having nightmares about what happened on Yamatai Island. And, honestly, the stuff that happened would be enough to give anyone nightmares, so I don’t blame her. Sam’s having troubles, too, but she’s not ready (or able?) to admit them yet, and there’s a sense that Lara is trying to be strong not just for her own sake, but also Sam’s.

Lara receives a message from another survivor of their trip to the island (there aren’t many), and she’s immediately off to see what his deal is. When she gets there (a rare trip for Lara to America – remember, she’s English), some crazy stuff goes down, and then the issue ends and I was all like “GRAH!” because I hate waiting to find out how things end.

Again, I was invested in the character going in, so there was a good chance I was going to like this. But there were a million ways it could have gone horribly wrong!  It didn’t, but it could have!  Obviously, we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but I’m going to go ahead and call this is a successful bridge from the game to the comics. Getting the reader to immediately want to know what happens next is the secret to serial storytelling, right?

I’m giving the issue a thumbs-up, but I’m giving the wait time til the next issue a massive thumbs down and a raspberry to boot.

Tags: comics, Tomb Raider

Written by: Mark