Creative Staff:
Story: Rhianna Pratchett
Art: Derlis Santacruz
What They Say:
After the events in the Mexican jungle, Lara finds herself back in London. However, the downtime doesn’t sit well with Lara and it’s even worse for Sam—much worse! Will they be able to overcome what haunts them?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Tomb Raider certainly went through some interesting events with its last adventure and the fallout from it is looking to shake things up a bit as well. While I’ve found that I mostly enjoy the adventures themselves that go on within the book, it’s the character material that draws me in more with it. Having had an installment earlier that was basically the Life of Lara, doing it again now after the Mexican jungle adventure works as a good kind of epilogue piece while setting other things in motion. Comics require transitional moments but so many of them just leap from one thing to the next that you never get a chance to really just enjoy the characters. Here, you do get to do that and it’s a big plus for me, especially as Pratchett gets into Lara’s mind pretty well.
With everyone having made it back to London at this point, there’s some nice parting of ways with her and Grimm, though not her Grimm, to the point where she makes she he knows to come to some of their regular gatherings and to be a part of what this group is. Lara’s the type that really does need friends and while she may not always admit it, she does what she can to keep them close at hand. And with her life in flux, she really does feel like she needs them now. The big part of the changes happening involves the fact that she was gone for awhile, without notice, which means she’s been let go from the museum. That takes a bigger toll on her than she probably wants to admit and seeing her basically burrow in and shut herself down a bit works well as a natural reaction. One that does get her to have some of her friends check in on her and work through it a bit in a way that brings smiles to all. The image of three of them sitting in a blanket cave is perfect.
There are things afoot here though that gets something else moving. The biggest catalyst is that Sam is not coping well with what happened in the jungle and is lashing out and pushing Lara away hard – and getting into fights that has her jailed. Lara’s concern is that it’s something related to the Queen of Snakes and a certain kind of revenge being put into motion, but everyone else is having a hard time believing that it could be that. What also comes up though is that some, like Kaz and Sam to a degree, lash out at Lara about the fact that she only seems alive when she’s on the run and doing things. When Lara starts talking about Yamatai and events there and how it may be involved here, Kaz realizes that she’s looking for a new place to run to in order to get away from the tension and problems here. It’s an interesting and unsurprising callout, one that Lara needs.
In Summary:
While not quite as fun as the previous London adventure that involved drinking and more, Tomb Raider has a fairly fun and useful installment here that works to basically debrief the cast and move them out from the previous adventure. Downtime, recovery and attempting to be normal is what most of them do but they’re all struggling with it in different ways. For Lara, she’s never felt like she fits in with the normal civilized aspect and all the things that it entails, so with a lot of what keeps her anchored slipping away with Sam and her job, it’s no surprise that she feels the need to flee into an adventure. The book does some good stuff with the cast here overall and it moves well, has some good depth to it and Santacruz once again gives us a fun vision of London and dealing with the “real world” aspects of this cast.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 29th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99