The final chaotic dash to save the world.
Creative Staff:
Story: Corinna Bechko
Art: Randy Green, Andy Owens
Colors:Michael Atiyeh
What They Say:
The identity of Lara and Carter’s dangerous new enemy—Mr. Green—is revealed. The two adventurers use every weapon in their arsenal to stop a cult led by a madman who wants to remake the world . . . by destroying it!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The final installment of Lara Croft and the Frozen Omen is pretty much what I expected out a finale in that it’s a mad dash of action trying to stop the end of the world. The series has spent its time moving us across the world and bringing Lara and Carter together to deal with what the ivory shards represent and how they were being acquired. As a buddy kind of story it was all right in a general kind of sense but I never felt like I really got know Carter well, though that may be my not reading other Lara Croft adventures in this particular iteration since I’ve only read the recently ended ongoing series. With the finale here, there’s not much in the way of knowing the characters more but rather seeing who will survive.
With Green having raised a number of these mysterious demonic creatures through the use of the ivory pieces, it’s essentially chaos all around as they try to kill Lara and Carter while the region around them turns to fire and lava. Visually, there’s a lot to like here even if Lara feels off-model in some scenes, simply because there’s a kind of busy energy to it that feels right. The creatures look fun in their own way and the dynamic in the leaping about and trying to find out more of what’s going on has a good flow to it. It gives you enough to want to turn to the next page to see what’s going on while also having enough to peruse each panel just a bit more for the creature design and the landscape elements. But it is, at its core, just the final arc action installment so it’s not hugely rich.
The time spent with Green in the cave has its moments as he’s being consumed more by what has been raised, which will be complete when the creatures do make their way there to culminate the process. Interestingly enough, the book takes a mild informational detour when Lara and Carter come across Chloe and she fills them in on how Green ended up amid all of this. It’s a quick little info dump and it adds another character into the survival mix while in its own way removing Green from having any complicity in it, at least in a sense, because he wasn’t himself. It all barrels forward to the ending and has an abrupt kind of element to it. Sadly, far too many books, especially miniseries, don’t factor in enough epilogue time in order to really humanize it and allow it to connect with readers properly. This is another of those cases.
In Summary:
Having not experienced this iteration of Lara before I found myself curious but not really feeling it after being so invested in the other version for the last couple of years. There are some fun moments throughout this miniseries and I suspect that it reads better when read in full. At the same time it feels like it’s just falling into the usual traps of game related books in that it can do only so much and possibly has to be done by committee in such a way as to negate the option of really exploring something fun. The basic elements of the franchise are all here though and you can see how it would make for a fun, if weird, adaptation into other media as well. I’ll keep looking for a really good vision of this character in the meantime.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 3rd, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
