The first four issues of the Tomb Raider comic book had plenty of action, some humor, the token bit of sentimentality at the end relating to Lara Croft's long-dead mother, and left her exactly the same person she was when we first met her. In short, no better and no worse than I expected when I first heard a Tomb Raider comic series was coming our way.

That seems to cover it, but I suppose you're expecting a bit more detail?

Okay, let's start with the basics: I had no strong preconceptions of what sort of person Lara Croft was supposed to be when I first read this comic book storyline. I had never seen the movie (it wasn't out yet when I first glanced at her earliest comic appearances) and I had once played the original Tomb Raider game for about 15 minutes and then lost interest. I don't think I even knew she was supposed to be British, much less a scion of the nobility. I knew, vaguely, that the Tomb Raider character was supposed to be a female rendition of the Indiana Jones concept: what I call the Combat Archaeologist. Of course, Indy carried a bullwhip for emergencies his handgun couldn't solve while Lara only packed a pair of pistols (as far as I know?), but I guess we can't all be lateral thinkers. Aside from knowing that she was an "action hero" who loved crawling around in long-lost tombs, I basically knew nothing.

The question now arises: How much more did I know about Lara Croft after reading a 96-page story about her? Well, I knew she was a filthy rich daughter of a now-dead English nobleman, and I knew she was multilingual. I knew that she was sentimental about her mommy (long dead) and an incredibly bad judge of character. Also that she bored me to tears, at least when Dan Jurgens is writing the stories about her, as he did here.

Okay, let's summarize the plot before I return to the subject of boredom. We start out seeing Lara Croft stealing an antique necklace from somewhere in Iran. In the process she shoots lots of Iranian soldiers who try to apprehend her. But hey, it's clearly perfectly okay that she does this, because we soon learn from dialogue with her faithful chauffeur, Compton (in this case he was acting as helicopter pilot and extracted her in the nick of time) that the necklace of Sharaham had originally been stolen from a museum in Israel several years ago! Gosh, and for a moment I was starting to think she was a common criminal with no respect for human life! (How do I get these crazy ideas?)

We next see her lounging on her yacht in the Mediterranean when the sinister Paris D'Arseine arrives (by appointment, over Compton's firm objections when he hears of it) and offers to hire her to recover the legendary Medusa Mask for him. It was last seen in 1505 aboard a Spanish galleon which sank during a trans-Atlantic crossing to the Americas. Reputedly it gives the wearer godlike powers including "the gaze of death." D'Arseine has recently learned that someone allegedly found the galleon, found the Mask, and disappeared with it. He wants Lara to track it down and bring it back to him. He asks how much money she wants (a million? Two? Three?) and is shocked at the price she whispers in his ear, apparently because it's something remarkably small. But he accepts it.

Next thing we know, the yacht is floating directly above the coordinates where D'Arseine now believes the galleon sank in 1505. For some reason, Lara Croft hopes to find clues down there even though the Medusa Mask is believed to be long gone. She puts on her diving gear and goes down to find the galleon. She got incredibly lucky: she found something. A little carving of a horse's head, probably a knight from a chess set. This just happens to be the distinctive calling card of her most successful rival in the treasure-hunting business, the egotistical Chase Carver, with whom she once had a relationship for two months. (I gather from reviews of the movie that there is another tomb raider guy who plays the same role in that story that Chase Carver plays in this one.) If Chase left the chesspiece here, it means he found the Mask and wanted any rivals who came along later to know he was gloating at having beaten them to the prize. If not for this flaw in his character, she would not have had a clue as to what to do next.

For reasons which utterly escape me, while she is examining the galleon she is attacked by a pair of murderous divers while a buddy of theirs attaches a bomb to the side of her yacht, which Compton is manning up on the surface. The yacht is sunk, but Compton gets away by jumping in the helicopter which was on top of the yacht (a very big yacht, I take it, although I'm no expert on the silly things). Lara kills her own attackers in an underwater knife fight despite being handicapped by a cut air hose, and makes it back to the surface. Compton picks her up in the helicopter.

Again for reasons that utterly escape me, the next scene shows them in a hotel in Athens, Greece. They are only there long enough for her to "hack into a global flight plan library to access Carver's logs." But given that she and Compton must have been somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean when their yacht blew up, why fly all the way across Europe to Athens before settling down with an Internet connection to do a little detective work? (Answer: Apparently to give the artist an excuse to draw a picture of the Parthenon in one panel before we move on to other parts of the world. No reason for dropping in at Athens is ever offered in the dialogue by the characters.)

She learns that Carver recently flew to Katmandu in Nepal, so she and Compton take off after him. Once they arrive in that town, there's an assassination attempt that leaves Compton flat on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his back, and Lara is yanked away from the scene by Chase Carver as more arrows and spears come flying in her direction. Lara assumes Compton is dead, but I'd be amazed if any of the readers agreed with her.

That covers the first half of the story. The rest of it continues along predictable lines. The mask is cursed, the guy who finally puts it on when they find it in a fancy underground lair is destroyed by it (similar to the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark except that a demon tries to take over his body instead of what might be an Avenging Angel simply destroying everyone with their eyes open at the crucial moment), and Compton was still alive but had a personal agenda instead of being the utterly unambitious faithful dog - I mean faithful servant - that Lara had always taken for granted. Lara trades the mask to D'Arseine in exchange for a music box which features a carved figure of a dancing ballerina modeled on Lara's mother when she was just a lass and D'Arseine was utterly infatuated with her (the feeling was not reciprocated, Lara says). Lara is working on the theory that D'Arseine (a man legendary for his self-centered evil ways) will not be able to resist putting on the mask as opposed to just putting it in a display case, and that putting it on will kill him, and serves him right.

So why did Lara bore me? Well, we saw her raid tombs and fight assassins and fire off lots of bullets and all that, but we saw very little of Lara-the-human-being as opposed to Lara-the-ruthless-treasure-hunter. The only person in this story with whom she seemed to have anything resembling friendship and mutual trust was her chauffeur/pilot/bodyguard/etc., Compton, and it turned out she had known him since her childhood without ever realizing he wanted to be more than just a loyal, self-sacrificing family retainer. This says marvelous things about her empathy, sensitivity, ability to judge character, ability to form real friendships, and so forth - or rather the total lack of any of those virtues. Of course it was stressed that she misses her dead parents, but they've been dead for ages, so don't expect me to see that as proof that she actually "has a life" here and now. Chase Carver is an ex-lover (in the sense of ex-sex partner, not in the sense of any real "love" between them that we ever hear about) and she only tolerates him as a business rival with whom she finds it necessary to work for a while. He makes occasional suggestive remarks which she keeps rejecting, and good for her! I appreciate a little romantic flavor in a story as much as the next guy, but there's no romance whatsoever in this one. Just lust. He makes it clear that he lusts for her; she makes it clear that she doesn't care. How thrilling!

I gave this three stars (Average) because it was just about what I expected, and probably no dumber than a lot of other action-packed comic books I could think of. If all you wanted was to read an adventure of Lara Croft in comic book format, you've got it made. I've recently noticed copies of the trade paperback collection of this story on the shelves of both Borders and Barnes & Noble, so it shouldn't be too hard to find (or, of course, you could check out the online resources linked in to Epinions without ever leaving your chair). But if you insist on reading stories with "character development" and feel that this requires more than "watching the character travel around the world and kill lots of people during her quest," then you'll want to give this one a miss.

P.S. The art is done in the standard Top Cow style. If you aren't familiar with that studio, I'll try to put it in layman's terms (since I'm not trained in graphic design and don't know the right jargon to use). The art is better than average. The action scenes are reasonably exciting. And to finally mention the most famous features of Lara Croft, she is definitely female in this story but my personal opinion is that penciler Andy Park showed some restraint. Her chest does not look so exaggerated as to strongly suggest she's recently had massive silicone implants - not that I would really know how to accurately diagnose the presence or absence of silicone, of course!

Note: Yes, I finally decided to try to get my name associated with "Lara Croft" and "Tomb Raider" in the search engines. It shocks you, doesn't it? I feel so ashamed of myself :)

Recommended: Yes