I am terrified. Couched down behind a steel contraption, hugging it for dear life as bullets fire around and ricochet off of it. The men who mean to kill me are in every direction in front of me, yelling over the rain and thunder where I am. They yell at me, telling me that I have no chance, that I’m going to be begging for death soon enough.

I look my inventory. I’m good on my arrows, I can even use the striker to set the tips on fire to take out any shooters in one shot. My shotgun’s out of bullets, but they’re all too far away for it to be useful anyway. My pistol has some ammo, but it’s going to be a last resort. My assault rifle has bullets, but not enough for my liking. Even with the new grenade launcher I found, I feel hopelessly outgunned.

Suddenly, to my right, movement. One of the attackers has outflanked me and is running up towards me. I can feel his stench, of filth and dried blood, when I pull out my steel axe. The tool, the sharpened blade that I have been using to traverse this vast island disappears into his chest, then his side, and when he drops to all fours, disappears into his skull, along with everything else about him. He falls with a thump, I loot his corpse, and I roll back to cover, remembering to check my flanks.

One down, a whole island left to go.

I didn’t play a whole lot of games in 2013 (most of my free-spending money tends to go to comics), but from my experience, Tomb Raider, the reboot origin story which recasts the iconic Lara Croft from smooth adventurer to scared-but-determined survivor was one of my absolute favorites. It was not the “funnest” game I've ever played, so much as it was one of the most intense. I would have to stop sessions, not because of boredom or other obligations, but because my nerves wasn’t taking it well anymore. I’ve played my share of enjoyable action games, but I never played one where it genuinely felt like I was fighting for my life, and that feeling made me really grow fond for Lara and her supporting cast, her fellow shipwrecked crew of the Endurance.

So when I heard that Dark Horse was going to publish a new series set after the game, and that one of my favorite writers was going to be on the helm, I definitely had to give it a read. So how does it hold up? Overall, this issue delivers an interesting set-up.

As I said, this takes place shortly after the end of the game–our survivors are back in some semblance to normal lives, but our two main characters, Lara and her best friend Sam, are still having nightmares every night after the horrors they witnessed in Yamatai and unwilling to talk about it.

Gail Simone excels at these kinds of characters–one of the reasons why I loved her take on Batgirl in the DC New 52 is that she found a way to take what was once a traumatic physical injury to Barbara Gordon still matter even after she regained the use of her legs, due to the trauma of the event. Ask anyone who has had to deal with immense trauma, or know people who have–that trauma never goes away completely. It stays with you, and it reshapes who you are. Gail uses that to good effect, and I bought the interaction between Lara and Sam, as they’re trying to go on with their lives without having to talk about what happened to them.

Then the story starts in earnest when, without going into spoilers, one of the other survivors gets Lara to meet him in a place called Devil’s Rest (which is apparently an actual place in Oregon, but looks…nothing like what it shows on the art, but I’ll get to the art in a second). and crazed with foreknowledge of what’s to come, tells Lara something is coming, and the cliffhanger (literally) puts our hero in a precarious situation.

This first issue sets up that we’re going to see some sort of strange, supernatural mystery that connects everyone who escaped from the tropical death trap of Yamatai. It’s a little surprising that they’re going in this direction because we all know that there’s likely going to be a new game installment sooner or later, and you would think such a plot would be used for the game sequel. But since the writers for the game were advisers for this project, I can assume that it will work out in the end.

The only thing I wasn’t a big fan of was the art. The pencils by Nicolas Daniel Selma was solid enough, he has a good handle on anatomy and backgrounds, but there are moments that seem rather stiff. There are also places that seem rather empty and too clean, though that could go just as much on the inking and especially the coloring. Of course, they could be going for something that seems somewhat normal at the start and then it gets crazier as the story moves along, but even the island flashback at the beginning seems extremely clean and safe when you compare it with what we see in the game. It’s not perfect or very interesting to look at, but it does the job in terms of storytelling, so I won’t hold it that much against them.

Overall, if you played the game and you want more of Lara’s adventures and you have some spare money on you, I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot, because it looks like the start to a really interesting continuation for these characters and their world.

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