Tomb Raider (Top Cow 1999 series) # 2

 By Mark Rodriguez

Lara Croft is on the hunt for the legendary Medusa Mask on the behalf of some very dangerous men. As she's searching a sunken ship underwater, some men strap a bomb to the side of her boat as well as the sunken ship itself. As she notices the bomb go off on her yacht, she noticed someone cut her air supply. As she tries to swim back to the surface, she gets knocked unconscious by the explosion from the sunken ship.

Lara Croft is floating underwater as the divers swim towards her. She is actually still conscious but lays limp as they inspect her. She determines these are the guys that set up the bomb and also cut her air supply, and are now after the item she found. Lara suddenly 'wakes up' and a knife from one of the diver and stabs him in the side. She takes his air supply but sees the other diver swimming towards her, armed with his own knife. 

The diver swings his knife at Lara and tries to grapple with her. She kicks him off and ducks under his attack and stabs him with her knife. She takes his air supply and swims towards the surface to see if her butler Compton is alright, as the sharks start to feast on the fallen divers. Unfortunately, the sharks start swimming over to her as well.

Lara manages to stab one of the sharks and tries to swim back to the surface. She then sees her yacht, now in shambles, sinking to the bottom of the sea. Lara laments the loss of her butler Compton who was still aboard. She remember a time when she was still a child, visiting Ireland with her parents. They were suddenly attacked by terrorists and they were saved by Compton. Lara was surprised because until now, he thought Compton was just their driver. Lara's father explained Compton's been with him since they both served in the Faulklands War. Compton says her father saved his life once, so he's been serving him since. 

Lara remembers Compton has always been with them. The only time he wasn't was a time she was flying with her family and her fiancé. The plane crashed and Lara was the only survivor. Lara looks up and thinks she should have known Compton would have found a way to survive, as he's piloting their helicopter.

Later on Lara and Compton are in Greece. Compton says he can't fathom who would go through such extremes to try to murder them. Lara says this is why they came to Greece and she shows him something. She shows him a small golden horse head, which she found at the bottom of the ocean. Compton recognizes it as belonging to Chase Carver, and Lara says they're both after the same item again.

Lara says Carver's ego demands he leaves something behind to let people know he's the front runner, but she doubts he tried to kill them. She thinks it's another player they haven't identified. Compton asks if she thinks Carver already found the mask. Lara says if he did, Darseine would have already had bought it from him. Compton asks if she's sure the Medusa Mask exists. Lara says she'd bet on it if Darseine says so.

Compton asks what their next step and Lara says she's hacking into Carver's flight plans. Compton is surprised she knows his access codes. Lara said she dated him for two months and noticed things on his desk. Compton said he was elated when she dropped him. Lara says she figured she'd had to before Compton would have had him assassinated. Compton says he' never do that but Lara makes him admit the thought had crossed his mind. Lara discovers that Carver flew into Katmandu a few hours ago. Lara says they are now headed towards Nepal.

Lara and Compton arrive in Nepal and the butler admits he hates the place. Lara says they'll be fine as long as they don't drink the water. They head into their rental car and Lara knows a 'dealer of secrets' named Taj that might know where Carver is. As they drive, Compton states he doesn't like how narrow the streets are and they make it easy for an ambush. Lara tells him not to be so paranoid. Compton says the fish didn't blow up the yacht. Just then some terrorists tie ropes around Lara and Compton's necks, trying to strangle them. Lara tells Compton to keep driving. 

Lara and Compton have the car crash into the side of the building, hoping that this would cause more harm to the guys in the backseat since they wouldn't have airbags. Lara grabs one of the men wanting to know who sent them. Taj appears and tells them that he sent them. He says the last time they conducted business, Lara left him with nothing but trouble and he told her he never wanted to see her again. Lara says she'll show him trouble and Taj says her threats are hollow. He knows he has information that she needs from him. She asks him who told him that they were coming. 

Taj tells her that the secrets of Nepal are his business, so naturally he'd know of her arrival. Lara says if he tells her where Carver is, she won't cut out his tongue. Taj says she's the second person to ask him about Carver. Lara wants to know who else is after Carver and the Medusa Mask. Taj freezes up upon hearing mention of the mask. He says he knows nothing about it and tells her to leave as fast as she can. Lara grabs him and tells him he'll tell her everything he knows or he'll hand him over to Compton. Taj suddenly groans in pain.

Lara realizes that Taj was shot by an arrow to the back. Compton tells Lara to seek refuge before he also gets hit by an arrow. Lara calls out to her butler when she's suddenly grabbed and pulled into a dark alley. Lara tells the person to let her go. The mystery man would hold a knife up to her throat and tell her not to say another word.

My Thoughts-

Pretty fun read. I loved the art and I also loved the underwater fight scenes. Lara is such a bad ass and we got to see her kick some ass. I still think she should have worn actual scuba gear than just her regular outfit.

We see a bit of Lara's history with her parents and Compton, the family butler who is also a bodyguard. We get to see more of how they interact, especially when Lara rest her head on Compton's shoulder when he showed concern about back when she was dating someone like Carver. We also see how Lara lost her parents in this iteration. 

It had to suck for Lara to see him almost die twice within a few days. While we didn't actually see Compton go down with the ship, as it may, we did see him get hit by the arrow so let's see how he gets out of that one. 

The chase is on as not only is Chase Carver looking for the Medusa Mask, it seems a mysterious third party is also after both things. What other adventures await Lara and who is this guy that has her at knifepoint? 

I loved the ads, there was one for The Madgalena and she also made an appearance on the overall advertising for Top Cow Comics as we were entering the epic year of 2000. There was even a game store ad saying 'in real life Shodan (from the System Shock games) would make the Y2K bug feel like a bad pest'. We were joking about Y2K even back then.