Tomb Raider (Top Cow 1999 series) # 8

 By Mark Rodriguez

A whole new adventure starts as this time the mystery comes to Lara Croft! Lara hires a new assistant named Madeline Hovan and when she came in for the job, she found a dead man by her bed! On top of that, Lara found a green jewel called the Eye of Shaharettin on her bed, and several armed men arrive to try to take it and gun down any witnesses. Lara and Madeline barely escape on a jetski as solving this mystery has now become the next order of business. What will happen next?

 

"Dead Center Part 2" opens with a man in a suit admiring his fireplace as he recites 'Rule the world, turn by turn, enter the fire, embrace the burn, a Midnight Squire. It seems the man uses the fire to materialize in a large facility full of workers. The man, Mr. Roetek, enters a private room and tells his guards not to disturb him unless war breaks out. As he enters, he asks his men why they failed. The men tell him that they encountered someone whose resourcefulness is almost indescribable, Lara Croft. A holographic image of her is displayed.

Roetek can't believe that Lara is more resourceful than the Midnight Squires. One of the female members tells him that Lara is the daughter of the great Lord Heshingly Croft and has specialized in acquiring priceless artifacts worldwide. Another member states that government data banks have several references of her activities but no concrete facts. The woman adds that Lara has no central base of organizations and seems to live life on the run. 

Roetek asks how Lara got her hands on the Eye of Shaharettin when it was in their grasp, and another man asks how she escaped them. The woman says they don't know and their agents on the scene were all found dead. Roetek will not accept that a lone woman can evade them. He slams his fist angrily onto the meeting table and says they have existed as a nation unto themselves since the day the Declaration of Independence was signed. They have Excalibur and other priceless artifacts but they would trade them all for the Eye of Shaharettin. He says it offers power, immortality and the ability to see future events. He tells his men to summon the Elite Fire Unit. He orders to tell them that he wants the Eye back in his hands, and Lara Croft dead. 

Elsewhere, Lara and Madeline are camping out in Mexico. Madeline asks where they go from here and Lara says she'll tell her when they get there. Madeline is surprised Lara doesn't trust her after all they've been through. Lara says she learned the hard way that trust has to be earned, though she admits she doesn't distrust her. Madeline says despite saving her life, they just meet the day before. Lara says she woke up to find her, a dead man and a precious artifact in her bedroom.

 

Lara says it is said that the Eye of Shaharettin allows you to the view the future, and if that's true that would explain why the Midnight Squires are after it. Madeline asks about them and Lara says she remembers her father whispering about them once. Lara says only the very rich and powerful have even heard of them and they have been around since the very beginning of America's revolution. Some say they have had a hand in every significant world event since.

Lara gets up and says it's time to go. They head towards a plane that should have arrived two minutes ago. Madeline is surprised that a plane would be in the middle of the jungle. Lara says when one does what she does, you stumble along all sorts of things, some legal and some not. They come across a plane.

Lara monologues that on occasions that she runs into drug dealers, the alerts the authorities. When she found a hidden field a couple of years ago and decided to keep it quiet. She does a lot of work in Mexico and it never hurts to have a back door. 

As men board the plane, Madeline acts like a lost tourist and asks if they can point her towards Mexico City. The men draw their guns and thinks she's from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Lara steps out, both pistols in hand, saying she's looking for any excuse to open fire, so don't give her any. The men start to shoot towards her as Lara fires back. 

 

Lara guns all the men down while dodging their bullets. She monologues that Madeline helped her sneak up on them, something she couldn't have done without her. With all the drug runners dead, Lara and Madeline take their plane. Madeline says she will never do that again and Lara says she hopes she never has to. As they fly off, Madeline is glad they're finally going to the police. Lara says they're going for someone better.

Madeline asks to see the Eye of Shaherettin and sees a music box with a ballerina in it. Lara tells her it's her mother which was sculpted in her younger days before she was born, before her parents died. Madeline says that Lara is so young and beautiful and asks what kind of life she's living. She asks why she doesn't settle down and have a family of her own. Lara says she was actually engaged once, but the plane crash that took him as well. Since then she knew she had to get more out of life. Madeline asks if there's been another man in her life since. Lara is quiet for a moment and then says 'no, not really'.

Elsewhere, one of Roetek's men informs him of a list of Lara's possible next moves. Roetek assumes she'll go to the authorities. The man says it won't be the ones that he expects. Their profiler says Lara rarely keeps a precious artifact for herself, but rather donates them to museums. She has solid working relationships with numerous international agencies. They have identified three of them and the likely contact person. Roetek notes that none of them are the police and orders them to dispatch an elite squad to each location. He wants special attention on the Washington location as he has a feeling that they'll find her there.

Elsewhere, Washington, a man named Mr. Rivers gets his coffee as he is prepared for a long day and possibly long night charting security systems. He heads to his office to see Lara and Madeline waiting inside. Lara says it's to see her teacher again but she's disappointing that it was so easy for her to sneak into the office of a security maven like himself. 

Madeline thought John Rivers was just a system instructor at Oxford. He says he was until intelligence work was more lucrative. While he worked at Oxford, he never seen a better computer science student like Lara Croft. Lara says she never had a better instructor. John says that Lara amazes him and is expecting to see in the papers daily. He asks how she's doing. Lara says she's been better since she's currently mixed up in something she doesn't understand. She needs information protected by security systems that only a handful of people can penetrate. John is intrigued and Lara asks if he's ever heard of the Midnight Squires.

John thought they were just more fiction that fact. Lara says the same but she has something they want. Lara shows him the jewel but as she is about to explain the legend behind it, she is suddenly hit by a vision. Lara sees that the Squires are about to bust in and start shooting and and she warns her friends. Madeline says there's no one there but them. Lara says the Eye showed her what is about to happen and says they're about to come bursting in any second.

 

Lara says she doesn't want to be there when they arrive and grabs the office chair. John says he'll get in trouble if they smash his window and Lara says it's better than being dead. She swings the chair through the window and tells Madeline and John to get out. Just then the men burst into the room, guns blazing, as one of them reminds the other to not damage the jewel. Lara says they should worry more about personal damage as she guns one of them down. 

Lara climbs out the window and asks John where his car is. John says that hardly matters now as all three of them are now surrounded by the Midnight Squires. They're ready to shoot to kill on the count of three...

 

My Thoughts- 

So things pick up as the new villains are being introduced. Lara has faced evil businessmen before but this is the first time we see the 'secret society that's been running things all along' type of villains. Roetek is the 'rule the world' super villain type with vast resources and legions of people working for him. Even though the Midnight Squires were first and are still very different, the overall concept reminds me of the Court of Owls, but the huge base full of advanced technology made me think of Shadaloo.

 

I like the banter between Lara and Madeline. Lara's extraordinary feats are always more fun when there's someone around her to be amazed. Now we have John Rivers, a former college teacher that now works with security systems, coming along for the ride. Now it'll be Lara's job to not just keep herself alive but also those two. Lara is bad-ass but I do like seeing her having other people to bounce off of.

My only nitpick is that Roetek's so-called elite squad doesn't look any different than the other guys sent after our heroes so far. I was expecting larger guys with more unique designs or weapons, not just more of the same gunmen we already saw. I also love how they give our trio up to the count of three before shooting. I know this is to give Lara some sort of way to get out of this within those precious seconds, but seeing how they burst into rooms gun blazing, you'd figure they'd just shoot them. I know that it would end the story and the overall series to have Lara gunned down by issue 8, but it is still is humorous to see these guys give them the luxury of a three count.

I'm also not clear as to what Roetek did to jump from his home to the offices of his company. Did he walk right into his fireplace and the company is on the other side? Did he literally teleport? We might find out next issue maybe? 

The letter column is always fun to read. The first letter discussed how pleased they were with the series thus far despite the doubts about a comic based on a video game series would actually be good. Similar to what I thought upon first reading the comics, the fan was glad that the comic didn't treat Lara the way Danger Girl does to Abby Chase. Lara is very attractive, but her dramatic poses are action packed and guns-blazing, not her purposely bending way over like the women in Danger Girl. I mean there's nothing wrong with Danger Girl, especially since that is an original series, but I am glad they respected Lara to not have the 'cameraman' focus on her boobs every third panel.

 

It was ironic though that the very next letter was a woman commenting on how 'yummy' Chase Carver looked without his shirt on in issue six (when he was under Morgan's control). Other people added more positive thoughts about Chase (and preferring him to be clean shaven) and yet someone else surprised by Compton's heel turn. 

The other most noticeable letter was one fan asking if they can have Lara come across other weapons besides her usual dual pistols. The first four Tomb Raider games had Lara run into Uzis, M16's, rocket launchers and Desert Eagles alongside her trademark weapons. That suggestion did get a response as they say they might throw in a few gems down the line.

 

I did notice that the letters did specifically mention which fan mail were actual letters and which were emails. Talk about a sign of the times. Actually mailing something to a comic book company feels like forever ago. I think the only time I sent out some letters once or twice was for the Archie TMNT comics back then.

The ads and other stuff were tied to Top Cow comics, mostly the Tomb Raider comic and the big 'Overkill' crossover that would mix Aliens, Predator, Witchblade and The Darkness. There's also a page announcing 'Lara gets a tan' as writer Billy Tan will be writing issues 11 and 12. Looking forward to seeing those. Also once again, shout out to Infinity Comics, one of the many shops within Hipcomic for this epic find.