Reviews»Comic Books»Tomb Raider #4
tomb4
Kareem Ali 3.5

Tomb Raider #4

 

  • The good

    Solarii plans for Sam are revealed. Lara retrieving the artifact and team finally heading back to Yamatai

  • The bad

    The artwork is very distracting with its lack of details. Still no answers given regarding the chain of events taking place in this story arc

  • The ugly

    • Tomb Raider #4 continues the story of Lara as she works to make arrangements with Joslin to travel back to Yamatai island. It opens up with Lara on the phone with Jonah, who is in the hospital recovering from his near drowning in the flash flood, and he states that he’s coming with them no matter what because the Solarii worshippers took Sam. He vaguely remembers the events that resulted in him being in the hospital, and as far as the things he said to Lara he can’t recall anything and the doctors labeled it a delusional episode. Somehow those words were put into his mind by someone else and when Lara goes to the one who she believes can help once again, one of her father’s friends, she discovers that he was killed as well. The Solarii seem to be a step ahead of everything Lara attempts to do but maybe it was a good thing that she had no recollection of taking an artifact from the island because they couldn’t plan for that, and since she knows herself she has a pretty good idea where she would hide it. This might be the only thing that could help her rescue Sam, who is being held hostage by a captor who believes in some sort of rebirth she can trigger. Can Lara save Sam in time or will the second trip to the island just result in more death around her?

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    I really enjoyed the last issue and even though it focused on so much action the story still moved forward, and I also felt the artwork was decent considering I wasn’t a fan of it for the first 2 issues. But I also felt this issue had all the potential trappings of a filler issue as I wondered if it would be possible for them to arrive at the island in the middle of it or if it would be delayed until the end. The start of the issue was ok as it was necessary to explain how it was possible for Jonah to accompany them on the trip but this is where the artwork started to bother me again. It’s not just that it looks cartoonish and betrays the more serious tone of the story but there’s so few details, at best, and zero details, at worst, when it comes to faces that everyone has the same facial expression regardless of the scene. It becomes extremely distracting and I shouldn’t notice how often characters are just heads with no faces in the middle of an important plot point. There are some story developments that slightly clarify what’s going on but the focus is on stressing once again that Lara has suffered tremendous losses and Sam means a lot to her as a friend. There is no other  character development and there is plenty of action in the second half of the issue but it’s not anything that hasn’t been shown in previous issues and the artwork makes it very difficult to become engrossed in it. The story does indeed progress and so hopefully next issue we’ll finally start getting some answers or the story will tread new ground because as one who has played the video game it’s all becoming too familiar. And that’s not completely a bad thing but there’s so much potential in the character and future stories that still haven’t been explored yet.

     

    SUMMARY

    Tomb Raider #4 is an ok issue that suffers once again from the artwork as all the characters appear to be emotionless regardless of the scene and that effectively diminishes the mature tone of the writing in the same panels. I’m not entirely sure if that’s why it was stressed once again that saving Sam means a lot to Lara and the others but doing so prevented the story from moving forward even more, which at this point is very crucial to the story remaining intriguing. With the conclusion of this episode it seems we’ll start to get the answers needed for this story arc to start making more sense and I can honestly say I’m looking forward to that.

     

    Release Date: 5/29/14

    Writer: Gail Simone

    Artist: Nicolas Daniel Selma

  • Rating ( 6.75 )
  • Total score 6.8

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