English version
Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider, from video games to other media (comics, cartoons, films).
A first narrative bridge between the games Tomb Raider 2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider: the novel The Ten Thousand Immortals.
Fabio Ciaramaglia
The first direct sequel of Tomb Raider 2013 is the novel The Ten Thousand Immortals (October 2014), written by Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent, authors, individually and in partnership, of several other novels, comics (Guardians of the Galaxy) and video games (Shadow of Mordor). The plot of the novel is set in a very limited timespan, less than a month, and everything happens only a week later the coming back home of Lara from Yamatai. Besides the need of concentrating all the plot in a small time and to be careful about the narrative continuity, the two writers also have to follow the new lines of the “Survivor Trilogy”, that is with our protagonist still in progress.
The plot
The plot is rather simple. Himiko is still trying to possess Sam, the best friend of Lara who tries to help her following an intuition related to the mythic Golden Fleece of the Argonauts and its regenerating powers. In some glimpses of mental freedom, Sam decides not to succumb to Himiko and attempts suicide by overdosing some medicaments. In a crazy run against time, Lara travels from London to Oxford, then to Paris and Greece and finally again to England to Oxford University. The first trip to Oxford is to consult Professor John Babbington, an old friend of her father, and in the city she also meets a youngish researcher named Kennard Montez: he tells her an art and antiquities collector named Menelaou who lives in Paris can help her. In the French capital Lara finds out that a group named “The Ten Thousand Immortals” (those of the title, with a reference to the mythic Persian army) is as interested in the Fleece, for its powers of long-life and regeneration. Menelaou is killed and Lara caught, but she manages to escape the Immortals and to keep a piece of the Fleece, and her next step is to travel to Greece to reach Montez. She is caught again, this time by the minions of a former actor who has a degenerative disease (thus he is interested himself in the Fleece), she escapes again but she realises Montez is hiding something important. As a matter of fact he is leading a group related to another organization, Trinity, of course with an interest in the Fleece as well. Once back in Oxford, Lara is involved in an assault to the University in which all the groups fight each others to get hold on all the pieces of the Fleece which only for short are in her hands. Yet that little time is enough to save her life from a deadly gunshot by Montez and to heal Sam, at least temporarily -considering in the next comics the issues related to Himiko happen again.
After the exotic setting in Far East in Yamatai, here we come back to themes closer to old European history and to locations which are more familiar to the Western Wold audience such as London, Paris and Greece. We can add that the quests for artefacts able to extend life or to regenerate, surely a fascinating topic, have been also the main narrative thread of Tomb Raider since the very first games of the late 90s. Another thing which reminds us of the first storylines is the involvement, and the premature defeat, of antagonist organizations, in this case the “Ten Thousand Immortals”. Yet, we have also Trinity involved here which, despite not being elaborated enough, is the recurring antagonist organization in the comics, in another novel (Path to Apocalypse) and in the two next video games. Finally, considering that in the novel there are many gunfights, we are led to ponder about a wish of the writers to go back to some older features of the character and her stories rather than entering more deeply in the new philosophy of the reboot, fact which is partially true.
Nevertheless all the first section of the novel, with Lara alone at home and Sam who meanwhile is at the hospital, marks a good psychological analysis which is wholly in line with narrative continuity. More than once Lara suffers from panic attacks, caused by post traumatic stress disorder related to the events of Yamatai. We have to remember that at this stage Lara is a twenty years old girl and she has not found her way in the world yet: as a matter of fact even the quest for the Fleece here is not linked to her archaeologist’s curiosity, but to find a cure for Sam. Lara is not confident and she is emotionally weak, she is not expert yet in explorations and gunfights despite the “crash course” of Yamatai and she is overwhelmed by a sense of guilt for what happened in that island. Besides, despite desperately hopeful the research she is into can help her friend, she still stays sceptical about this type of “fancy” archaeology which had obsessed her father and which led to his death. In spite of these weaknesses, Lara can be strong and stubborn, she learns from mistakes and reacts quickly and with resilience against all the troubles she is facing: the bases are lain so that the raider of tombs we know can rise and thus another step is taken towards the turning point of the Rise of the Tomb Raider.
The task of Abnett and Vincent has not been easy, moving on that unstable ground of providing an important part for the reboot narrative continuity (on which there are some minor mistakes related to chronological sequences) and at the same time working on a new version of the character who they surely knew and loved, but more in the more traditional concept, falling in this way to the temptation of the earlier representations.
I am not acquainted on the details of the contracts of the two writers, but somehow they managed to have a green light for their next novel Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever (September 2016), which is definitely more “old style” and it is not in any way inserted in the new continuity. I am not entering deeply in this novel, but the story is similar to those of the first games and comics, with a quest, that of the sword of the title, which begins rather randomly and which carries Lara to travel from London to Turkey, then to Egypt and to London again. The allies and the enemies are stand-alone, such as Carter Bell (who stars also in the spin off games out of any continuity Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, 2014, and Lara Croft and the Frozen Omen, 2015) and the rival Florence Race.
Lara is definitely older here, despite no timeline is provided, and she is by now renown as an expert archaeologist: as a matter of fact she can afford to interact in a badass way with the English Minister of Defence Theresa Johnson (a weird and probably willing mixture of the two former PMs Boris Johnson and Theresa May). Probably the only element which is in the same mood of the new version is the importance given to the role of women in society, though the vision of it by Florence, who wants a matriarchal new regime, is too much for Lara too.
Despite The Ten Thousand Immortals is not vital to understand Dark Horse comics and the next two video games, it provides us a good outline of the introspective and emotional sides of Lara Croft. With the other novel it provides us also some food for thought for a future possible article. It is clear there is a double tension of the authors linked to Tomb Raider but also of the audience: on one hand they appreciate the insight and the new representation of the character, on the other hand there is a sort of nostalgia for the more adventurous and action-driven older version. We shall see how the future of the franchise is going to evolve, meanwhile in the next article we go back to Dark Horse comics which are wholly in line with the philosophy of the reboot.
end of article 15
Further readings
Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent, Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals, Penguin Random House, October 2014.
Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent, Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever, Penguin Random House, September 2016.
As a side note, three more novels of Lara Croft had been published in the past, and further below I am providing the references. Yet I did not manage to find them at affordable prices, so I cannot say more on them, but they are all of the first period of the character, so it is likely they are novels based more on action and adventure, as the first games were.
- Mike Resnik, The Amulet of Power, Random House, 2003
- E.E. Knight, The Lost Cult, Ballantine Books, 2004
- James Alan Gardner, The Man of Bronze, Ballantine Books, 2005.
Biography
FABIO CIARAMAGLIA
With an M.A. degree in English Literature, with a dissertation on Shakespeare and comics (2000) and a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Shakespeare and Italian TV (2004), I have always tried to deal with the complex relationship between literature and other media.
I have written for comics magazines, such as Fumo di China and Fumettomania (in its previous printed version), but also translated into Italian a couple of American comics for the publisher Magic Press and some poems. Meanwhile I have begun teaching English language at High School, at first in Rome and then, after 2015, in Trieste.
I have never lost the nerdy attitude even as a teacher, but since 2006 videogames have attracted me more and in some of them, maybe for a personal inclination, I have found several elements which are worth of being analysed, though before this year I had never dared approaching more seriously.
NOTE EXTRA
Tutti gli articoli precedenti dello speciale approfondimento: Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider.
04-05-2024
06-04-2024
https://www.fumettomaniafactory.net/la-nuova-lara-croft-dopo-il-reboot-tomb-raider-the-beginning/
03-03-2024
https://www.fumettomaniafactory.net/lara-croft-the-tomb-raider-il-nostro-grande-balzo-in-avanti/
15-07-23
23 giugno 2023
2 giugno 2023
10 maggio 2023
https://www.fumettomaniafactory.net/tomb-raider-approccio-al-ciclo-conclusivo-di-dan-jurgens/
21 aprile 2023
6 aprile 2023
16 marzo 2023
24 febbraio 2023
7 febbraio 2023
Seconda puntata del 21 gennaio 2023
Prima puntata del 30 dicembre 2022
Nel 2022 Fabio ha pubblicato il lungo ed interessantissimo approfondimento dedicato a “DRAGON AGE dal videogame ai fumetti!“.
Sotto riportiamo l’ultimo articolo (il 27°) pubblicato da Fabio del 28 dicembre 2022
e la PAGINA DEL SITO DEDICATA A FUMETTI E VIDEOGIOCHI
