Chronicles of the Tomb Raider by Alex Forbes- Calvin (2026) Dark Horse Books

 

The 30^th anniversary of Tomb Raider has shaped up to be an exciting time. It was announced that two new games were coming – Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst and that they would be set in a unified timeline.

To explain the Tomb Raider game franchise has had two reboots, creating three continuities – the six games of the original continuity, the Legend, Anniversary and Underworld timeline and the more recent prequel Survivor trilogy – all with slightly different timelines and continuity – Lara is there but her year of birth changes, her parents and their causes of death change, her motivation changes. (and that’s just the main games, the spinoff games, the comics, the animation, tv series and movies bring their own histories – check out the The Tomb Raider Trinity - A Line Through Time by the 4^th Snake and his follow ups)

So naturally this created some excitement and trepidation as to what was and wasn’t canon. Was the Netflix series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft set in the Survivor timeline or the reboot timeline? Or did it no longer exist? Presumably the new comic series Tomb Raider: Sacred Artefacts (2026) and the current G.I. Joe Tomb Raider miniseries are in but what about the Top Cow comics or the Survivor series comics from Dark Horse?

The back cover blurb tells us that “nothing comes close to this tome in terms of comprehensively compiling her adventures so far.”

20^th Years of Tomb Raider: Digging up the Past, Defining the Future by Megan Marie (2016) (Prima Games) was a fantastic resource that covered the Tomb Raider franchise from a real world historical perspective, telling us much of the behind the scenes about all parts of the franchise – the games, movies, animation, books, comics, fans, models, voice actresses, and more.  It’s a book I go back to time and time again for reference (also the bottom right corner of the book serves a flip book with Lara shooting and jumping around).

So expectations were high – and the idea of a comprehensive timeline of all of Lara’s adventures from the in world perspective of the games/books/movies/comics/etc was a great way to expand on 20 Years with a decade of new material that didn’t just retread the same ground. 

Having done my own attempts at a general combined timeline here on the blog Tomb Raider Timeline Updated, I as curious to see how the developers would handle a similar task.  Now I didn’t expect them to include everything (I mean only a complete obsessive would do that), but many of the comics and novels were intended to slot in between the games. There was a great deal of material that could be considered – and considering that I don’t play the games, the expanded franchise that’s where I live.

That’s a lot of introduction to the review but sometimes it’s important to lay out your expectations.

Where do I start?

There were a lot of pictures and some fantastic stuff I hadn’t seen before renders, concept art from all the games.  I don’t think there is a single full page of text in the entire book and it was a very quick read – my wife was surprised at how quickly I read the book.

The book focuses exclusively on the games – giving precedence to the twelve mainline games (Tomb Raider (2013), Rise, Shadow, Tomb Raider (1996)/Anniversary, Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III, The Last Revelation, Chronicles, Angel of Darkness, Legend, Underworld) but only placing them in their chronological placement for the main game so the Tomb Raider Chronicles flashback adventures are not placed in their chronological place – so Father Dunstan’s adventure with young Lara is after the Last Revelation and not before 2013 Tomb Raider. The other tales predating Lara’s “death” are not assigned a place in the chronology.

The spinoff games like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Temple of Osiris, Go, Relic Run, Tomb Raider (Gameboy), Curse of the Sword and the Prophecy are all relegated to tall tales – canon events that have been exaggerated and characters who appear in those games can appear in the unified timeline.  But we have no idea where they may take place in the timeline.

It seems like the people behind Tomb Raider made a similar decision to Disney when they took over Star Wars and ignored the expanded universe material, so this book does not feature any of the books, comics, movies, animations. As I said, I am a fan of the expanded universe material, so I was a little disappointed by that decision, but I understand it.

The book decided to focus on the games and try to tell us that it was the definitive chronology.  There are several videos on Youtube that explain the errors made in the descriptions. Look I get it, mistakes happen you misremember some detail but these should be minimal.  At least one review suggested that the text may have been AI generated.  I can’t speak to that.

The structure of the book is weird to me it opens with myths and mysteries talking about the mythology and artefacts in the Tomb Raider series why not place that within the entries for each game.  Even stranger the first myth covered comes from Tomb Raider II.

We then go into a series of bits about Lara where we are told her date of birth 14 February but not the year (the 1968 birthyear from the original game would have Lara at 58 years old – pushing 60 when Catalyst comes out) but the information is fairly shallow. Also the book does not try to reconcile the differences between the continuities.

To me that should be your primary goal -  had they given me the job I would have structured the book differently make it an in-universe dossier complied by a character who ties into Catalyst. Have them studying Lara – reportedly the game has Lara working with a team of adventurers against mercenaries – have someone trying to sort fact from fiction so you can explore the deaths of Lara’s parents and try to reconcile them, there could be a list of artefacts retrieved by Lara and trying to sort out what happened to them.

I’m thinking of something like Lara Croft Tomb Raider Technical Manual by Michael Jan Freidman (2001, Pocket Books) published to tie into the first Angelina Jolie movie. The book itself is written by Bryce Turing, Lara’s tec whiz in that movie talking about various gadgets and devices seen in the film and is told in a series of transcripts and instant messages.  Something like that would have been ideal here and would have allowed for more nuance and variations, as well as giving us a sneak peak into Catalyst hyping up that game.

So what was my verdict? I’m a completionist so I’m glad to have this book and the lovely pictures.  I think they really missed the opportunity to tell us about the Unified timeline and how it works and to give us an in-universe work that expands and enhances the 20 Years of Tomb Raider.  Chronicles of Tomb Raider is not going to replace the older book as my go to Tomb Raider reference

Remember how I said that the 20^th Year book was a flipbook, there is a picture of Lara at the bottom on The Chronicles of Tomb Raider – the same picture on all the pages – flip though the book and Lara doesn’t move.

Is it Pulp?

"What is pulp?" a question heard around the various pulp groups.

Some argue that like Champagne – unless your fiction appeared in the pulp magazines it’s just not pulp fiction.  Some will give you a time frame, others may narrow it down by country. (I should know I’ve seen several of these arguments, heck I’ve been in some of these arguments)

I tend to take the definition coined by the New Pulp movement as my touchstone:

“PULP IS -fast-paced, plot-orientated storytelling of a linear nature with clearly defined, larger than life protagonists and antagonists and creative descriptions and clever use of turns of phrase, words, and other aspects of writing that add to the intensity and pacing of the story.”

Pulp defies genre – The Cape can be both a superhero story and pulp, The Lone Ranger a western and pulp.  Pulp defies medium – pulp storytelling can come from pulp magazines, radio, comic strips, comic books, movies, TV, and video games

 Now I want to look at two recent TV series that both have similar premises but one is pulp and the other is not.

The premise: A high school teacher abducts one of his female students, holds her captive and tries to make her his family before she escapes.  In both shows we see the fallout of this act as the women recover from their abductions and return to society.

The first series is Found (2023-2025) and the second is Girl Taken (2026) based on the novel Baby Doll by Hollie Overton.

Both series handle their premises differently:

In Found, we follow abductee Gaby Mosely twenty years after her abduction and escape, who now runs a private investigation firm with a team of investigators who have all been victims of abductions or affected by an abduction.  The agency specialises in finding missing persons who might fall through the cracks of the police or other larger agencies.  Through flashbacks we see Gaby’s time as an abductee and then in second season her return to society.  Mark Evans, the kidnapper known as Sir is presented as a genius, who seems to be able to enter wherever he wants whenever he wants and evades capture for 20 years until Gaby finds him and locks him in her basement utilising him like Hannibal Lector assisting in the solving of her missing persons cases.

Gaby Mosely and her team are larger than life, challenging and supporting the system. Mark Evans/Sir is the bogeyman and we get the feeling that he could escape Gaby’s chains whenever he wants but his captivity gives him what he wants to be close to Gaby. Mosely and Associates are licenced private investigators but are often referred to as vigilantes.  In many ways they remind me of The Avenger and his team – Justice Inc. Like Justice Inc. all had been affected by crime and they bring special skills to the team. They solve the cases outside the norm for the police.  The kidnappers are rarely larger than life but Sir’s presence looms so large over the series especially after his escape at the end of season 1 that we don’t need other master villains.

 

In Girl Taken, we follow the escapee Lily through her abduction, sexual assaults, birth of a child and the immediate aftermath of her abduction and attempts to reintegrate into her old life.  The kidnapper Rick Hansen is presented as a smart man but is quickly captured after the escape.

Girl Taken on the other hand is grimly mundane, there are no special investigators, no master strokes of deduction. Lily is missing for five years, while her family and the police have no leads until she escapes. Rick Hansen is no bogeyman, he is just an ordinary kidnapper, holding his victim for his sexual gratification.

Girl Taken is a mundane crime story that could be ripped from the headlines.  Found takes that mundane premise and makes it larger than life adding the element of a super criminal and the almost extra-legal private investigation firm that elevates that show into pulp.  In fact, I recommend checking Found out.

Shi: Before the Way of the Warrior

 

Shi: Before the Way of the Warrior

Shi: Senryaku, Shi: Year of the Dragon.

We start with 2 miniseries that tell stories of Ana’s adventures before she became Shi.

Senryaku was a three part miniseries with 36 short stories from Ana’s youth and training illustrating the 36 stratagems of the art of war.  The stories bop around in time, so you get a story set when Ana is 6, to one at age 17, then 13, followed by a story with no date clues.  These are paired with gorgeous artworks of adult Shi in action by some of the best artists in the business.

I had the original 1990s three issue comic but I picked up the 2023 Omnibus which separates the text from the art and it looks amazing.  It’s a cool experiment and worth reading as an insight into Shi and to look at the beautiful artwork (the Omnibus is worth getting for the virgin art as well as some extra artwork)  When I bough the omnibus, the guy at the comic store warned me that it was not a comic story and asked several times if I was sure.  I explained that I had the original editions so I knew what I was getting.

 

Year of the Dragon is an actual three issue comic set in 1988.  It retells a couple of the stories from Senryaku but makes changes.  Ana is 18 years old and Tucci is wearing some of his influences on his sleeve with much of the artwork inspired by Patrick Nagel. The story features an 18 year old Ana going out into the world and hanging with the wrong people and not following either the Christian faith or the Way of the Warrior.  It’s a good prequel that shows Ana rejecting the call before embracing her destiny.

Dimension Hopping 

Next up we have what I like to call “the dimension hopping saga” of Cyblade/Shi & Shi/Cyblade, Funnytime Features, Lethargic Comics, Lethargic Lad, Gen 13, Shattered Image and Weirdsville.  (these all take place after Razor Annual #1/ Razor Shi Special)

It starts in Cyblade/Shi with Ana encountering Cyblade of Cyberforce in a cross company crossover with Witchblade making her first appearance.  It’s a slightly more fantastic story than the relatively grounded Way of the Warrior, with robot shock troopers and ends in a cliffhanger of an explosion.

In Shi/Cyblade, we discover that the explosion seems to have sent the two women into another dimension where they encounter a large number of independent comic book characters.  Toto we are not in Kansas anymore, and it’s a completely bonkers story -  to the point I wonder what the planning meetings between the two publishers was like.

Both Funnytime Features and Lethargic Lad had part one of their story run as a back up feature in Shi Way of the Warrior (6 & 7 respectively) and part 2 in their own title.  Both have Shi interacting with wacky characters in their own worlds.

Shi appears in a brief cameo in Gen 13 #13C, helping Grunge fight off a team of bad girls. Another cameo in Shattered Image #4 telling members of Cyberforce that they could join her as an independent, and that she had met their teammate Cyblade.

Our final cameo, has Shi appear in the main character’s cupboard in Weirdsville #5.

Most of these are fun stories but don’t really add anything much to Shi mythos as a whole and can be skipped. 

Grifter/Shi & Horseman

And Shi is back in reality, teaming up with Grifter from WildC.A.T.S to stop an attack on America on the 50^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. It’s a good action piece that pairs Ana with a man who worked with her father. 

Horseman follows directly on from the events of Grifter/Shi and has Ana meeting an immortal Korean horseman.  The Horseman would later appear in his own series. 

One thing I love is the fact that the independent smaller publishers all seem to be happy to allow the crossovers between their series as well as giving each other a forum to debut new characters.  The Horseman debuted in Shi, Shi debuted in Razor and Razor in Sade.

 Both set up Ana's career as Shi before Way of the Warrior #1.

Painkiller Jane (2005) TV movie

 

Starring Emanuelle Vaugier, Eric Dane, Richard Roundtree, Callum Keith Rennie and Tate Donovan. Directed by Sanford Bookstaver.

(How awesome is the poster above?  Nothing like that happens in the film)

I’ve been on a bit of an Event Comics/Painkiller Jane kick of late and I discovered there were 2 attempts to make a Painkiller Jane show.  This 2005 TV movie/pilot and a 2007 one season TV series.

I’ve said before that in a sense adaptations almost need to be reviewed at least twice, once in comparison to the source materials and once as itself.

In a lot of ways this puts me in mind of the 1944 Captain America serial – we have a guy called Captain America in a reasonable version of the suit and that’s about all that came across from the comics. This adaptation has a woman named Jane who heals quickly and that seems to be all that came over.

In the comics Jane Vasco was an undercover cop who had her cover blown and pumped full of untested synthetic drugs. She goes into a two year coma and wakes up with rapid healing powers.  Her former partner now gives her cases that sit outside the law.  In earlier Adventures she is covered in bandages, which is a cool look. 

Here our heroine is Jane Browning, an Army Captain in the Painkiller Unit. The unit is in Chechnya shutting down what they think is a drug lab.  The team start to bleed from their eyes (never a good thing) and men in biohazard suits shoot them.  Jane is the only survivor and she has a heightened metabolism and heals quickly.  She also has enhanced intelligence but doesn’t seem to come into play as much. 

Colonel Watts (Roundtree) tells Jane that they stumbled onto the lab of evil scientist and bioweapons manufacturer, Peter Erfan, a man so mysterious that they only have one photo of him at age 6 in an orphanage. 

Intel suggested that our scientist is trying to enhance human beings but until now it only burns subjects out eventually killing them. Until Jane that is.  The Secretary of Defence, Donnie Mitchell, wants her to be studied.

Jane is about be put into protective custody in Alaska, but determined to find Erfan and with a little encouragement from Dr Knight, she escapes custody.  Where she basically kidnaps Nick Pierce, a thief forcing him to outrun the military on his motorcycle.

Jane is shot so Nick takes her back to his house, where she recovers from her wound, her body forcibly ejecting the bullet.  Jane meets the rest of Nick’s crew - Blue, a medic and Squeak, young man who know every tunnel in the city.

There’s some skullduggery, Jane discovers that the man she thinks is Dr Knight is not Dr Knight and he tells her he is Captain Lucas Insley, military intelligence investigating Colonel Watts, believing that Watts has created Irfan as a cover for Watt’s own experiments.

Not knowing who to trust Jane brings in her sister (who does not appear in the comics) and calls on Nick and his crew.

We discover who the real Peter Erfan is, and he is able to recreate the virus that created Jane.  I won’t say who it is in case you want to watch the movie yourself on Youtube.

The story ends with Jane reported dead and given a new identity by Watts looking closer to her comic book counterpart.  We aren’t told the new identity but I like to think it is Jane Vasco.

Erfan believed to be dead, but a final coda shows him alive.

I presume had this gone to series, Watts would have given her missions to chase Erfans and battle his enhanced soldiers, likely working with Nick and his crew.

As an adaptation, this isn’t particularly faithful but does a reasonable job with the action on a TV movie budget.  It’s an ok set up, I suspect the series may have been closer to the comics or at least tried.  I liked Eric Dane’s Nick Pierce, I would have been on board for more of him, a roguish thief who helps Jane because it is the right thing.

Now this has me curious to see what was changed for the short lived series 2 years later.

I presume that this led to the 2006 Painkiller Jane comic miniseries from Dynamite comics.

 

Red Sonja (2025) Directed by MJ Bassett starring Matilda Lutz, Wallis Day and Robert Sheehan.

I saw this in the cinema – as luck would have it, I had the day off and I randomly looked up the third cinema near me and they were showing it. The other two weren’t. Pure luck.

 So off I go and I saw this movie in a theatre with six other people – all men. 

There’s thing that some movies need to reviewed multiple times.  Some demand it.  Any adaptation/remake/reimagining by its nature demands that it be compared to other iterations.  Does the movie work as its own thing? Where and how it sits in the participant’s filmography.

Red Sonja is a quasi-adaption of a 1934 Robert E. Howard story “Shadow of the Vulture” starring Red Sonya – not a spelling error – set in the 16th century. In turn that story was retold in the Hyborian age as a Conan comic tale by Roy Thomas and art by Barry Windsor-Smith in 1973. Sonja was successful and soon made the leap to her own series and novels.

In 1985, Brigitte Neilson starred in a movie featuring definitely not Conan played by Arnold Schwartezegger. 

Red Sonja appeared in one episode of the 1998 Conan TV series starring Rolf Moeller.

This latest version went through a rogue’s gallery of actresses and directors before we got this movie.

MJ Bassett had previously adapted Howard’s Solomon Kane in a 2009 movie of the same name. 

Now I haven’t read any of the Sonja comics or books or seen the earlier movie (working through the Rolf Moeller TV series right now) so I had to judge this movie as its own thing.

And I enjoyed it.  Lutz did a good job – her Sonja is very physical and has some good fight scenes, the make up, special effects and CGI were quite good.  There’s a baboon man who looks amazing and the CGI cyclops looks great. 

We got the chain mail bikini with a sly wink and a nod (interestingly in the original stories Sonja did not wear the bikini – according to legend Esteban Maroto sent Marvel an unsolicited sketch with the bikini and Roy Thomas loved it so they adopted it for the comics and hired Maroto to draw the comics.)

The story isn’t something ground-breaking and super-innovative.  Sonja’s village is attacked when she is a child, she grows up, ends up as a gladiator, leads a rebellion and fights the evil emperor.  We cover many of the beats that I know about Sonja so I wasn’t mad. 

I’m not going to lie and say it’s a perfect movie.  I have some issues, Sonja seems to pick up the fighting as a gladiator very quickly and gains the respect of her fellow prisoners almost instantly and similarly after the escape Sonja and her fellow gladiators form a guerilla Robin Hood group of freedom fighters and the climatic fight with the bad guys seems like it comes only a couple of days after their escape and a character who left earlier to return to his kingdom rides in with the cavalry.  Neither of these developments felt earnt by the heroine and that there needed to be a montage or something to better show me that there had been a passage of time – hell sod showing me TELL ME that time had past a line “the rebels have been hiding in the forest for 6 months” would have helped.

Look, it’s a nice B movie throw back to sword and sorcery movies or Xena Warrior Princess.  It didn’t reinvent the wheel and told me a story I quite enjoyed.

Shi Remixing the Warrior

 

Tomoe, Shiseiji, Reikishi, the Illustrated Warrior (and a movie that never was

One of the things I mentioned in my look at Way  of the Warrior (WOTW) was how Tucci and the Crusade team grew more confident in their story telling.  At the time issues 5 -8 of Way of the Warrior were being published, Crusade released the crossover /parallel story of Tomoe is told in issues 0 to 3 with Shi #6 and Tomoe #1 being the same story with the issue being published with the two covers Tomoe #1 and Shi #6 and the parallel stories converging again with Shi Vs Tomoe one shot that sits between issues 8 and 9 of Shi WOTW.

Tomoe then encounters Witchblade again between issues 9 and 10 of WOTW.

Do you need to read the Tomoe comics to understand what is happening in WOTW?  I’d say except for Shi Vs Tomoe you don’t need to read those comics to follow the story but they enrich your reading of those comics telling us what Tomoe is doing.

****

Shiseiji is where we see the Manga influence appear and we get a story told in Manga style (read back to front) with Manga influenced art that explores the unnamed illegitimate son of Ana’s nemesis Arashi hunting Shi and discovering that she is Ana. The battle between him and Shi does not end well for the bastard.  Even unluckier is the meeting with Tomoe.

The story opens with the events of issue 1 of WotW and finishes between issues 9 and 10. I liked the side story that tells us what happened in between issues.

(The Manga influence also appeared in Shi ½ from Wizard Entertainment -also known as Manga Shi ½ and the Manga Shi 2000 miniseries.  More on these later.)

****

Rekishi is a two issue retelling/summary of Way of the Warrior from the point of view of Detective Joe LaBianca which nicely summarises Way of the Warrior   . 

****

Shi: Illustrated Warrior was published in 2002, a prose retelling of Way of the Warrior by Caig Shaw Gardner.  I initially wondered if it was intended to be the novelisation of the Shi film that never happened. After some research it turns out that the novelisation was just the Way of Warrior comic and independent of the movie – but I presume that there may have been some plans for synergy with the novel and the movie coming out at the same or similar times.

The art is beautiful and Gardner stays fairly close to the events of both Way of the Warrior and Tomoe.  One change is that Gardner inconsistently swaps the races of Ana’s parents so her father is the Caucasian American and her mother is Japanese.  Her mother is still a devout Catholic but it makes for an odd read with the clash of cultures seemingly reduced by the change and undercut by the seeming forgetting of which parent is which race.

 

*****

Shi: The Motion Picture  – it’s unclear what happened to the movie – Franchise Pictures and Crusade Entertainment released a Cannes Film Festival Preview edition in 1999.

Tia Carrere was both producing (with her husband) and starring in the film.  I could speculate as Carrere and her husband divorced in 2000, Franchise had released Battlefield Earth which had lost a lot of money and lead to a lawsuit against the company at that time. (Franchise’s model is interesting – take passion projects stuck in studio limbo, negotiate reduced salaries for the stars to lower costs and get the film made. There were successes The Art of War starring Wesley Snipes, The Whole Nine Yards starring Bruce Willis)

The Cannes preview gives some script pages and some story boards – the movie seems to be adding new characters and costumes as well as keeping the overall battle between Shi and Arashi.

In interviews I’ve seen Billy Tucci say that Ming Na Wen was at least in talks for Tomoe and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa for Arashi.  More’s the pity that we never got this movie.

Shi Way of the Warrior 1-12 (Crusade Comics)

 

So this is the tale that William Tucci wanted to tell.  The appearance in Razor Annual was just to get the character out there but Shi really came to life in this maxi-series.

It’s here that we meet Ana Ishikawa and her quest to find the man who killed her father and brother – Arashi. 

After the wrapping up of this story, the saga of Shi took a few different directions but this war against the Yakuza story forms the heart of Shi’s story. More than the physical battle, there is a moral battle, Ana is raised Catholic and trained as a Sohei with warring philosophies about violence, an internal battle, the battle between duty and honour. 

Part of the pleasure of this reread is to see the growth of Billy Tucci as both a writer and artist over the years.

The story opens with Shi killing the attackers of a policewoman and witnessing Arashi murder a homeless man. 

The police are shown to be competent, with Peter Denyse and his partner Joe Labianca investigating these Shi killings in New York.  Bodies are piling up and Tucci introduces Shi’s frenemy Tomoe Gozan, in flashback in issue #4 and in the present in #5.

Tomoe is from a rival ninja clan and is hired by Arashi to take out Shi and this takes up a portion of the plot as the pair battle not realising their secret identities.  Interestingly, Tucci then runs a four issue Tomoe miniseries that runs parallel to the story in Shi with Shi #6 also serving as Tomoe #1  and a Shi vs Tomoe special taking place between Shi Issues #8 and #9 and this is part of the growth of Tucci as a writer in that reading just Shi makes sense but adding in the Tomoe material enriches what happens in the story (having said that #9 does feel like a cheat as we are told of the battle between the two women, which we see in Shi vs Tomoe).

The contrast between the two women is highlighted in issues #9-#10 where Tomoe has adopted the role of Shi and how her methodology differs to her friend.

That battle between duty and honour, goes beyond Shi and her struggle between being a Sohei and a Christian, we see it with Tomoe and her reaction to fighting her friend, Peter Denyse’s conflict between the law and justice, even Arashi has his own inner battle.  This last one leads to an unexpected conclusion.

Shi: Way of the Warrior is more than comic about a hot chick killing people and that’s why it is rated so highly in many list of Bad Girl Comics.  Interestingly in an interview in Wizard #56, Tucci says that he doesn’t see her as part of the bad girl movement -  I see where he comes from.  But I think that Shi is part of that movement, Shi utilises the same inspirations as other bad girls but the difference comes from the fact that Tucci had a story to tell, not creating a comic to chase the trend, these characters like Shi, like Lady Death have survived and grown because they were their own thing they didn’t want to be the next Wonder Woman, the next Wolverine they wanted to be the first Shi and blaze a trail.  That legacy can be seen 30 years later with new Shi comics comic out today.  All because of this 12 issue maxi series.