Now Available

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SUPER HERO ACTION DOWN UNDER-SECOND ’AUSTRALIS INCOGNITO’ STORY DEBUTS FOR 99 CENTS!
Masked men and mystery women from the Land Down Under explode to life in author Brad Mengel’s Pro Se Single Shot Signature Series- AUSTRALIS INCOGNITO!
Crime is alive and well in Australia and thankfully so are several Pulp Heroes ready to take on evil! Brad Mengel’s own creations, including The Question Mark, The Cutlass, The Aggressor, Sai, Risqué, The Bushranger, and others will stand alone and combat thugs, crooks, and psychopaths in their own stories. But behind the scenes, a puppetmaster of Machiavellian proportions is yanking the strings, jerking the world toward the brink with every tug, and pulling Australia’s heroes closer together. Closer to the answer. And to the final battle.
In the second short story, ‘RISQUE: THUNDERSTRUCK’, our heroine, Risque, finds herself confronting a villain like none she’s known before, whose only calling card is a clap of thunder. When a killer can strike without warning like a storm, even Risque finds her own life in danger in RISQUE: THUNDERSTRUCK by Brad Mengel
Featuring A haunting cover and logo design by Jeffrey Hayes and formatting by Antonino lo Iacono, RISQUE: THUNDERSTRUCK is available now for only 99 cents at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Risque-Thunderst…/…/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2…
and for most digital formats via Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/699372.
For more information on this title, interviews with the author, or digital copies to review this book, contact Pro Se Productions’ Director of Corporate Operations, Kristi King-Morgan at directorofcorporateoperations@prose-press.com.
To learn more about Pro Se Productions, go to www.prose-press.com. Like Pro Se on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ProSeProductions.

A Few Thoughts on a Tomb Radier Timeline

Now I've been on a bit of a Tomb Raider jag lately - I got the 20th anniversary book which introduced me to a bunch of new stuff.. I also bought and read Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever


There seems to be three different "series" or in the games
So the Classic series is the Games from Tomb Raider 1996 to Angel of Darkness (2003) that is the games by Core design.

The Legend series all the Games from Tomb Raider Legend and includes the new games that have been branded as Lara Croft.

The Survivor series are 2013 reboot and associated tie ins.

So I naturally wanted to see how it all fit together and I found these videos

Most videos tend to consider the Legend series a continuation of the Classic series without explaining why Lara's father's name changes from Lord Henshingly Croft to Lord Richard Croft, such as this one:

 

Others consider the Survivor series as prequels to the original games

 

Perhaps the most detailed is this video which includes the Tomb Raider novels:

 

 

Tomb Raider: A Line through Time and the addenda

I found these really interesting and I can see his reasoning for three different game continuities (Classic, Legend and Survivor) .  I have issues with the addendum which just states that each new thing is a new timeline so in a one minute video he creates several timelines - Movie, Top Cow, Journeys, Re/Visioned animated and a cameo on Totally Spies.

Looking just at the Angelina Jolie movies - The 4th Snake offers that the movie Lara's Date of birth is 17/4/1972  and then just states that he doesn't have a source for that "fact" but just runs with it.  Why use this?  Given that the Legend games use designs (Croft Manor) and history (Richard not Henshingly Croft) based on the movies and there is a large gap in his timeline with no adventures from 1996 until 2007 it would make sense to incorporate the 2001 and 2003 movies into that timeline.

The Top Cow Tomb Raider series is just mentioned as being on a sliding timescale but issues 32-34 adapt the Angel of Darkness game suggesting that they should be considered part of the Classic timeline.

Personally I like the idea that it's all a single timeline with the new games as prequels.  I also toyed with the idea that the Lara seen in the new games is the daughter of the original Lara.

My next post will be a Tomb Raider Timeline including a number of things that I haven't seen in other timelines.  I will be building on the information in the above videos and 20 years of Tomb Raider as well as Crossovers and Crossovers Expanded.

 

 

 



Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) starring Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight and Daniel Craig

Tomb Raider Poster

I remember back in 2001 being quite excited to see this in the cinema.  However, the ENTIRE 97 minute run time my wife payed out on Angelina's breasts.  There had been articles in the paper about how the star had a C cup and Lara Croft had a DD cup and they compromised with padding Jolie up to a D cup and my wife (and I'm pretty sure her sister was there too) nothing but comments about how fake the breasts looked.  Kinda took me out of the movie.

Fast forward a few years and I get the DVD and my wife and I watch the movie with one of her friends - if you guessed another 97 minutes commenting on Jolie's breasts, you'd be right.  So the other night I watched this on my own.

Each time, I've enjoyed the movie as an action adventure movie.  Had this been Indiana Jones and the Triangle of Light - I still would have enjoyed this.  It's not a great movie but it's fun.  Jolie sets up her action cred which allowed her to do films like Salt and Wanted.  The aerial ballet scene was a great set piece showing us Lara using her brains and athleticism to take down a number of heavily armed intruders intent on stealing the mystical McGuffin she's found.  Because Jolie did a lot of her own stunt work I believed in her as Lara Croft - perhaps slightly more Goth version with black hair and outfits but it worked. 

I was intrigued by the idea that some of these artefacts can only be accessed during planetary alignments - because magic?  Which meant that Lara was literally racing against time as the next alignment wouldn't come for another 5000 years -  however at one point had Lara let them make the error they were going to make it would have solved her problems but wouldn't have made for much of a movie.  I could nit pick more but those things came after the movie was finished and I was following along the adventure as Lara proves herself smarter that the Illuminati and their henchmen.

I also enjoyed Christopher Barrie's Hillary the butler and Noah Taylor's techie Bryce.  Both offered support and light relief to the movie and I especially enjoyed Hillary's donning bulletproof vest and slippers while loading the shotgun during the invasion of Croft Manor. 

The movie still holds up fifteen years later and is worth watching if you enjoy the Indiana Jones or the Brendan Fraser Mummy series as I do.