New Tomb Raider miniseries by Casey Gilly appears more faithful to original vision of the early games in series

There's a new Tomb Raider miniseries coming out titled Sacred Artifacts, no doubt intended to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Lara Croft, and judging from what's presented from the interior artwork, it appears more faithful to the original games' premise where Lara would be armed with guns rather than archery. And, it appears less PC. But that doesn't seem to impress the following reviewer at Kabooooom, Matt Morrison, who's also a leading writer for Superhero Hype, who even admits he didn't exactly care for anything Tomb Raider-related years before:

Confession: I’ve never played a Tomb Raider game, nor read many Tomb Raider comics.

I am familiar with the character of Lara Croft, of course, having been a PC Gamer back in the 1990s. And I’m aware there was a reboot that made the franchise into something more like survival horror than an action movie. But I skipped them, as I am more into RPGs than action/survival games. I also skipped the comics as the Top Cow series seemed more concerned with sexy art than solid stories.

He makes it sound like sexy art is literally a bad thing, and Dan Jurgens' writing, from what stories I read, wasn't that bad. Sounds like somebody's regrettably letting his forced politics color his own "reviewing". And if he thinks this new story is acceptable merely because here, there's a woman writing, even that's ridiculous. All that does is suggest he doesn't want to be see ragging on a woman with a sex-positive viewpoint. And if those are the kind of views he upholds, who knows what Mr. Morrison thinks of Wonder Woman, no matter how it's written?

The artwork seen so far (by Antonio diCaprio), contrary to what Morrison's telling, may not be perfect, but is still far from shoddy and watered down like some results of the past decade, which could be horrific and represented a considerable amount of dullness and lack of creativity as a result of the PC approach to writing/drawing/editing. The cover, however, most certainly is dreadful, and anybody who buys this could certainly find a case of trying not to judge a book by its cover. That's the only fault I see so far, in what appears to be a 4-part miniseries. On which note, seriously, I wish again that the industry would turn to paperbacks/hardcovers instead of pamphlets.

Get Your Comic On has a more respectable review of this story, which is supposed to build upon the premise of one of the games produced in 2008, another clue that this time, the writers/artists are building on better source material. On the other hand, Fanlight Zone, while their review is positive, they also say:

I really like the set up that Casey Gilly does with the start of this series because it has been a while since we’ve seen Lara Croft. Her last video game & film were released in 2018, and while there was an animated series released on Netflix in 2024 it’s been relatively quiet for the franchise. There is of course another film coming down the road, but this is the latest content fans have had in a few years.

So here, we have another somebody who doesn't want to get into deeper details of why something produced for Netflix is bad news. Including how it depicted Zip as a gay man in most stereotypical fashion. With all that, is it any wonder pop culture enthusiasts may have lost interest? When a cartoon like this is developed for Netflix, that should be a red flag.

If Dark Horse and Crystal Dynamics, the current owner of the Tomb Raider franchise, have finally shown some willingness to move away from PC mandates, that's good, and while Ms. Gilly may have done a good job, one more thing to hope for is that we don't remain with a situation where only a woman can deliver a better product but a man can't get the same assignments like Dan Jurgens did over a quarter century ago when he wrote the first series for Image/Top Cow. Exactly why men with creative visions should start making story pitches anew and campaign for the challenge of writing figures like Lara Croft again, if it matters. And if men like Mr. Morrison can't appreciate what Tomb Raider was originally built upon, then they shouldn't have anything to do with it at all.