FLESHING OUT
LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER
Copyright 2000 www.anotheruniverse.com
[ August 25th 2000 ]
Who is
Lara Croft? Is she a relic hunter, a thrill seeker,
a marksman, a hero, or just an adrenaline junkie
looking for a fix? What secrets from her past
compel her to travel the world and track down
the rarest ancient artifacts? As the regular writer
of Top Cow's Tomb Raider comic book series, Dan
Jurgens chronicles Lara's adventures on a monthly
basis. However, he never really got a chance to
delve into the past of this video-born mystery
woman until he wrote the Fandom Exclusive one-shot:
Tomb Raider Prelude. Recently, Jurgens took some
time out to talk about what went into the creation
of this Fandom Exclusive comic book and what it's
like writing the regular Tomb Raider series.
Dan Jurgens:
To me, she is a very sophisticated, intelligent
person, who has all the financial resources she
has to live out the rest of her life in whatever
style she chooses. If she wanted to lounge on
the French Riviera, she could do that. But to
me she is someone who is easily bored and restless
and needs the personal challenge and gratification
of going out and finding that which no one else
can. We're so accustomed to the world of superheroes,
where someone's parents were killed or something
like that. There are people in the world who just
need challenges and I think she is such an accomplished
person that she is one of those.
Fandom:
It's less a mater of super-altruism and more of
a personal quest.
Jurgens:
Exactly. I see Lara as generally working on behalf
of museums or sort of like appropriate final destinations
for these artifacts, rather than Machiavellian
private collectors or that sort of thing. So there
is some sense of that to her. I think she's generally
well intentioned. Also, I write the book in such
a way that when the stuff winds up someplace,
it usually winds up in the right hands or the
proper finish. For example, in the first story
arc, someone sends her off to find the Medusa
Mask, which is essentially an evil artifact. The
person meets his just desserts. He dies at the
end of the story and presumably the mask dies
along with him. It's one of those things where
the final resting place of these articles is generally
just, one way or another.
Fandom:
How much of a free hand did you have to develop
character?
Jurgens:
I have actually been really gratified and totally
amazed at the freehand I've had. I say that as
a person who once before worked on a licensed
property--years before I did Flash Gordon for
DC, which is, of course, owned by King Features.
It was just an awful experience in terms of working
with King Features. After that, I said I'm never
doing a licensed property again. When the Top
Cow guys first contacted me, I said that I'd never
do a licensed property again. They said, 'Well
look, this one is going to be different.' And
it has been. It's been a real good relationship.
Fandom:
How much of the origin did you come up with?
Jurgens:
The only thing that I had been given was that
her parents had been killed in a plane crash with
her fiancé on board. Everything else, I constructed
around that premise and the premise that Lord
Croft was a very wealthy individual. It seemed
to be reasonable to me that he was a part of British
society. Like I say, after the plane crash, I've
done most of it.
Fandom:
What type of challenges did you have fleshing
out Lara's character?
Jurgens:
I think you start to ask at that point the questions
of what is the medium as well, if only because
going into this, everybody assumed that it was
going to be a T & A book. When I first accepted
the book, a lot of my friends in the business
called me up and said 'Dan, since when did you
do T & A stuff?' You know, that sort of thing.
I said, 'No, wait. Give it a shot. I want to make
this a legitimate character and a legitimate book
with legitimate stories.' So, I think the toughest
thing has been fighting the perception that previously
existed of who Lara was and what the book was
going to be. After that, to me, she represents
a world traveler. One of the criticisms that I've
gotten from a couple of fans is that she's not
British enough. To me, because of her education,
because of the world travel I think she did as
a child and has always done, I see her as much
more than a British citizen. To me, she doesn't
speak with a thick accent. That's been sort of
watered out of here because of her world travels.
The toughest thing was fighting the preconceived
notions.
Fandom:
What about the supporting cast?
Jurgens:
We've seen a lot of Chase Carver who is an individual
who is also sort of a treasure hunter, cut much
more out of that rogue element. To me, he's also
someone who is, if we look at the Indiana Jones
model, he was a guy who could find it and would
be tremendously successful. Chase Carver, to me,
is sort of a rouge in that same way, but at the
same time, if he was sent out to find a $10 million
object, he's the guy who stumbles around and instead
comes back with something in the neighborhood
of $100,000 and gets a five per cent cut. He makes
just enough to get by. He's semi-good at what
he does. He is not in Lara's class. The most important
thing about him is that there is one treasure
that he covets above all else in the world and
that's Lara. It's the one treasure he'll never
have. I think that becomes the fun element because
he's always going to be around. I like him a lot.
In, I think, issue seven, I also introduce a new
butler/assistant/cook/advisor-type character for
Lara. There will be a couple of people who are
recurring characters that way, but for the most
part it's Lara's book and because it hops the
world, she's not going to have the standard Peter
Parker/Clark Kent supporting cast around the newspaper.
Fandom:
Was it easier or more difficult to adapt something
that was a game. Did the game's elements of traveling
to different locations and encountering different
supernatural elements help or hurt you?
Jurgens:
I wouldn't say they helped or hurt either way.
There were things that I was aware of. If you
look at the games, a video game is constructed
so much more differently than a comic book. The
story of a game is essentially the player's ability
to ascend to each new level. In a comic book,
the story is what happens to the character. So
really, when you look at the video games, there
are some aspects of Lara's character that comes
through it, not a lot. But there's not necessarily
a real tight story around the games. They also
tend to center on the supernatural. The problem
with supernatural in a comic book and magic in
general in comic books which is whether it's Dr.
Strange or Dr. Fate, the problem with magic and
supernatural in comic books is you essentially
go in telling the reader 'Because magic exists,
because the supernatural exists, we've broken
all the rules for you.' At that point, it's too
easy to pull a rabbit out of a hat. It's sort
of how each story works. I think that isn't real
gratifying in the long run. You can do a story
like that here and there, but you can't do it
every issue. So I made a deliberate decision to
push it more into the treasure quest realm and
dabble with the supernatural here and there, but
not get into it real strong.
Fandom:
Have you seen Mark Pajarillo work on Tomb Raider
Prelude?
Jurgens:
I think it's a good-looking book. The cover is
exceptionally nice. The book has been dialogued
and scripted so we're all done with it. It's a
nice looking book. The story essentially starts
off in the mountains. We don't even say exactly
which ones when it starts off and she's obviously
in search of something and right away, someone
else who is trying to get to it is trying to kill
her. It takes us into a flashback sequence of
Lara's youth when she was educated in a private,
very upper crust British school. It moves through
her training as a gymnast. I also made it clear
that she got some target training just to be able
to handle firearms the way she does. The story
ends again with Lara taking the item she has found
and putting it in a proper place or giving it
to a proper person in terms of there being a sense
of justice to it. The artwork, as it moves through
some of the sequences on the mountaintop where
she's actually attacked by a World War I biplane,
it's great stuff, so it's a good looking package.
Fandom:
So, what plans do you have for the regular Tomb
Raider book?
Jurgens:
To me, the most important aspect of Tomb Raider
is to continue to make Lara interesting as a character.
What I want to do is spend a little more time
examining her feelings about Chase Carver. One
of the things that we've stated is that she had
a relationship with him back in their younger
days in which this guy was just an irascible jerk
and at the same time, she obviously had feelings
for him. We play with that a little bit. I think
that we can assume, whereas, back then, Chase
was the dominant person in the relationship, now
the dominant person by far is Lara and she calls
the shoots. I also want to play around with what
her parents meant to her, particularly her mother.
In the first four-part story, we touched on the
idea that she went and found the Medusa Mask for
a man who once coveted her mother when she was
younger and had a sculptor make an incredible
one-of-its-kind music box featuring Lara's mother
as a ballerina in the center. That's what Lara
found. She found this incredibly priceless object
and traded it to that person just for this music
box. That I think certainly communicates something
of her thoughts for her mother and I want to play
with that a little more because the death of her
parents is what has made her independent as well.
Also realizing, 'My parents lived as safe as they
could and still died young, so I might as well
do what I can to have a good time.' The other
thing that I should mention though and something
that I think people are really going to get jazzed
about is a 38-page special I've written that Joe
Jusko is painting. Anyone who just saw the latest
issue of Tomb Raider, I think it was number seven,
that had the Jusko painted cover on it, it was
just a gorgeous cover on it. It won't be long
and people will be able to get 38 pages of that
kind of quality. I think it's really a nice story
and I have every anticipation that Joe is going
to do his usual job and blow everyone's doors
off.
Fandom:
When will that be coming out?
Jurgens:
I think we're trying to have that out in November
of this year which would be on the anniversary
of the launch of the regular series itself. Whether
or not we make it, (laughs) I don't know. Joe's
working on it, but we'll see if we get it there.
Fandom:
What has been the fan response to the regular
Tomb Raider comic?
Jurgens:
I did a show in late April at a convention and
it was, I think the first one I had done since
more than just an issue was out or something like
that. And I was stunned at the amount of people
who came up and made it quite clear that they
read Tomb Raider and not a lot else. Clearly,
we have a bit of a different audience and a lot
of them are female. I was also surprised at that
and happy to see that there are a lot of female
readers that we have. Typically, if I make a convention
appearance, considering my workload now which
is Thor, Cap, and Aquaman on one side, I'm going
to get a lot of the Marvel/DC junkie-types and
a lot of the hard-core superhero readers. I'd
look up and see a lot of young woman or girls
in line who are there because of Tomb Raider.
I was telling people at the Cow this and I think
they agreed that clearly we've found a different
audience than I am reaching or dealing with on
the normal books.
Fandom:
That must be very gratifying.
Jurgens:
Oh yeah, I'm always one of those who says any
level of success anybody has in this industry
is a good thing for us all. I always applaud it.
If we can manage to find a couple more people
out there who generally don't pick up a comic,
that's nothing but a good thing. The one other
thing that I would mention in terms of the origin
story itself is that it's going to be something
that every Lara fan is going to want to get there
hands on one way or other. In addition to that,
it opens up in the mountains and the here and
now and tells the story through flashbacks. It
also flashes back to that incident that was the
plane clash that she survived that was in the
mountains, so it's kind of one those full-circle
kind of things that becomes more important to
understanding her character.
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