Tomb Raider: The Series

The flagship Tomb Raider comic series from Top Cow Productions ran for over five years and fifty issues, making it one of the longest-running tie-in comics of the early 2000s video game boom. Launched in 1999 with writer Fiona Avery and artist Andy Park, the series quickly found its footing as a globe-trotting supernatural adventure strip that complemented the Core Design games without being directly bound by their plots.

Dan Jurgens took over writing duties and shaped much of the series’ identity across its middle run, crafting stories that sent Lara into conflicts with ancient cults, cursed artefacts, and rival treasure hunters in locations ranging from the Amazon to the Himalayas. The book treated Lara as a fully capable lead rather than simply a game property being monetised — at its best it captured the same mix of dry wit and reckless bravado that defined Core Design’s portrayal of the character.

Adam Hughes contributed some of the most celebrated covers of the run — his painted and rendered cover work for the series became definitive images of classic-era Lara and are among the most reproduced pieces of Tomb Raider art outside the games themselves. Andy Park’s interior artwork set a clean, dynamic visual standard that subsequent artists built on.

The series was published at a time when Top Cow had a prolific stable of titles — Witchblade, The Darkness, Fathom — and Lara crossed over with several of them, including a notable encounter with Sara Pezzini (Witchblade) that ran across both titles. The book was Top Cow’s best-selling title for much of its run and was collected in multiple trade paperback volumes.

Publication concluded in 2005, roughly concurrent with the end of Core Design’s involvement with the franchise. The series stands as the most sustained attempt to expand Lara’s world in comics form.