This is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever read. I asked to review this graphic novel because I thought it would give me a chance to have a look at a few characters I knew nothing about. I’ve never played any of the Tomb Raider computer games, or seen either the Tomb Raider or Witchblade movies, or read any of the various comics either of them feature in. I was, I reasoned, in a position to take an unjaundiced look at this book, and these characters, and I was reasonably hopeful that I'd enjoy what I found.

I was sadly mistaken.

This book actually comes in two parts, both of which are reprints of previously published "stories" (using the word in its loosest possible sense…) The first part is primarily a Witchblade story, with a few brief inserts from Lara Croft, and the second part is a solo Witchblade piece. Actually, if I was a Tomb Raider fan, I’d be sorely disappointed, as Lara appears on only seventeen of the one hundred and forty four pages in this book, and that includes some where she’s only standing around in the background.

Anyway, the first story, "Dark Crossings" is a lot of nonsense about Sir Lancelot (who, it seems, was actually a black guy) and an ancient evil sword. He gets transported to the present, and it’s all a set-up for some future story line. Yawn city.

The second half of the book reprints issues fourteen to sixteen of the Witchblade comic for no good reason I can figure out. These three issues don’t form a story line. In fact, we are dumped into the middle of an ongoing storyline, which appears to finish up (although it’s hard to tell without having read the beginning of it), and we conclude in the middle of another story. There is not a single sensible reason I can see to put these three issues together, if the publishers had possessed even the slightest concern about presenting well-rounded stories to their customers.

The only well-rounded feature of this book, is the ample embonpoint of the leading ladies, which is, it seems, the real raison d’etre for its entire existence. I’m forty two years old, and this is the first time in my life I’ve felt embarrassed to be seen reading comics on the bus. I wanted to tell people "this isn’t what I usually read, I’m only reading it for a review." There are numerous borderline-pornographic splash pages, which are more or less what the Americans call "pin ups", and they seem to be inserted at random into the book for no logical reason I can discern, except to keep the presumably adolescent male readership happy, I suppose.

I saw a documentary on the comics industry recently that claimed that Witchblade is said to be one of the few comics also read by girls, as it presents a positive image of a female superhero. God help us all if this is the good stuff.

This book is bad. Not bad in a post-modern, post-ironic, post-anything sort of way, but simply because it seems that nobody cared enough to make it even borderline good. It’s a waste of money, time, and some more of the planet’s rapidly dwindling resources.

Don’t buy it.

Review originally on The Alien Online