Lara Croft is on Cobra Island today, on covers that could have shipped in 1985

Lara Croft reaches Cobra Island this morning. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero/Tomb Raider #1 is on sale today, 32 pages for $4.99, written by Kyle Higgins and drawn by Elena Casagrande, with colours by Alex Guimaraes and letters by Pat Brosseau. We covered the announcement in July, when the only hard facts were the creative team, the five-issue count and the date. The date has held. Image’s own release page and the solicitation both say 7 October, and the shop listings we read this morning agree.

Four of the seven covers are ones a reader can walk into a shop and ask for by name. Cover A is Casagrande and Guimaraes at $4.99 and Cover B is Stjepan Sejic at the same price. Cover C is the Sejic art again on foil at $5.99, and Cover G is a blank sketch board at $5.99, for anyone taking it to a convention table to get drawn on. All four were in stock at Third Eye Comics when we read the listings this morning, with 253 copies of Cover A showing [1].

The other three are retailer incentives, and a shop had to order in quantity to qualify for any of them. Mooneyham’s is 1:25, Leirix’s is 1:50, and the Lorenzo Tammetta and Mike Spicer variant, the hardest of the three to come across, is 1:100. But a shop which ordered deep on a crossover premiere will often have the 1:25 sitting in the back, so it is worth asking.

The covers are pitching this as a Larry Hama comic

Mooneyham drew a variant for all five issues, and he drew all five to the same template. Issue one splits into three stacked panels, with blood-flecked caption boxes running between them that read “A sunken ship…”, “An ancient artifact…” and then, in red, “DANGER AT EVERY TURN!!!” Modern covers do not talk to you like that. The ellipses and the three exclamation marks are 1985 Marvel grammar, and Mooneyham has copied the layout along with the lettering.

It carries through the run, and the blurbs get louder as it goes. Issue two is “SNAKE-EYES and LARA CROFT… OUTNUMBERED! OUTGUNNED! OUT OF OPTIONS!!!”, issue four is “THE TOMB RAIDER vs THE BARONESS”, billed as the showdown you have been waiting for, and issue five is “DESTRO’S LAST STAND!!!” Skybound could have sold this crossover on Lara Croft and let the Joes be the guest stars. She is the one of the two with a film in the last decade. Mooneyham’s covers do it the other way, and sell Lara Croft to a reader who already owns the Hama run.

Chris Mooneyham's variant cover for issue two, with Snake-Eyes and Lara Croft drawing weapons in a stone corridor while four Cobra troopers advance behind them, under caption boxes reading Outnumbered, Outgunned, Out of options

Mooneyham’s 1:25 variant for issue two, out 4 November. Cover art: Skybound and Image Comics.

They also give something away. Issue three’s cover puts Shipwreck in a flooded wreck under a caption reading “UNEARTH THE HIDDEN SECRETS OF THE ARBCO STAR”, and that is the name of the sunken ship issue one only gestures at with a caption box. Skybound’s own copy says the treasure has been hidden on the island for decades; the cover gives the hull it went down in.

What is actually in it

The first page is not on Cobra Island at all. Image has put it out with the covers, and it opens on a caption reading “THE GULF OF MEXICO.” over a wedge of Cobra hovercraft running at speed, watched through binoculars from a gun position, before cutting inside a transport where the expedition is sitting strapped in and waiting. The last two panels are a man in a slouch hat saying “TWO MINUTES.” and Shipwreck, in his watch cap, answering “STILL TIME TO CHANGE YOUR MIND.” Skybound’s own copy says Lara needs Shipwreck, an old acquaintance of hers, and several squads of Joes to get into the heart of the island after something that has been down there for decades, with Destro and the Baroness chasing the same prize. Graphic Policy ran four pages of preview on 3 October, including a spread at pages five and six.

Page one of the issue: a caption reading The Gulf of Mexico over Cobra hovercraft running at speed, a gun position watching through binoculars, and the expedition strapped into a transport interior

Page one, published by Image with the covers. Interior art: Skybound and Image Comics.

Shipwreck being the Joe she knows is a good joke on its own, and the covers put him on two of the five.

One thing worth settling, because a shop’s filing system has confused it. Third Eye files this issue under a collection called GI JOE x TOMB RAIDER - ENERGON UNIVERSE, and a reader could reasonably read that as a continuity statement. It is not one. Image’s own press release describes A Real American Hero as a cornerstone of the Skybound and Hasbro deal “alongside the shared Energon Universe comics line”, and alongside is not inside.

The dates that matter next

Issue two is already orderable and its final order cutoff is Monday 12 October. After a book’s cutoff a shop can only sell you what it had already decided to buy. Issue two is on sale 4 November with a Casagrande and Guimaraes cover again and two by Sweeney Boo, one of them on foil, and issue three follows on 2 December with a pair by Ludo Lullabi, its own cutoff falling on 9 November [2].

A first issue sitting in stock on its release morning looks safe enough, but the first issue of a licensed crossover is the one that goes to a second printing, so it is worth putting issue one on a pull list today. Our comics archive carries the wider A Real American Hero run, and we covered the Classified Lara Croft figure that started this collaboration.

Sources

Cover and interior art: Skybound and Image Comics. Prices and stock read off the retailer’s own listings on 7 October.

[1] Prices and stock read first hand off the shop’s own listings on the morning of 7 October. Covers B, C and G were listed as available without a count showing.

[2] Issue three’s A cover was not listed at the shop we read when we checked, so the Lullabi pair are the two we can confirm. Issue two’s final order cutoff of 12 October and issue three’s of 9 November are both printed on the listings.