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Old 16-06-21, 19:07   #1
ELIMTBF
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Default Did you read Season of the Witch? (spoilers for issues #1-6)

I'm working my way through the books, comics, and games post 2013 in order.

What did you think of this one, issues #1-6 collected as Season of the Witch? By the way I haven't read further than this so please no spoilers for the media ahead of this.

For me it didn't really work. I read The Ten Thousand Immortals directly before, and I felt like there was a mis-match between the Laras in each one.

And that guy who shows up in the jacket, his story doesn't add up. Unless I'm missing something.

He hypnotised the survivors into taking an artefact each from the island. So what, he just walked up and hypnotised them all? OK, could happen in a world of sun queens, I guess - let's allow it.

Still, that means he was on Yamatai while the group was there, and he did his hypnotism act after Matthias died - because his whole motive was to chase that cult down, because they planned to raise Matthias, and he feared Matthias would find a way to bring Himiko back.

And the reason he, sigh, hypnotised the group, was because the cult he was chasing down was laying low. He couldn't find them. So he made the crew take the artefacts in order to use them as bait, draw the cult out you see, so he could take them down.

So - sometime between the time that Matthias died, a cult worshipping the Solarii had formed (a death cult that worships another death cult, no less), created a plan to raise Matthias from the dead, and become noteworthy enough to get on jacket guy's radar, who, remember, had to have been stuck on Yamatai too, and therefore only recently become able to leave.

So he would have had to leave the island, start hunting down this cult, realise that he can't find them because they'd gone into hiding, return to the island, and then hypnotise the group. And all this happened between Lara defeating Himiko and the team leaving the island.

But, maybe that cult wasn't new, maybe it had been worshipping the Solarii for a long time. How can this be if Matthias formed the Solarii in the first place? How much time would there have been between him doing that and his death? According to the wiki he crashed in 1982, so a couple of decades, tops?

OK, I suppose that's enough time to create a global death cult that worships another death cult. In a world where sun queens exist, let's allow it.

But how would they know about the Solarii in the first place? No one gets off the island, that's its whole thing. They could learn about Himiko - Lara did - but they don't worship Himiko, and they were very adamant to make that point clear (quite understandably - if I was in a death cult that worships another death cult, I'd honestly resent being mistaken for a death cult that worships a sun queen).

It's totally possible I'm missing something obvious here. I want to be missing something. Am I?

Also, Lara smells gas in the monastery (presumably not natural gas because as Ross from Friends taught us, they put that smell in). Jacket guy says that the Solarii didn't even light fires in winter when that happened. But a few pages later they think it's a great idea to start chucking grenades around.

Also I appreciate that Lara took some weapons with her, but why is she wearing trainers and not boots? Even TTTI Lara knew to wear boots (in metropolitan areas, never mind islands of death). Luckily the artist doesn't seem to like drawing feet, so the offending footwear was often behind a rock or out of shot.

Last edited by ELIMTBF; 16-06-21 at 19:11.
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Old 16-06-21, 19:23   #2
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Trash arc. The ones after this are so much better.

It's been a while so I don't remember all the specifics but the idea of Lara almost immediately going back to Yamatai felt so dumb. I also remember hating the villain and the implementation of hypnotism.
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Old 16-06-21, 20:21   #3
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I thought the same thing. Back to Yamatai, already? And dragging all her friends along too seemed unfair. Taking Jonah - a man who was recently in a seriously delusional state as a result of being on an island of death, right back to said island of death, seemed like a particularly unwise call.
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Old 16-06-21, 21:03   #4
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We used to have dedicated threads for the comics, but they've been 'lost' due to lack of activity in this section.

It's been a while since I read this arc, it certainly is one of the weaker ones.
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Old 16-06-21, 21:20   #5
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Still trying to figure out who the Witch is...
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Old 16-06-21, 21:26   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by .snake. View Post
Still trying to figure out who the Witch is...
Himiko. Most likely.
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Old 16-06-21, 21:32   #7
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Yeah she's the only candidate. Still though, seems like they just chose a catchy title for the sake of it without connecting it to the story.
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Old 16-06-21, 21:34   #8
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Yeah it does feel like they just pulled words out of a hat to name this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rai View Post
Himiko. Most likely.
Has to be right? She's the only one who fits the bill. But she never gets called a witch at any time, that I can recall. Nor does she play a big role, besides being the cause of everything and the ever-present background threat. But she doesn't have a season, exactly. Yet who else could it mean?

Is Lara the witch? Is there an alternate retelling of this whole story where a group of friends crash on a peaceful island of hippies who have chosen to worship the sun and live off the land... and one of them suddenly goes completely insane and starts slaughtering everyone?
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Old 17-06-21, 09:17   #9
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I still don't believe Gail Simone of all people wrote Season of the Witch. That arc is trash and she is a much better writer than that.

Luckily all other arcs are much, much better. Even the worst one of all others (Spore, IMO) is at least decent enough...
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Old 17-06-21, 11:13   #10
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Quote:
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Luckily all other arcs are much, much better. Even the worst one of all others (Spore, IMO) is at least decent enough...
Yep, I've just finished the next arc which I believe is called Secrets and Lies, did you like that one? I thought that while it wasn't mind blowing, it seems to be going in the right direction.

There was actually a laugh out loud moment when the bad guy is like "I do not fear the worlds deadliest assassins, but I do fear this girl, Lara Croft. And unfortunately, she does not seem to fear anything." And then in the next panel Lara's throwing up with stage fright. That would work really well on-screen.
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