I'm sorta digging GameTap's Re\Visioned series. The idea is that they choose a iconic video game and hand the character over to ten teams of artists and writers to reimagine different elements of the icon. The ten-part Tomb Raider Re\Visioned animated series includes a number of interesting takes on the most famous video game heroine, including a humorous story of her untold young adulthood and more serious takes on her adventures, but by far the most interesting is Gail Simone's "Pre-Teen Raider" a look at Lara Croft as a young boisterous and sticky-fingered private school student.

The look of the young Croft and the short's script are both the product of Gaile Simone, who worked with Six Point Harness to put the six minute video together.

Simone, perhaps most known for her work on Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman, said she was approached by the GameTap folks because they were looking for someone with comic book experience. It was an added bonus that Simone also happens to be a big fan of the Tomb Raider video games.

"The very first Tomb Raider that came out, I played all of the way through," she said. "The last one, Legends, I played all the way through too. It was the first game I've played all the way through in a long time."

Simone, a feminist writer known for her talented comedy-action stories, said she was drawn to Croft because she wasn't the typical heroine.

"She's an adventurer, educated, classy, strong doesn't need to be rescued by someone else," she said. "She goes all over the world."

GameTap "asked me to pitch them a few concepts and (Pre Teen Raider) was my favorite," she said. "I thought it would be fun to explore what she would be like as a kid. I thought it would be a blast to show her that way."

And the end result it, an animated short that Simone describes as having a "lot of velocity. I'm excited about the visual look of it. It's very fun, it moves very fast, the jokes are funny."

Instead of trying to go back to the creative minds who initially gave life to Croft, Simone said she looked to the adult Croft for insight into what she would be like as a child.

"I just thought about how her character is as an adult," she said. "In order to grow up and have that personality what ideas she would have as a pre-teen."

I asked Simone if she was bothered by the seeming duality of Lara Croft's popularity. On the one hand she is popular because she is a representation of a smart, strong feminine hero, but on the other she is worshiped as a bombshell.

"I'm used to working with that," she said. "I write a lot of female strong feminine heroines. I'm not distributed by a female character being beautiful. I get disturbed by a bunch of video games that all look the same and all have the same focus."

While Pre-Teen Raider was a one off created for GameTap, Simone said it would make sense to turn into into a regular animated show.

"I think it would be fun."

Tome Raider

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