Story: Shipwreck meets up with Lara Croft, “the Tomb Raider” as she needs help getting to the Arbco Star shipping freighter on Cobra Island to hunt for a missing artifact. Destro’s forces are already there so the Joes send a team in to try to find the artifact, which has the potential to be really powerful. The team encounters the Iron Grenadiers on the island and neither team uses weapons for fear of alerting the Blue Ninjas that are still in the casino.
Writing: The themes of this issue feel more like a classic Sunbow cartoon than the ongoing ARAH issues but not too bad. Lara Croft has been set up as an established character in the series with Shipwreck knowing her and both Destro and the Baroness having met her before. I did like that as it feels a bit more believable than her suddenly appearing in the series. Her franchise (Tomb Raider) is mentioned a few times ("oh, it’s the Tomb Raider") more as a nickname than what she goes by. I also enjoy the call back to the freighter, which played an important role back in the original run of the series.
Art: Being a five-issue miniseries to the main series, the art is on par and fits in nicely. The action scenes are done well and Destro gets a nice, menacing panel at the end.
Overall: For a crossover property, this was handled pretty well. It’s not taken to the extreme where Lara is a better fighter than the Joe team but she can handle her own. This could have been done In a few different ways and I think keeping the tone with the regular series does both properties justice.