The secondary comic market regularly ebbs and flows as book sales go through moderate changes, and occasionally see big jumps (or falls) in value. Overstreet Access tracks these changes through diligent research into the market and via assessment of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide marketing reports. Those changes are routinely updated on OverstreetAccess.com’s Recent Value Changes page, which can be viewed with a membership to the website.

An interesting change that Overstreet Pricing Editor Yolanda Ramirez recently noted is the rise in value for Tomb Raider: The Series covers created by Adam Hughes.

The Tomb Raider franchise began in 1996 with an action-adventure video game about archaeologist Lara Croft, who travels across the globe to find hidden relics. Gameplay involves exploring tombs, solving puzzles, surviving traps, and fighting others on the hunt for the same artifacts. Since the first game, there have been two dozen more games, live-action and animated movies and shows, and comic books.

Lara Croft made the jump to comics in 1997 in Top Cow’s Witchblade/Tomb Raider special, then began her first (and longest) ongoing series in 1999’s Tomb Raider: The Series. There are a few standouts like the first issue that’s priced close to $20 in Near Mint condition, but most issues in the series are valued at $10 or under. The comic values see a significant jump once Hughes began producing the covers.

Hughes has been working in comics since the late 1980s and has become well known for his pin-up style renderings of female characters. He has provided covers for big name characters like Wonder Woman, and employed his talents to indie books like Tomb Raider: The Series. Hughes began his run of producing covers for the title in Tomb Raider: The Series #33 (October 2003), which recently saw a value update of $27, marking an increase of 900%. For context, the previous issue 32 is priced at just $4 in Near Mint.

For his covers, Hughes employed his pinup style while also capturing Lara Croft’s action star qualities. The covers show Lara in action, confronting enemies, and occasionally posing like a femme fatale. The main covers and variants Hughes provided on issues 34, and 41-49 have all seen a bump in value to $17, marking a 566% increase across the board. The biggest increase was for Tomb Raider: The Series #45 on which Hughes illustrated Lara in a barely-there bikini. That issue saw a 1,233% increase in value to $37 in Near Mint.

The Recent Value Changes page on OverstreetAccess.com can be found by clicking on the “Search Titles” tab in the Quick Navigation bar on the home page, then click the green “Recent Value Changes” button on the “Titles” page.