by L.A. Mood Comics and Games

By Dan Brown

All readers want from comics, I’ve said before, is compelling characters in interesting situations.

Well, Indiana Jones – featured in the Dial of Destiny, which is in theatres now – is certainly a compelling character as played by Harrison Ford. And the makers of the Indy films have certainly been able to place him in some interesting (and deadly) situations. 

So how come the daring archeologist has never been able to sustain a comic title for long? 

I’m not saying Jones is a total washout as the headliner of a monthly series, but compared to adjacent properties, like Star Wars, he’s only been a blip in the grand sweep of comics history.

Inspired by the success of 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, It’s true Marvel Comics did publish more than 30 issues of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones starting in 1983. 

Remember, those were the days when there wasn’t a property Marvel didn’t try to plunder. The gang from the bullpen attempted to cash in on every new fad, trend, craze and sensation that came along. 

How ridiculous did it get? This was the era when even the rock band KISS ended up in the pages of Marvel Comics. That’s right – for a brief moment, Gene Simmons was a Marvel protagonist, along with Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine and the rest.

I’m guessing an Indy comic seemed like a no-brainer. As it turned out, that first series would pale beside the Star Wars monthly, which ran 107 issues from 1977 to 1986 and is credited by some with keeping the House of Ideas afloat during lean economic times. 

And those Star Wars comics were . . . fine. They weren’t the worst stories in the world, although I would argue Russ Manning was doing far more interesting things in the same universe in the pages of daily newspapers with the Star Wars comic strip.

And Marvel certainly invested in the venture, attaching talents like Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson and John Byrne to bring Jones to life on the page. Yet the Further Adventures of Indiana Jones fizzled even before the original Indy trilogy wrapped up in 1989 with the Last Crusade.

Here’s another comparison: Conan, Robert E. Howard’s pulp barbarian character, was also a Marvel Comics property during roughly the same period, and has been in the hands of one publishing house or another for decades since. Who knows how many Conan comic adaptations there have been to date?

It’s also true Dark Horse Comics licenced Indiana Jones and his bullwhip in the 1990s for several more adventures. But those stories are only half-remembered now, if at all.

So despite his enduring appeal on the big screen, why was Indy a comparative dud in comics form? 

I don’t have an all-encompassing answer, but the fact is some properties just don’t translate to other media. Some books don’t make good TV shows. Some movies don’t make good comics. Very few plays make for interesting films. (This is where I should also note that the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the network version of the character, barely lasted two seasons on ABC, so there may be something about the archeologist that just doesn’t work in other media.)

Or perhaps it’s because the Indy films are the end product of pop culture, not the beginning.

What I mean is, it was newspaper strips and adventure comics, along with silver-screen serials, that moved George Lucas and Steve Spielberg to come up with Indy in the first place. And maybe it just ends there: Dr. Jones was intended to be a creature of the big screen, so he is doomed never to transcend its limits.

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for 30 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.