For those who may not be aware of John Byrne's response regarding the further adventures...
Were those two Indiana Jones issues the only ones you were supposed to do or was a longer run originally envisioned? If longer, why was it cut short?
JB: I'm going to do my best not to whine at you here. INDIANA JONES was one of the Worst Experiences I've had as a comicbook professional. It started out well enough -- I saw "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and came out of the theater with my brain abuzz with all kinds of story ideas for such a character, expecially set against the fascinating millieu of the 1930s. The first obstacle turned out to be Shooter (ser-prize!!) He didn't want to do an Indiana Jones book. Thought it would have no sales appeal. It was Jim Salicrup who pointed out that more people had heard of Indiana Jones than of Any Marvel character. So the book got greenlighted, written and drawn by yours truly.
Then came the second hurdle. Obviously, one of the chief attractions of such a book would be the Saturday Morning Serial feel one could evoke -- collosal, impossible cliffhangers at the end of every issue. Right? Well, not as far as Shooter was concerned. He was in his "one issue" mode at that time -- all stories must be resolved in one issue (except the ones he wrote himself, of course!). I could do "cliffhangers", he said, but only if I resolved them in The Same Issue. Some cliffhanger, huh?
Ahh. . . but this was only the Beginning! Next came the liason with LucasFilm, a woman who clearly understood nothing about the way comics were produced, and who had no inclination to learn. It went like this: I wrote the plot, submitted it to LucasFilm for approval. It was approved. Drew the pictures, likewise submitted, likewise approved. Wrote the script, submitted it -- she asked for plot changes. Er, no, we said -- that was two steps ago. No, she said, want plot changes!! And when the first issue was finally complete, she decided she liked the plot I'd submitted months earlier for the third issue even better, and wanted that to be the first issue. We talked her out of that one. After two issues of this insanity, I gave up the ghost.
There was no way to work if each step could be overturned by someone who did not understand the process. (This did not change after I left, by the way. Tom DeFalco later told me that when Marvel did the adaptation of the second movie, each step was approved as above, then one week before the book was to go to the printers, she called up and asked for a different penciler!!!!) Okay. . . . so I whined a little bit.