Indiana Jones Omnibus: The Further Adventures Volume 1

[InBanana Jones]

Rocket Surgeon: Thanks. Interesting story about Byrne's experience.

Although I'm a lifelong fan of John Byrne's work, I have to wonder with all the projects he had going at the time--He was already writing/pencilling The Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight--I just don't see him, prolific as he was in those days, lasting too long with Indy.

Besides, I've always had a soft spot for the David Michelinie run on the book!

 

[harvey]

Way back in the day, I'd heard that George Lucas was quite displeased with John Buscema's work on Marvel's Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation so Marvel made up for it by getting John Byrne to produce their Further Adventures of Indiana Jones series. True or False?

The John Buscema part is very much true.

John Buscema (on breakdowns) and Klaus Janson (on finishes) did the art on the Raiders of the Lost Ark comic book adaptation, with a script by Walt Simonson.

As was often the case, the adapters were working from an old version of the script for the film, so the Marvel take differed from the actual film, but basically it was a fine, normal adaptation.

Lucasfilm, though, hated it.

Well, the person in charge of the comic book license hated it, at least. I don't know if George Lucas was really even that involved in stuff like comic adaptations at this point.

In any event, they did, indeed, as Elliot alluded to, give Marvel a hard time over the work.

Hmm...that seems to contradict what Jo Duffy (editor of the Raiders adaptation) stated in our recent IndyCast interview:

"Lucasfilm liked the work, but we did get some complaints from them, but you would laugh if you knew what they were. Somebody complained about an actor likeness, but it was never Indiana or Marion. Somebody complained about, like, a completely minor character."
"What we heard from LucasFilm, who were the authority, this was THEIR stuff, THEIR characters...and it was things like, this tertiary character looks too fat here, her bosom looks too big..."

She goes on to talk about how it was possible a different team from LucasFilm dealt with Marvel personnel post-Raiders, pre-Further...and that's where the difficulty probably arose.

 

[phantom train]

Great article re: Byrne & the IJ comics. It would have been great to see Byrne drawing more of the series, but I guess it's good we got even two issues done by him, given that he was probably busy with other commitments at the time, i.e. Fantastic Four, etc.

Also, I don't want to get too OT, but I know there are some comic fans on this board, so I wanted to recommend the superb John Byrne Fantastic Four Omnibus that came out last Fall - truly awesome, and this reprints a lot of (though not all) of the Byrne Fantastic Four comics - the issues are all re-colored/re-mastered. However, be warned - this Omnibus is both expensive & quite bulky/heavy.