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Indiana Jones
"The Harbingers"
The Further Adventures of
Indiana Jones
#5
Marvel Comics
Plot/Script: David Michelinie
Pencils: Ron Frenz
Inks: Danny
Bulanadi
Letters: Joe Rosen
Colors: Bob Sharen
Cover: Ron Frenz and Danny
Bulanadi
May 1983
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The crystal cylinder is brought back to
Stonehenge at the appointed time. What will it reveal?
Notes from the Indiana Jones chronology
This issue takes place in 1936.
Notes from
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones is a 2008 publication
that
purports to be Indy's journal as seen throughout The
Young Indiana Chronicles
TV series
and the big screen Indiana
Jones movies. The publication is also annotated with notes
from a functionary of the
Federal Security
Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, the successor
agency of the Soviet Union's KGB security agency. The KGB relieved Indy of his
journal in 1957 during the events of Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The notations imply the journal was released to other
governments by the FSB in the early 21st Century. However, some
bookend segments of The
Young Indiana Chronicles
depict Old Indy still in
possession of the journal in 1992. The discrepancy has never
been resolved.
The journal as published does not mention the events of this
issue, going from the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
in 1936 to
Indy's recovery of the Cross of Coronado in 1938 in The Last
Crusade.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
Indiana Jones
Karen Mays
Hauptman Loeb
Nazi thugs
Nessel
Mrs. Mays
Mr. Mays (mentioned only)
German radio operator
Arnold 'Smitty' Smith/Schmidt (dies in this issue)
Major Temple
(mentioned only)
Anna Jones
(mentioned only, deceased)
British military guards
Didja Notice?
This issue identifies the bridge on which Indy and Karen are hanging
in the Rolls Royce limousine from the end of
"Gateway to Infinity"
as London Bridge, the one that existed there over the River
Thames from 1831–1967 (since replaced with a new bridge and
the old one sold to American entrepreneur Robert P.
McCulloch and deconstructed, shipped, and reconstructed over
the Bridgewater Channel of
Lake Havasu City, Arizona).
On page 4, Indy and Karen wind up at her mother's flat in
Egham,
Surrey.
On page 7, Smith watches Indy and Karen clandestinely on the
train to Salisbury Plain behind a copy of yesterday's
Times with visible article titles of "Churchill
Concerned at Nazi Advances" and "RAF At Ready Says
Minister". "Times" refers to the newspaper often
called the
London
Times. Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was a member
of Britain's Conservative Party at the time and would become
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1940. The Prime
Minister in 1936 was Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947). The RAF is
the Royal
Air Force.
The English Channel mentioned on page 7 is the narrow
stretch of ocean that separates England from the European
mainland.
On page 12, Indy notices the British "Bobbies" waiting for
them when the train stops are carrying Luger pistols. Luger
is a pistol design first patented by Austrian Georg Luger in
1900.
His men disguised as English police, Loeb regrets that they
don't have the same power as the Gestapo. The Gestapo
(Geheime Staatspolizei) was the secret police of Nazi
Germany from 1933-1945.
On page 13, Indy steals a motorcycle, with a sidecar for
Karen to ride in. Karen asks if he's ever driven one before and he says
he ran a paper route on a motorbike when he was a kid, but his
mom didn't let him go over 5 miles per hour. This is the
first mention of his ever having had a paper route. Besides
a paper route motorbike, he also rode one as a courier for
the French military during WWI, as seen in
"Demons of Deception".
As Indy and Karen speed away on the motorcycle, Loeb shouts
to his driver and other men, "After them! Schnell!
Rasch!" "Schnell! Rasch!" is German for
"Quickly! Swiftly!"
As Indy prepares to run the motorcycle across the
fragile-looking rope-and-plank bridge on page 14, he tells
Karen, "I'm glad Mom isn't here to see this...she'd give me a
lickin' like you wouldn't believe!" Of course, Indy's
mother, Anna Jones, died in 1912 of scarlet fever when Indy
was 12 years old.
On page 16, Loeb says, "Guten abend, Herr Jones,"
as he leaves him and Karen to sink into the quicksand.
Guten abend is German for "good evening".
Karen carries a
Webley
revolver issued to her when she started working for the
British government.
On page 19, the crystal cylinder sends harsh, pulsing light
flows down Loeb's arms like St. Elmo's Fire. St. Elmo's Fire
is an electrical weather phenomenon that is known to create
a glowing plasma field around a grounded object.
On page 20, a German soldier refers to Indy as schwein.
This is German for "pig".
Also on page 20, Karen swats one of Loeb's men with her
handbag, calling him a "bloody brownshirt".
"Brownshirt" was used to refer to members of the Sturmabteilung (Storm
Detachment), the original paramilitary division of the
German Nazi Party, founded in 1920 and clothed in brown
uniforms.
Indy knocks the cylinder out of
Loeb's hands, sending it flying into the air and then
descending like "sad Icarus in failure", shattering on the
ground.
This is a reference to the Greek mythological figure Icarus,
who used wings made of feathers and wax to fly, but flew too
close to the sun, which melted the wax and caused him to
plummet to the sea, where he drowned.
Unanswered Questions
Why did the British government name the project to decode
the writing and workings of the crystal cylinder "The
Gateway Project"? They had no idea at the time that the cylinder had anything
to do with opening a portal/gateway for otherworldly beings
until after Indy and Karen were finally able to decipher the
writing.
Who or what were the forces that once existed on Earth and
who were to return if the crystal had been allowed to
complete its summoning function? They seem almost like the
Old Gods of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos, described in
the narrative as they attempt to emerge from the
partially-formed portal as "things reptilian, simian, canine,
insectile and utterly, utterly unknown."
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