Reading Marvel - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Cody is endeavoring to read his way through Marvel's entire publishing history. Let's see if he can do it!

Follow Indiana Jones to Pankot Palace and beyond...

A comic book adaptation of director Steven Spielberg’s 1981 adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark was published as part of the Marvel Super Special series - and, to be exact, it was issue #18 of that series. Marvel Comics launched Marvel Super Special, a full-color magazine series that was “devoted to concepts thought to be deserving of special treatment” in 1977. The early issues featured stories about Conan the Barbarian, Star-Lord, and Weirdworld, as well as bands like The Beatles and Kiss, with some movie adaptations mixed in. As of issue #14, and continuing through its final issue (#41), the Marvel Super Special series became dedicated entirely to movie adaptations.

Of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the film that introduced the world to archeologist Indiana Jones, who would return for multiple cinematic adventures over the decades. The second time movie-goers got to see him was in the 1984 prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which takes place one year before the events of Raiders. Just like Raiders, Temple of Doom got a comic book adaptation in the pages of Marvel Super Special. The comic book version of the story was told in Marvel Super Special #30, and was also released as a three-issue special.

The Temple of Doom adaptation was handled by a completely different creative team than the Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation, with writer David Michelinie, colorist Andy Yanchus, letterer John Morelli, and artists Jackson “Butch” Guice, Ian Akin, Brian Garvey, and Bob Camp picking up the baton passed by writer Walt Simonson, colorist Michele Wolfman, letterer Rick Parker, and artists John Buscema and Klaus Janson. Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz wrote the screenplay they were working from, working in turn from a story by George Lucas.

When we catch up with Indiana Jones in Temple of Doom, it’s 1935 and he's selling the remains of an ancient Emperor to Shanghai crime boss Lao Che in exchange for a large diamond. This exchange goes wrong, there’s machine gun fire, and Indy escapes from the club with the criminal's "famous American female vocalist" mistress Willie Scott. They're driven to the airport by his young orphan sidekick Short Round.

Indy, Willie, and Short Round board a cargo plane to leave the country, not realizing that the plane is owned by Lao Che. The pilots ditch the plane mid-flight, leading our heroes to escape from the crashing plane by jumping out with an inflatable raft and landing on a snowy mountain. The raft is then swept down a river until Indy and company end up in a small village in India that is experiencing a streak of horrible luck, the village elder telling them that they are the answer to his prayers, they have been delivered to the village by Shiva to help his people.

At the center of the plot is the legend of the Sankara Stones, five stones that were delivered to the priest Sankara by the Hindu god Shiva for him to combat evil with. One of the sacred stones was kept in a shrine to protect this village Indiana Jones has ended up in by chance or by the will of Shiva, but it has been stolen. Since the stone was taken, the village wells have dried up, the river turned to sand, the crops were swallowed by the earth, the animals laid down and turned to dust, there was a fire in the fields and when the men returned from fighting the fire, they found that all of the village children had been kidnapped. The source of all the evil befalling the village is the nearby Pankot Palace, which had been deserted, but a new Maharaja has recently moved into it.

Indy agrees to go to the palace as the villagers want him to, but he's still not a noble hero. Legend has it that when the stones are together, the diamonds inside of them will glow. Diamonds. These stones mean fortune and glory for Indiana Jones, and if he saves a bunch of kids while he's getting them, well that's just a nice bonus. 

Indy, Short Round, and the very reluctant and out of her element Willie make their way to Pankot Palace and find that the civilized appearance of the new Maharaja is actually a front for the Thuggee, a gang/cult that existed in India for hundreds of years before seemingly being wiped out by British forces in the 1830s. The Thuggee are back now and have three sacred stones in their possession. The final two are believed to be in the ground beneath the palace, so the village children are being used as slave labor to mine for them. When the Thuggee have all five stones, the power of their evil will sweep over the entire country.

Our heroes go through battles with cult members, brainwashing, human sacrifice, rooms full of insects and spikes, and an out of control roller coaster-esque mine cart chase, building up to a final confrontation on a rope bridge high above alligator-infested waters.

It’s probably become quite obvious in both the Reading Marvel series and the Racks and Stacks series that I really enjoy reading comic book adaptations of movies, and this was no exception. The team behind the Temple of Doom comic adaptation did a good job of condensing the film’s story down into approximately 70 pages, with Michelinie taking opportunities to dig deeper through narrative passages and the occasional Indiana Jones thought bubble. 

It’s also clear in some panels that the art team had the opportunity to either watch the movie or see still images from the film before crafting the artwork, because some images are recognizable as being straight out of the movie. For example, when the drawing of a monkey’s head in the “chilled monkey brains” dinner scenes looks just like the monkey head in the movie, I have to think that the artist was working directly from film imagery.

The creative team put in a strong effort and the Temple of Doom adaptation is a fun read, but they weren’t quite successful at making the comic as fun and exciting as the film is. Some of the action sequences are lacking on the page, especially the booby-trapped room scene, and (not unexpectedly) the moment where villain Mola Ram rips out a person’s heart with his bare hands did not make it into the comic.

But living up to Temple of Doom is a tall order, as far as I’m concerned. It was the entry in the Indiana Jones series that I watched the most growing up, and I feel that it has the most memorably iconic moments and settings, the best representation of Indiana Jones as a character, and the best villain. Reading the comic book adaptation really made me want to watch the movie again as soon as possible.