Lost Artifacts Found
piecing together the collection
Shortly after writing the first post, I started hunting for the prequel books published by Bantam in the early 1990s. I missed a few deals on eBay and put in an interlibrary loan request and was reserved to wait. However, an unexpected treasure appeared on Facebook Marketplace: the complete collection of Bantam Books along with the novelizations of four Indiana Jones films (all but Dial of Destiny). These “prequels” in fill the gap in storytelling between the Young Indiana Jones TV series and the films. The seller listed them for just under the original list price and I couldn’t pass up the offer! Along with a well-timed Thriftbooks.com reward I acquired both books from Scholastic, Inc.’s “Untold Stories” series. I suddenly had everything I needed for under $100! Putting it together piece by piece would have cost significantly more.
With the collection in hand (and an extra copy of the Peril at Delphi that I may resell), the project has become a reality and I can begin reading… Although I am tempted to add more titles. The Dark Horse Comics series of The Indiana Jones Adventures and a few “Find Your Fate Adventures” books featuring Indy are on the market for a good price. For now, that feels like an unnecessary stretch. The stories follow Indy as an adult post-1936, so they fall outside the parameters of this project. I’m more interested in seeing how Henry Walton Jones, Jr becomes the swashbuckling archaeologist we see in the movies. That version will have to wait!
Watching the first episode of the television series raised a number of questions about Jones’ development as an adventurer while giving some insight into a few of his signature character qualities. I will do a deeper dive into these things in the next blog post.