Indiana Jones

Background

Video

Theatrical trailer for Raiders of the Lost Ark, goes up to 1080p.

History

Henry Jones Jr. was born on the 1^st of July, 1899. During his early years, he traveled with his parents and Miss Helen Seymour, his tutor on his father’s lecture tours through Europe, Asia and Africa. During these travels, he learned a great deal about different countries and cultures, and gained a fondness for adventures abroad.

During a Boy Scout outing in Utah in 1912, Indy tried to foil the plans of robbers planning to steal old Spanish-American artifacts, including the Cross of Coronado. During his encounter with the thieves, Indy gained some of his most notable characteristics: his affinity for the bullwhip, the scar across his chin, and intense fear of snakes, and his distinctive brown fedora.

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In 1916, Indy decided to follow the adventures of his friend T. E. Lawrence  and enlisted in the Belgian Army to fight against Germany. There he met his friend Remy Badion, a Belgian national. He saw action as a soldier in France and Africa, then worked for intelligence throughout Europe, including Austria, Spain, and Turkey.

After the Great War, Indiana attended college at the University of Chicago , studying history and archaeology with Professor Abner Ravenwood. Although Indy was one of Ravenwood’s brightest students, the two later had a bitter conflict when Indy became interested in Ravenwood’s daughter, Marion (who was also infatuated with him).

After graduating from the University of Chicago, Indy studied at the Sorbonne  in Paris.

Since then he has taught at several colleges, including the University of London, Princeton University and his alma mater, the University of Chicago. Jones is currently teaching history and archaeology at Marshall College, a small school in Connecticut.

Throughout his adventures, Indy has made several life-long friends. His patron and his father’s good friend Marcus Brody is curator of an archaeological museum in New York City and a frequent visitor when Indy is teaching in the Northeastern United States. Sallah, Indy’s Egyptian friend, has been a great help during Indy’s Middle Eastern exploits

While Abner Ravenwood was a good friend of Indy’s during his college years, the two never resolved their differences over Ravenwood’s daughter. They did not speak in the years leading up to Ravenwood’s death.

Subsequent timeline

1922-1947 history is best presented as a timeline:

October 1922: Indy finally completes his undergraduate degree and moves onto a graduate program (in linguistics) at the Sorbonne. His archaeology professor, Dorian Belecamus, invites him along on a dig in Greece. There, she’s involved in a plot to overthrow King Constantine, and Indy is unknowingly set up to take the blame for the king’s murder.
Indy saves the king but loses Dorian when she is killed by a bullet meant for him. It is this adventure that marks the turning point in Indy’s life. Archaeology now becomes his lifelong pursuit. (from Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi, Bantam Books).

1924: Still a graduate student in France, Indy goes on a dig with Roland Walcott and other students. Indy discovers an underwater cave with Ice Age paintings and clay animals inside. Walcott learns of this and tries to steal the glory for himself, but disappears into an underground river during a struggle. He is presumed dead (from Indiana Jones and the Unicorn’s Legacy, Bantam).

1925: Indy finally completes his graduate studies at the Sorbonne and is hired for his first professorial job on a summer course at London University. The purpose of the dig is to confirm the legend of Merlin and to study Stonehenge. Indy also ends up romancing the archeology’s department head’s daughter, Deirdre. (from Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants, Bantam).

March 1926: Indy and Deirdre recover the Mask of Camozotz and other artifacts during an expedition in Guatemala. Deirdre dies later on a plane crash (from Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils, Bantam).

Late 1926: Indy is teamed with Professor Abner Ravenwood and they discover the Staff of Ra (from Indiana Jones and the Lost Horizon, Dark Horse).

1927: any hope of recovering of Noah’s Ark is lost when a group of bolshevik spies causes an avalanche at Mount Ararat, burying the vessel under tons of ice and rock (from Indiana Jones and the Genesis Deluge, Bantam).

1928: Roland Walcott reappears and tried to take an unicorn’s horn at Utah’s anasazi ruins (from Indiana Jones and the Unicorn’s Legacy, Bantam).

Spring 1929: Indiana is at the Easter Island when a local myth takes him to the dream-like “interior world” from which he eventually escapes, reappearing in New York (from Indiana Jones and the Interior World, Bantam).

1933: Indiana explores Mongolia in search of a nun’s father and a still-living dinosaur (from Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs Bantam).

Early 1934: Indiana joins three other adventurers to find the Hollow World, the world that exists under our feet, and fights (for the first time?) the nazis (from “Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth”, Bantam).

Early 1935: Indy finds and loses an undersea treasure of valuable statues and pearls to a giant octopus (from “Indiana Jones and the Shrine of the Sea Devil”, Dark Horse).

Spring 1935: Jones has gangster troubles at Shanghai and ends crashing somewhere on India. At the risk of his own soul and heart (literally), Indiana rescues Sankara’s stones and children (from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”).

Summer 1935: Indiana travels to Dracula’s castle to gather the Cup of Djemsheed (from “Cup of the vampire”, Find your fate #5).

1936: Indiana is at Peru. First, he tries to find a golden necklace from king Manco Capac supposed to give him power over life and death. Later, Indy travels through the jungles of Peru to recover a golden idol from the temple of the Chachapoyan warriors. An old rival, Belloq, shows up and steals the idol from Indy by lying to the local Hovito tribesmen.
Later this year, Indiana is consulted by the government for an intercepted message supposedly from Abner Ravenwood. He learns that the nazis need the Staff of Ra to find the Ark of the Covenant. Ravenwood’s daughter, Marion, becomes Indy’s partner in the adventure and together they find the Ark.
Belloq shows up again to steal the Ark for the Nazis (he is their lead archaeologist) but is killed when he opens the Ark to get the tablets containing the Ten Commandments. The Ark is placed into storage in a secret government warehouse somewhere in Washington (from “Legion of death”, Find your fate #6, and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”).

Later in 1936-early 1937: ’36 was an adventure packed year for Indy, but “Raiders” was nothing compared to what the year had yet reserved to Mr. Jones:

• Indiana finds the Ikons of Ikammanen, a 400 years old man (Prospero) who knows how to concoct the immortality elixir
• Fights Nazis for control of a cylinder able to open dimensional gateways that summon otherdimensional beasts.
• Opposes gangsters as Marion opens a nightclub in Manhattan (The Raven’s nest).
• Meets a group of Atlanteans banished from the city because they revered death.
• Recovers the Chachapoyan idol that Belloq earlier this year stole.
• Comes to Barcelona to find Christ’s fourth nail (but doesn’t take it as it seems to kill thieves).
• Saves ancient Native American dwellings.
• Defeats Japanese pirates.
• Searches yet again for Abner Ravenwood and ends finding a healing meteorite.
• Rescues a dragon from Japanese soldiers.
• Confronts the doors of Hell (Lucifer Chamber) and Satan’s soul (the Devil’s Heart amulet).
• Destroys evil treasure collector Ben Ali Ayoob.
• Finds El Dorado.
• Raids the world in search of a stolen mummy.
• Has first contact with The seven Sorcerers that want to destroy the world (defeating one at Iran).

And they talk about DC’s compressed timeline… (from “The Fantastic Adventures of Indiana Jones” #1-32, Marvel).

August 1937: In Greece, Indy recovers the shield of Perseus from a sunken ship. It gives clues to the location of the Eye of the Fates, which can show the future (from “Eye of the”, Find your Fate #4).

Through 1937: Indiana fights one of the 7 Sorcerer: Ian Soames, lighthouse keepers at Scotland.

1938: Indiana Jones finally recovers the Cross of Coronado from the man who “acquired” it back in 1912. Afterwards, he returns to his job at Barnett College and is contracted by a collector of antiquities, Walter Donovan. He informs Indy that his father, Henry Jones Sr., disappeared during a search for the Holy Grail. Indiana travels to Italy and joins forces with another archaeologist, Elsa Schneider.
Together, they find several other clues concerning the Grail and eventually determine its actual resting place. Elsa and Donovan are revealed to be Nazi spies when Indy finally locates his father. They steal the Grail diary and leave the father and son team captive. The Joneses escape, retrieve the diary and barely catch up to the Nazis in the hunt for the Grail.
Unfortunately, the Grail is lost when Elsa attempts to take it beyond the seal of the cave where they found it, but not before Indiana drinks from it to discover it’s the true Grail (from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”).

1938 (right after “Last Crusade”): Indiana’s next adventure takes him on a dig in China, near the site of an ancient monastery. He unearths a stone tablet inscribed in an ancient language, but he cannot decipher it. From the monks, he learns that the tablet tells of a covenant left by Buddha himself, perhaps the one true key to the state of Nirvana. He also learns that the Japanese are after the tablet so that they can control the destiny of the world.
Indy’s search for the tablets takes him through India, Tibet, China and Shangri-La (from “Indiana Jones: Thunder in the Orient”, Dark Horse).

June 1938: The Dragon of Vengeance is unearthed at China. Two Chinese societies, the Golden Lotus and the White Tigers, battle for it. Indy confronts the Golden Lotus leader in an ancient mountain temple (from “Dragon of Vengeance”, Find your Fate #8).

July-August 1938: On vacation in Venice with his young cousin, Indy meets an old friend, Giacomo Andrini, who claims to have found Marco Polo’s diaries. Indy outwits one of Mussolini’s fascists and goes to Mongolia were he meets Mongolian bandits led by a woman named Bortay (from “Gold of Genghis Khan”, Find Your Fate #9).

Christmas 1938: Indy travels to Ethiopia with young George Ballentyne in search of George’s father, Dr. Roger Ballentyne, who had been kidnapped by Italian fascists. George’s father had a map to the lost treasure of Sheba’s Queen and had invented a diamond laser (from “Lost treasure of Sheba”, Find your Fate #2).

March 1939: Once he does, Indiana is hired by the US Government to lead an expedition to an iceberg near Greenland to uncover an ice-encased Viking longship. The Germans are also interested in the ice wall, since it contains a strange disc of unearthly origin. The disc is freed, revealing itself to be a UFO which destroys the Nazi submarine before disappearing into space.
The US rescue team arrives barely in time to save Indy’s group from the longship, which sinks back in the ocean (from “Indiana Jones and the Longship of the Gods”, Goldmann).

May 1939: A mysterious stranger arrives at Barnett College with an ancient key and Indiana looks up a former colleague, Sophia Hapgood. Together, they determine that the key is part of a dig that unearthed treasures from the lost continent of Atlantis. Continuing that quest, they travel around the world, adventuring in Mayan ruins and the labyrinth of the Minotaur before finding all of the pieces of the key to Atlantis.
Just as they do, the Nazis arrive, trying to plunder Atlantis for their own gains. They nearly succeed, but ancient magics kill the Nazis and place Atlantis out of reach once more (from “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” Lucas Arts game).

1939: After leaving Crete, Indy finds himself in the Sargasso Sea, the legendary “ship graveyard” in the Atlantic. Once there, Indy discovers a community of stranded survivors and descendants who have based their lifestyle on the pirates of history. Indy finds relics from nearly every known sea-going culture, but spends most of his time just trying to escape (from “Indiana Jones and the Sargasso Pirates”, Dark Horse).

1940: Indy has a dance with death on an island in the Indian Ocean. During an observation of native worshippers, many of them become ill with an outbreak of the plague. The source of the plague is the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who is releasing his evils upon the world.
Indy fights some zombies and barely escapes an earthquake which hits the area, killing the Horseman (from “Indiana Jones: The Dance of Death”, Dark Horse).

Spring 1941: Indy returns to Greece again, this time near Mycenae. He begins work at a British site, but a German invasion of the area causes the British to abandon the dig, leaving Indiana alone. On his own, he discovers an artifact which verifies the existence of the legendary Golden Fleece. There is a scuffle with the Germans and they steal the artifact.
Indy still manages to find the location of the Fleece and fights a life-or-death battle with its guardian serpent (from “Indiana Jones and the Golden Fleece”, Dark Horse).

Summer 1941: Indiana Jones searches and finds Genghis Khan sword, but a curse keeps him from departing with it (from “(Indiana Jones and Genghis Khan’s Sword”, Goldmann).

Late 1941: Indiana helps destroying a secret German U-boat base at the Easter Island (from “Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Easter Island”, Goldmann).

August 1943: Indy meets some of the supposedly disappeared anasazi Native Americans (from “Indiana Jones and the lost people”, Goldmann).

1945: In a last ditch effort, Hitler sends agents to Britain and Ireland in search of the spear which pierced the side of Christ on Good Friday. It is believed that the spear would make the army that wielded it invincible.
However, one of the agents has his own plans for the spear, and when he is defeated by Indiana and the “True King of Ireland”, Hitler loses his prize (from “Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny”, Dark Horse).

1946: Indy goes to Russia at the request of the Soviet government to evaluate ancient artifacts. He unearths the Key of King which tells of the design of a Philosophers’ Stone for turning metal into gold and bringing inanimate objects to life. Indy sets off to the three churches which are said to hold the three pieces of the stone.
He obtains the first piece from a coven of witches in Ireland and heads to Tibet after the second piece (from “Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix”, Dark Horse).

1947: Indiana Jones, exhausted by conflicts, is trying to resume his digging career in the American Southwest, far from the excitement of his treasure-hunting past. Fortunately for Indy’s adventurous soul, the world is still a dangerous place.
The Soviet Union has slammed an Iron Curtain down across Europe, provoking the Cold War that will occupy East and West for half a century. Communist agents are everywhere, searching for a weapon to tip the balance of power in their favor. And they may have found something useful in the desert ruins of Babylon, the legendary Tower of Babel.
Gennadi Volodnikov, an unorthodox Russian scholar, thinks the Tower housed a machine to reach across the dimensions of space and time, inspired by the winged god Marduk. When gears began to clatter, alarmed Babylonians toppled the Tower, scattering four of Marduk’s disciples (and parts of the machine) to the far corners of the globe.
Indy races the Soviets to recover those parts and stop them from repairing the “infernal machine” (from “Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine”, Lucas Arts).

Description

The prototype of adventurer: brown fedora (winged hat), trusty bullwhip at one side, revolver (sometimes) at the other, leather trousers, jacket full of pockets, and whatever the moment calls for.

Henry “Indiana” Jones is a tall, dashing figure. Indy usually has a five o’clock shadow on his face, and, if he’s been on an expedition to acquire some archaeological artifacts, he’s often dusty and covered in bruises. Around the campus of Marshall College, he wears a coat and tie and is the object of affection for many young women.

Personality

Indy has extensive contacts around the world and has met a number of historical figures in his time. He is a veteran of countless adventures and served in World War I. He firmly believes that archaeological treasures were meant for the world to see and should be placed in museums.

He lives kind of a dual life, both as an university teacher and as an archeologist that can move hell and heaven to find what he searches. He despises evil in all his forms, but mainly Nazis.

Indy has sort of a disdain for “the rules.” He’s not the sort to tremble before gods or fight a scary martial artist when his revolver is handy…

Quotes

“I don’t know ! I’m making this up as I go !”

“Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Doctor Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall. So, forget any ideas you’ve got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and an ’X‘ never, ever, marks the spot”

“That belongs in a museum !”

DC Universe History

Indiana Jones could work unchanged into the DC Universe. His adventures were set from the 10’s and 20’s (for young Indy) to the 30’s and 40’s (for Dr. Jones), but in the 90’s he’s still alive.

He could be an interesting supporting character for the Challengers of the Unknown or for any adventure involving the recovery of sacred/mystic artifacts.

Also, for adventures during WW II although that would ask for changes in some Atlantean and Spear of Destiny facts: he could have given Jamie Rock the crystal knife that restored Carter Hall’s memories of Khufu, Professor Gill the speed formula that made John Chambers become Johnny Quick, and perhaps even “liberating” the Hard Water formula from the Nazis and passing it to Dr. Hughes.

He could have been the archeologist who released Kulak and even Ian Karkull’s partner if you decide Karkull’s story was skewed to make himself an innocent victim rather than admit that he earned his fate. Marcus Brody could then be substituted for the museum curator who revived Sir Justin.

This would culminate in an All-Star Squadron adventure where they have to save Prof. Jones from a cadre of supervillains who have just discovered that he’s responsible for much of their trouble…

Indiana can also disclose the whole “Parsifal” thing and prove that it’s the Spear and Grail keeping the Allied supers out of the Axis countries.

Another possibility, specially apt for amalgamated or mixed worlds, would be delaying his birth by five months so that he would be born on January 1, 1900 just as Elijah Snow, Jenny Sparks, and possibly Doc Savage were. He would be a close associate of Snow’s and perhaps a lover of Sparks’.

By KalEl el Vigilante.

Helper(s): Dr. Peter S Piispanen, Revenant, Sean MacDonald, JD, Sébastien Andrivet, Max, Pufnstuff, John Colagioia, Nick Yankovec, Michael Spagnola ; TheRaider.net  for background bits, most history and chronology.

Source of Character: “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” films, “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” TV series; Bantam and Goldmann books, “Find your Fate” interactive novels by Phil Anderson, Dark Horse and Marvel (“The Fantastic Adventures of Indiana Jones”) comic books, and LucasArts videogames.