Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Graphic Novel

It is now the 1950's, and Nazism was defeated at the end of WW2. Indiana Jones is still having problems, but this time with the Commies, who have taken over for Nazis as the all around bad guys.

When we first see Indy in this book, he has been locked into the back of a car trunk with a CIA agent and former MI-6 Agent George McHale. They have been kidnapped by the Commies to find an artifact that Indy found on a previous expedition. Specifically, a body wrapped in some sort of metallic, magnetic wrappings. Indy finds it using the pellets from the Commie shotgun shells, and then uses the distraction of finding it to escape them... only to find that his companion has sold out to them.

Indy still manages to escape himself, and after the requisite fistfight with the Commie Dovchenko, finds himself in a very strange small town. Trying to warn them of the danger of the Communists, Indy realizes that the town is peopled by Dummies. Literally. It's a test town for the firing of a nuclear bomb. Indy barely escapes the blast by putting himself in a lead-lined refrigerator. The Commies, of course, are not so lucky.

After a long period of decontamination later, Indy is questioned by agents of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. But when Indy is vouched for by General Ross, the FBI questions *his* loyalty, as he seems to know a lot about the Communist people. The FBI man promises to watch Indy, and Indy says people know who he is, and that he has friends in Washington. Later, we see at his house that Indy has been fired, although it has been spun as "a leave of absence". His friend, Charlie, the Dean, quit when it was clear that the board of Regents was setting out to fire Indy, but it made no difference. Indy thinks about teaching in Europe, but when he's setting out on a train, he is approached by a young greaser on a bike named Mutt Williams, who tells him his old friend Harold Oxley, "Ox" is in trouble, and they are going to kill him.

At a local hangout, Indy asks how Mutt knows Ox, but they are interrupted from their discussion when two men show up to try and grab the letter that Mutt's mother, Mary Williams, recieved from Ox after he found a crystal skull in a place called Akator. After a wild ride on Mutt's motorcycle that ends with them outwitting the men chasing them, Indy takes Mutt back to his house to translate the letter.

The letter leads them to the Nazca lines, and the town of Nazca, where Ox had been in the custody of the local sanitorium until his kidnapping weeks before. Marked in his cell are the word "return" in many different languages, and a map supposedly leading to the cradle of the Gods.

The map takes them to a cemetary outside Nazca, where they are attacked by locals who don't like the idea of Indy and Mutt desecrating their ancestor's graves. But Indy is able to fight them off, and find the entrance to the grave. Inside are the bodies of Spaniards, one of whom wears a gilded mask. Indy knows Spaniards didn't wear masks, golden or otherwise, and says this is Orellana, or "The Golden Man". When he removes the Mask from the body, the head is actually a Crystal Skull. Returning outside, however, shows that they have been followed, by Indy's "Old friend" McHale. They drug Indy and take him back to their camp, where Indy finds Oxley, mad as a loon and dressed in local clothing. Indy assumes it is the fault of the Commies, but they say the Skull drove him insane, and then force Indy to undergo the same experience, which frees Oxley from his madness.

The Commies threaten Mutt to get Indy to lead them to the treasure, but Mutt tells Indy not to give them anything. Indy agrees, so the Commies threaten Mutt's mother instead, who just happens to be Marion Ravenwood, Indy's old flame. They force Indy to try and find out where the treasure is from Ox, and Indy is able to translate the map Ox draws. Mutt kicks over the map table to help them escape, but when Indy and Marion fall into quicksand, they are eventually recaptured by the Commies.

On the trip, their leader, Irina, wonders why the skull revealed its secrets to Indy and not her, who so desperately wants it. Indy and Marion's squabbling leads to the guard on them getting annoyed and telling them to shut up, but Indy parlays his attack into another escape, and Mutt retrieves the Skull. Following Oxley's memories and directions, they make their way to Akator, where they are attacked by natives, who retire when they are shown the crystal skull.

But Mac, who has allayed Indy's suspicions about his actions with the claim that he is a double-agent spy infiltrating the Commies, proves that he was lying, and leads Irina Spalko to the chamber with not only the Crystal Skulls, but thirteen alien Crystal Skeletons as well. She reunites the skull with the skeleton, and asks to understand it all, but it is too much for her, and she burns. The temple collapses, turning into a crystal-clear ball that then departs for other dimensions, and Mac, Indy's traitorous friend, is pulled into oblivion because he stole the treasures from the temple.

Back in America, Indy not only gets his job back, but is promoted to Assistant Dean, and he finally marries Marion. The end.

Okay, so an Older Indy is wiser and slower, but of course, still has his ability to kick ass despite being older now. This is given a nod in the movie when Indy is waiting to recover from one of his more improbable escapes: riding a military jeep over a waterfall! As he himself says, "It's not the years, it's the miles." I can sort of see why people didn't think the movie was a real Indiana Jones movie, in that he is still out-fighting and doing his own son, Mutt! That's about as realistic as T.J. Hooker, where William Shatner, playing the older cop, could consistently out-run and outfight a rookie 30 years younger than he is!

My biggest problem is that the villains, the Communists, were just plugged into the movie. There is nothing that felt realisticially "Communist" about them, and really, any group of people could have been plugged into the same gap and the movie wouldn't have been any different. In fact, Indy's foes could have been Americans without substantially changing the movie in any way, and that just seems wrong. When you have a plug-in villain, it makes that part of the story shallow. Well, it seems that way from the comic. The movie might have more bits in it that I haven't seen.

In any case, flawed villain execution, but an otherwise interesting and engaging storyline that brings back Marion for a stereotypical happy ending. I liked it, but am still aware of its flaws.