Indiana Jones

My 2021 in Books

The key word in my reading this year was “pulp”: not to say I didn’t read some “serious” literature, but for the most part I was looking for the quick hit, and that meant tearing through a lot of genre paperbacks—adventure, horror, and mystery—especially once summer started and I found myself doing a lot of waiting for kids at music lessons, doctors’ appointments, and the like. I guess you could say that this year I rediscovered the pleasure of skimming, of not having to read every word as closely as if I were writing a graduate thesis on it. Fiction often takes me longer to read than non-fiction because of the labor of imagining every detail as the author describes it, but, welp, not this year.

If I had a reading “project” this year, it was reading all of the (non-film) Indiana Jones tie-in novels; I had read a couple of them before and had a few more on the shelf, but making the decision to track down the rest (a manageable but not trivial task) was a plunge I hadn’t expected to take at the beginning of the year. Despite my affection for the Indiana Jones movies and pulp adventure in general, I grew up with the snob’s suspicion of such tie-ins, a resistance I’ve gradually broken down in recent years as I explored movie adaptations and mass market fiction in general.

So, how were they? Most of them don’t rise to the heights of the best media tie-ins (Max Allan Collins’s Dick Tracy novelization and Matthew Stover’s adaptation of Revenge of the Sith are probably the best I’ve read), but they are diverting, and the best of them feel like authentic extensions of the character and his world that we know from Harrison Ford’s performance in the film series. They are also a neat-looking collection, with matching trade dress and original painted covers by poster maestro Drew Struzan, and most of them feature Indy confronting a legendary supernatural artifact or phenomenon, as you would expect.

Of the three authors who wrote the original twelve installments, Max McCoy’s were my favorite: they feel the most like they could have been movies in the original series, and strike the right balance of action, mystery, and characterization. The two by Martin Caidin (who, among other works, wrote the book upon which The Six Million Dollar Man was based) feel like they might have originally been written about Doc Savage or some other pulp superman and then rebranded as Indiana Jones novels; they’re entertaining enough, but the plots are bizarre and don’t feel much like the character as depicted anywhere else, like hearing a story about someone you know that makes you wonder if you’re thinking of the same person. Rob MacGregor not only wrote the most books (six), but they have the most complex internal continuity, not to mention a mystical bent that, considering these are prequels set in the early to mid-1930s, makes the character’s skepticism of the supernatural as depicted in Raiders of the Lost Ark a little jarring.

The original twelve books were published in the 1990s, following Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so there are frequent references to Indy’s strained relationship with his father, and side characters such as Marcus Brody and Sallah make appearances. The thirteenth book, Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead by Steve Perry, was released in 2009 alongside Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and includes that film’s George “Mac” McHale as Indy’s partner in adventure. With another Indiana Jones movie scheduled for 2022, will there be any new tie-in prequels/sidequels? I don’t know, but while researching that question I found that Rob MacGregor wrote another novel, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, that was never published, but which he began releasing as audio installments this fall, to be finished in January with a mystery announcement scheduled for February: a new book, or a print publication of this one? Either way, I feel obligated to check it out now.

Another theme emerged in my horror reading: the much-discussed motif of the “final girl,” the (usually virginal) would-be victim who is able to stand up to and escape or dispatch the killer in a slasher film. The concept was codified in Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws, but is now deployed self-consciously (witness The Final Girls, the 2015 movie I watched in October, not to be confused with Final Girl, from the same year, and a bunch of other movies and TV episodes with similar titles). The Final Girl Support Group was the first fiction by Grady Hendrix I’ve read, but the novel, which brings together a group of survivors of killing sprees clearly modeled on classic slasher franchises, is definitely the work of someone familiar with the tropes and clichés of the genre, as well as the commentary and criticism surrounding it. By chance I had read a less self-conscious “final girl” novel, Kimberly Rangel’s The Homecoming, earlier in the fall, with its heroine the only survivor of a Ouija board session gone wrong; when she returns home (and to the scene of the crime) years later, many still suspect her of the murders, but the reader knows that it’s actually the work of a serial killer who was executed at the very moment the Ouija board made contact with the spirit realm (did I mention I was looking for pulp?). Even Stephen Graham Jones’ recent The Only Good Indians riffs on the concept with a “Finals Girl,” so-called because she’s a basketball prodigy, but, well, don’t be surprised by where she ends up at the end of the book. (Jones’s latest novel, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, looks to be similarly self-referential, as it deals with a horror fan who ends up putting her knowledge to practical use, but I suppose it’s as much a matter of writers starting out as fans as it is the ubiquity of metanarrative concepts being popular; in any case, I look forward to reading it.)

January

The Boys of Sheriff Street, Jerome Charyn and Jacques de Loustal: French graphic novel, translated and published by Dover, of all companies

Samurai Executioner Vol. 4: Portrait of Death and Vol. 10: A Couple of Jitte, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima: excellent manga from the creators of Lone Wolf and Cub, set in the same historical era

Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin: a masterpiece

February

Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman in Rogue to Riches, David Boswell (reread)

The Living Talmud: The Wisdom of the Fathers and its classical commentaries, selected and translated with an essay by Judah Goldin

Medieval Ghost Stories, Andrew Joynes

March

The Night Ocean, Paul La Farge

Wonder Woman: The Complete Dailies 1944-1945, William Moulton Marston and H. G. Peter

The Which Way Tree, Elizabeth Crook

May

Kanako el Kananam: Aventuroj en la Ĝangalo de Novgvineo, Kenneth G. Linton: As I mentioned last year, I began studying Esperanto in 2020, and this memoir, by an Australian soldier stationed in New Guinea after World War II, is so far the only full-length book I’ve read in the language. It took me a while.

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, George Saunders, illustrated by Lane Smith: another one of those “postmodern author’s children’s books for adults,” fits on the shelf next to Donald Barthelme’s The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, but not as good

The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux: the book that got me in the pulp mood for the summer

June

Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi, Rob MacGregor

Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants, Rob MacGregor

Cold Cash, Gaylord Dold

Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils, Rob MacGregor

Indiana Jones and the Genesis Deluge, Rob MacGregor

July

Indiana Jones and the Unicorn’s Legacy, Rob MacGregor

Indiana Jones and the Interior World, Rob MacGregor (reread)

The Homecoming, Kimberly Rangel

August

Avengers: The Complete Celestial Madonna Saga, Steve Englehart, John Buscema, Jorge Santamaría, et al

Faerie Tale, Raymond E. Feist

Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates, Martin Caidin

Indiana Jones and the White Witch, Martin Caidin

King Kong, Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper, novelization by Delos W. Lovelace

September

Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone, Max McCoy

Dangerous Girls, R. L. Stine

The Yellow Room, Mary Roberts Rinehart: I know, don’t judge by the cover, but I expected more of a Gothic romance than this turned out to be. Wouldn’t you?

Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs, Max McCoy

Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth, Max McCoy (reread)

October

Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx, Max McCoy

The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix

The Death Freak, “John Luckless” who is also known as Clifford Irving and Herbert Burkholz: I found this at Goodwill and immediately had to read it, and I guess in this case the cover turned out to be pretty accurate: an only-in-the-’70s satirical spy thriller, sort of like a James Bond novel if Q were the hero.

Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead, Steve Perry

November

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco (trans. William Weaver)

December

The Best American Noir of the Century, ed. James Ellroy and Otto Penzler: a 700+ page doorstop that I’ve had for a while, but once I started reading it I wished I’d started it sooner

Flying Too High (A Phryne Fisher Mystery), Kerry Greenwood

The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones

That’s it for 2021: I hope to post more consistently in 2022, but whatever happens, have a Happy New Year!

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Fates Worse Than Death: Exploring the Motion Picture Serials

Several years ago I was sitting in Century II Concert Hall before a Wichita Symphony pops concert; the day’s program was to include film music excerpts (some accompanying silent film clips), including selections from John Williams’ Star Wars score.  I don’t remember quite how the conversation started, but an older lady sitting next to me was blunt in her assessment: “People don’t realize it now,” she told me, “but Star Wars was a comedy.  The first time I saw it, I just laughed, because I had seen it all before.  Luke Skywalker swinging across the chasm on a rope? That’s Douglas Fairbanks.”

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I already knew that in a general way before this conversation, of course: not only had George Lucas acknowledged the inspiration he had taken from the adventure and science fiction movies of his youth, Star Wars’ debt to the weekly serials was a big point of discussion among fans and critics of the Star Wars saga.  Between 1913 and 1956, serials, or “chapter plays,” were a unique genre of motion picture: episodic, with a week-to-week continuity and boldly drawn, easy to follow stories that kept audiences coming back for more.  The serials developed in parallel with pulp magazines and comic books and shared many of the same story-telling conventions (and specific characters).  They were best known for the “cliffhangers” that ended each chapter with a character in peril, waiting until the beginning of the next chapter to show their escape.

Although the serials of the silent era were produced with an adult audience in mind, from the mid-‘30s onward, sound serials were increasingly geared to children.  Almost all were livened up with spectacular stunts: fist- and gunfights, chases, natural and man-made disasters.  Whether the story took place in the Old West, outer space, or the jungle, whether it was an adaptation of a classic novel or a story of (purportedly) true crime, the storytelling mode was the same, emphasizing action, adventure, and suspense.

Perilsofpauline

Serials of the sound era generally included between ten and fifteen chapters (by contrast, one silent serial, The Hazards of Helen, boasted over one hundred; it appears to have been an open-ended “continuing adventure” rather than a single narrative, however).  The first episode introduced the characters and set up future conflict (ending on a good cliffhanger to get the audience hooked!); episodes were around twenty minutes in length (with exceptions: sometimes the first episode would be a little longer, like the pilot of a television show).  Serial chapters were shown in conjunction with full-length features (along with newsreels, cartoons and other “shorts”), part of a weekly moviegoing experience that had little to do with the specific film being shown.

Although I tend to see Star Wars as more homage than parody, there’s no denying that it draws heavily on the language of the serials that were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s, before their thunder was stolen by television. Indeed, watching the 1977 original today with an awareness of serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, it’s easy to see just how much the characters and situations were based on very specific models: how, in Terry Gilliam’s words, Darth Vader is just “the cowboy with the black hat”—the “spearhead villain” in the terminology of the serials.

I had seen clips from the original serials, sometimes in conjunction with material from Star Wars (or Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lucas’ and Steven Spielberg’s other homage to the format).  As I mentioned in a previous essay, the pop culture of my childhood was marked by a major resurgence of the characters and formats popular in the 1930s and ‘40s: not just the movies, but also the comics, pulp magazines, and radio shows of the Depression and war years.  During the 1970s and 1980s, there were new movies, comics, and television shows based on characters such as Conan the Barbarian, Doc Savage, the Lone Ranger, Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and many others.  Some were revived in response to the success of Star Wars and Indiana Jones; others had been brought back as part of the “adult fantasy” wave that had also swept J. R. R. Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons to cultural prominence in the early 1970s, and of which Star Wars was partially a product.  And some had never really gone away.

Still, it was rare for serials to be shown in their entirety on television when I was a kid: there had been a serial revival in the mid-1960s, coinciding with the popularity of the Batman TV series, but that was before I was born.  Many of the serials had been “featurized”—edited down to hundred-minute movies—for television broadcast, so I might have seen some without even realizing it, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that I was able to get the full, multi-chapter experience.  As much as I love the pulpy aesthetic of old movie posters and the juicy, crackling dialogue of the old-time villains, the serials themselves were something of a blind spot for me.

The goal of this series is to explore some of the classic serials, not necessarily as they were originally seen, but at least uncut and at full length.  Of the hundreds of serials that were made, not all have survived, but many are available on DVD and a large number can be seen on YouTube.  Without trying to be comprehensive, I will have plenty of material to examine.

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In reading about the history of the serials, many names pop up frequently: the serials had their own stars, such as leading men Buster Crabbe, Tom Tyler, and Kirk Alyn; and leading ladies Pearl White (“Pauline” of The Perils of Pauline, the archetypal silent serial) and Linda Stirling.  (Stars such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff also made appearances in serials, as did future star John Wayne and television’s Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore.)  Behind-the-scenes personnel made long careers out of the serials, such as stuntmen Tom Steele and Yakima Canutt, and directors Spencer G. Bennet and the team of William Witney and John English.  One also sees the name Sam Katzman frequently: the corner-cutting producer who, despite the tight budgets with which serials were typically made, was said to have never lost money on a production.

Finally, the name of Republic Pictures is nearly synonymous with the serial.  While other studios made serials as part of their output, Republic specialized in them, and one can hardly discuss the subject without acknowledging them.  After forming through the merger of Mascot (an established producer of serials) with Consolidated Film Laboratories and Monogram in 1933, Republic made sixty-six serials over the next two decades, almost to the end of the serial era.  Republic, along with Columbia, Universal, and a number of smaller studios, brought superheroes like Captain Marvel and the Phantom to the screen for the first time, and eventually created some of their own, such as Rocket Man.  In examining the serials, I intend to examine both the source material from which these characters were drawn and the serials’ lasting influence on the TV shows and movies that followed.

So much for the preliminaries.  I’ve decided to start with one of the most successful serials of all time: in two weeks, I’ll examine Universal’s 1936 production of Flash Gordon.  I hope you’ll join me.

FlashGordon

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