Back when I was drawing the Dallas and Star Trek newspaper strips, my syndicate (the Los Angeles Times Syndicate) also distributed the Star Wars strip. One day word passed down that Lucasfilm had suggested the Times Syndicate produce a strip based on their "other" movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Indiana Jones' 1930s-serial adventures were my favorite kind of story. Not bothering to consider the fact that I was already drawing two daily and Sunday strips, I put together this promotional piece and routed it to Lucasfilm. I drew it on a 15x20 inch piece of heavyweight Crescent board and colored it with markers and Dr. Martin's dyes (note that the flesh colors have faded with time).
That was the end of the story. The syndicate passed on the strip. Later I was told they thought selling their existing continuity strips was trouble enough. Raiders was nowhere near as big a deal as Star Wars and they figured an Indiana Jones strip wouldn't stand a chance. Nevertheless a short while later they launched a strip based on the already-passe (and quite dead) Bruce Lee. Go figure.A year or so later Lucasfilm returned the art without comment. Some time after that I heard that John Prentice had been angling to draw the Indy strip. Guess who would have got that assignment.
Several years later I drew another Indiana Jones piece just for the hell of it.
Thus ended my relationship with Mr. Jones.
2 comments:
Nice work, Ron!
Thank you, John,
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