Didja Notice?

 

The story opens with Indy parachuting out of a plane near Mount Manaslu, Nepal. This is an actual mountain in the Himalayan range of Nepal, the eighth-highest mountain in the world at 26,781 feet above sea level. The airplane seen here is likely intended to be a Douglas DC-3.

 

Before bailing out of the plane, Indy thanks his friend Tommy and tells him he'll see him in Shanghai. Shanghai is the most populous city in China. It is nowhere near Mount Manaslu, so I don't know how Indy planned to get there! The reunion is not depicted in the story.

 

After landing in the snowy Himalayas, Indy finds a cave to shelter in, builds a fire, and rereads a letter he recently received from a Japanese colleague, Professor Kobayashi, whose life he saved two years ago. Kobayashi has written to him to pay off the life debt, about an expedition he was on last month to find a lost primitive tribe in the Himalayas. The expedition met with success in the northwest sector of Mount Dhubri when they met descendants of prehistoric cave-dwellers. Mount Dhubri appears to be fictitious, though there is a district (and city) by the name of Dhubri in the Indian state of Assam, not far from the Himalayan range (though about 400 miles from Manaslu).

 

On page 4, General Makimura tells Professor Kobayashi that their country will be at war in a few years, when they are ready to fulfill a destiny as a great imperial power and drive the foreigners from the Pacific. This is meant to be a foreshadowing of the Japanese involvement in WWII.

 

After finishing his rereading of Kobayashi's letter of an alleged dragon frozen in the ice of the Himalayas, Indy agrees with Kobayashi's reckoning that his debt to Indy is repaid, if, Indy thinks, your fantastic dragon yarn is true--and not just so much sukiyaki! Indy's use of sukiyaki here as a pejorative is a bit odd; I've not been able to find other examples of the term used in that way. Sukiyaki is a Japanese hot pot dish of thinly sliced meat with vegetables.

 

On page 5, Indy reflects that, before he took off for Nepal, he radioed a U.S. base in Burma about his mission to seek out this alleged frozen dragon the Japanese wanted to recover as a potential military weapon. Burma is a country in Southeast Asia, now more commonly known as Myanmar.

 

When Indy sees that the Japanese troops have successfully cut out a block of ice containing the frozen dragon on page 6, he says to himself, "The sons of the Rising Sun have beaten me to it!" Japan is known as the Land of the Rising Sun.

 

On page 8, Indy refers to himself as "Jonesy". Years later, Indy's partner in a number of spy missions for the U.S. and U.K. in the 1940s-50s, George McHale, would call him by that nickname, as seen in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (and also referred to in The Dial of Destiny).

 

On page 9, Indy laments that the Japanese are getting away with the frozen dragon that they intend to unleash as a weapon against Uncle Sam. "Uncle Sam" is a common personification of the United States government.

 

The cavemen show Indy and old parchment with writing which he determines is pre-Indic. "Indic" refers to a subgroup of Indo-European languages spoken in the north of the Indian subcontinent. Pre-Indic would indicate language in the region before about 1500 B.C.

 

Several weeks after the Japanese escape with the dragon in tow, Indy sneaks into the island country, looking for Professor Kobayashi. He learns from Kobayashi's daughter that her father committed hara-kiri over the disgrace of his betrayal of his country by confiding the military's plans for the dragon. Hara-kiri (or seppuku) is a Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment with sword.

 

On page 15, Indy jokingly refers to the two temple guards he's defeated as Laurel and Hardysan. Laurel and Hardy (Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy) were a British-American comedy team during the early film era. San is a Japanese honorific, typically added to the end of a name, as Indy does here.

 

On page 17, panel 3, Shimada's name is misspelled "Shamada".

 

On page 21, Indy begins reading the pre-Indic chant on the parchment, thinking, "Here goes--Indiana accent and all!" Did the story's author presume that the "Indiana" name of the character meant he was from the state of Indiana? This comic book was written before the "Indiana" nickname was revealed to be based on the name of the character's beloved dog when he was a boy, as originally revealed in The Last Crusade, released in 1989. And, as far as was shown in the variious "young Indy" adventures, he never resided in the state of Indiana.

 

At the end of the story, Kobayashi's daughter bids Indy, "Sayonara." This is Japanese for "good bye."

 

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