Despite what the cover may lead you to believe, this is not one of Indiana Jones's missing adventures. That dashing, ruggedly handsome, fedora-wearing adventurer is none other than John Lynch. Those of you who remember issue #2 of the monthly Gen 13 series no doubt recognize the menacing villain in the background as Helmut. And if you were paying really close attention, you remember a certain photograph hanging on Lynch's wall where he's dressed like he is on the cover here, gloating over a captured Helmut. We wondered together about whether that story would ever be told and, lucky(?) for you, the answer is 'yes', a mere three years later.
Grab your machete and your Spanish dictionary, gang, because we're off to South America on a glorious adventure they're calling "Jungle Jeopardy", but which may as well be called "La Jolla Lynch and the Temple of Viracocha".
So it's the summer of 1968, and we find Lynch, a young hotshot ecologist, paired with Caroline McArthur (who, you may recall, was responsible for sending the Gen 13 kids to Madagascar in issue #3), her son Jimmy (who is definitely going to bang Fairchild in a few decades' time), and Jimmy's dog Ringo on a trip up the Amazon to study shrinking Brazilian watersheds. Our guy's concerned because his hypothesis so far hasn't borne any fruit, but maybe some soil samples collected at the next stop will prove more useful.
Once ashore, however, the soil samples are forgotten as Lynch asks after the location of the Temple of Viracocha, an Incan ruin said to hold both great danger and great treasure. Local legend has it that the temple is guarded by some sort of armadillo-human hybrid. Natives who go looking for the treasure never come back. Fortunately, Jimmy has found a man named Quecho who knows the jungle inside and out, and he's willing to take them to the temple if that's what they want. To Caroline's chagrin, that's precisely what both John and Jimmy want, so after trading some cigars for fresh supplies, the group sets off into the Peruvian wilds.
Quecho, true to his claims, has no trouble navigating the jungle, reading the ancient Incan inscriptions that mark dangers and even demonstrating what happens if you ignore them:
In no time at all, they're admiring the view of temple. But Jack's too keen-eyed to let his awe overtake him: piles of poorly-camouflaged creates, an abundance of footprints, and disturbances in the dirt hinting that the giant slab closing off the temple has been opened lead him to opine this place isn't as "lost" as legend would have it. While Lynch investigates, Quecho slips away, only to return moments later with some friends:
A blow dart to the neck renders Lynch unconscious. While they sleep, we're introduced to Helmut (the so-called Armadillo Man of local legend) and a group of Nazis looting the temple for treasure in pursuit of a plan we're never made privy to. Also, instead of doing the sensible thing like killing Lynch and the McArthurs, Helmut and his Nazi buddies simply plan to leave them tied up in the temple to succumb to the elements.
As always, it's up to the dog to save the day. Ringo, being the goodest of good boys, first spooks a bunch of bats from a nearby tunnel into the room where his friends are being held. This throws the natives and Nazis off their game for a minute, but more importantly reveals a chink in Helmut's armor:
After the bats leave, Helmut and rest of his gang does too, which allows Ringo to chew through the ropes holding John, Caroline, and Jimmy captive. They escape the temple, but Lynch isn't about to let Nazis get away with rebooting the Reich in South America. His attack on their operations naturally summons Helmut, but Lynch tosses a bullhorn to Caroline, and one sheep noise later . . .
Stumbling around in agony, Helmut lands himself in one of the net traps Quecho pointed out earlier, and we get our iconic photograph courtesy of Jimmy and his camera:
Sword of Viracocha in hand, Lynch, the McArthurs, and Ringo return to the village, where they are greeted as heroes. In all the confusion, the Germans and Quecho managed to escape, and, as far as Caroline knows, Lynch never did discover who the Germans were or why they were looting the temple, nor did he get those soil samples he had planned.
The year after this adventure, Lynch was deployed to Vietnam and his days as a dashing young ecologist were over. Prior to her encounter with the Gen 13 kids this year, Caroline hadn't seen him in nearly three decades. And as she pens this installment of her memoirs, it's clear she still carries a torch.
Final Score
out of
This is a cute story with a nice setup that unfortunately gets very rushed towards the end. There's only twenty-two pages of story here, and another page or two in the second half could have slowed things down a bit to allow that ending to breathe. As it is, the first half feels like the pace is just right, but the second half floors the gas pedal and blows by without letting us appreciate the scenery.
On the one hand, this is totally Shon Bury's Indiana Jones fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off. Like, Nazis in South America and you aren't even going to tell us why? On the other, it's a fun exploration of a bit of backstory we saw very briefly teased literally two years earlier, along with a follow-up coda to Caroline McArthur, who Campbell and Choi never bring up again (at least as far as I remember). The fact Wildstorm greenlit this one-shot at all is a testament to how popular the Gen 13 brand was at the time, and how much fans were interested in learning a more about these characters.
So while it's cheesy and thoroughly nineties, I really can't fault it for that. This isn't an integral part of the Gen 13 story, and it doesn't reveal any mind-blowing details or change the way we look at anything that has happened before, which is why it was never going to score higher than three @blewitt faces, but the fact it got them all means it did the job it set out to do adequately. The main reason it's here in the chronology is because it's a flashback story told by Caroline in the aftermath of meeting all the Gen 13 kids and sending them off to Madagascar in issues three through five. Without that framing, this would precede Deathmate: Black in the chronology, but as it stands, this is where you should read it in order for it to make the most sense.