Artist and visionary Matt Busch has created a masterpiece: a complete world map of every ancient artifact discovered by Professor Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D., aka Indiana Jones. When I saw every artifact, I mean every artifact Indy found in all four movies, all the video games, the Young Indiana Jones TV series, comics and the theme park rides. Everything.

Authorized by Lucasfilm to utilize the trademarked names and graphics of the Indy Jones oeuvre, Busch spent three years compiling the data and painting the map by hand.

There are 36 different archeological artifacts displayed, each illustrated where Indy discovered it, and numbered chronologically. Three legend sections list info on the artifacts, including name, city and country, year, title of the story the artifact was discovered in, followed by symbols. The Key chart lets you decipher those symbols for each artifact to see how the story was presented, be it film, novel, TV Episode, etc… In many cases, these stories have been delivered in multiple platforms. In other words, “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” was at first designed as a video game, but later developed as a comic book, too…

In each of the four corners, Busch illustrated an exotic stone relief carving, each representing a cultural motif from one of the four Indiana Jones feature films.

The maps are movie poster size (2 feet by 3 feet) so you can use ready-made frames and spare yourself the hundreds of dollars in custom framing costs. Each poster sold will be signed and numbered by the artist, and this is a big deal because the print run is extremely limited. Only 255 of these maps have been made. Once they’re sold out, that’s all folks.

You can purchase your print on Matt Busch’s site for $59.95. All the proceeds will be donated to Disabled American Veterans, a non-profit organization that provides, among many services, physical and psychological rehabilitation for disabled veterans, food and shelter for homeless vets, transportation, job training, help navigating the VA bureaucracy and support for families.

If that doesn’t whet your appetite, this video by Matt Busch describing how the map came about should do the trick. Teaser: R2D2 helped.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgGyev6nCDU&w=430]

Tomorrow I will relay how the spirit of Indiana Jones descended upon me while researching this post to answer a question I asked in an entry about something else entirely three months ago.

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EDIT: It’s already sold out online. My apologies for the tease. I found the map last night when they were still available and didn’t refresh the page until after I’d posted. 😥 The only way to secure a copy now is by purchasing one in person at the Adirondack ComicFest in Old Forge, New York, November 11-13. Admission is $15 or $23. Veterans get in free on Veterans Day, Friday, November 11.