Honestly it’s hard to find a place to start so I’m going to go with the obvious and start with comparing it to the grail diary hero prop. With the hero grail diary, as most of you know it’s a bunch of repeating pages to fill out the book enough to be a functional prop. Holt’s DoD Spear of Destiny diary is not so much a movie prop like the grail diary but feels like a real world notebook used by Indy himself! The amount of research Holt had to have done to create the amount of unique pages that is presented here so beautifully, would have taken forever. Trust me I’d know as I’m researching creating my own grail diary pages and it’s a lot of work. That being said, if you love the grail diary, you’ll love this. It’s like a great sequel that hits upon the same things you loved from the original but then expands greatly. Opening you up to new aspects of that world without deviating too far that it looses the original fan base.
The diary is weathered in a much more subtle and realistic way than the original grail diaries from Last Crusade. Pages smudged with dirty hands that have been adventuring rather than a chemical reaction that oxidizes the paper. All of the inserts feel and look like real world, period correct pieces that Indy would have found useful in his journey to find the Lance of Longinus.
My overall review of the diary is that it’s extremely well made and a wonderful example of the artwork that devoted fans of the franchise are capable of. Now matter how you felt about the movie, there’s no denying that Holt’s diary should be a must have for any Indy fan and collector of rare antiquities.
I can go on and on about this so I’m going to let pictures of a few of my favorite spreads in the diary do the rest of the talking, please enjoy.
