Big Trouble in Little China: Volume 1 (2015)

The Hell of a Midnight Road

and The Ghosts of Storms (2015)

Authors: John Carpenter / Eric Powell  |  Illustrator: Brian Churilla  |  Page Count: 128

I always wanted more Jack Burton adventures but never actually expected it to happen. Okay, it's not a film, obviously, but it's unmistakably Big Trouble to its very core. If you know the film well you'll be able to fit each character's personality to their respective hand-drawn counterpart. The illustrations are somewhere between caricature and likeness, but everything about the things they say and do feels authentic, even down to the individual rhythms used. Thank the gods of faithful continuations for an adherence to the source.

It picks up the story mere minutes after the 1986 film ends. If you remember, Jack and his more competent pals kicked some ass and shook the Pillars of Heaven from somewhere underneath San Francisco's Chinatown. Jack may have left Chinatown behind, but the denizens that gather there aren't finished with him yet.

Punctuating the elevated weirdness are a number of eye-opening flashbacks to the worldly truck driver's colourful and sugary past. Even in his own flashbacks he's clueless to the supernatural reality that seems to be happening all around him and, bizarrely, he wears the same combination of clothes most of the time. The latter isn't an oversight or laziness, it's a running joke. Comedy is a big part of the book and it doesn't disappoint. I laughed more than I expected to.

Gracie Law was notably absent. She wouldn't have had any significant part to play in the bulk of the story, but I feel sure she would've been present at the event occurring near the beginning. Hopefully she'll reappear further down the line.

Volume 1 collects together Big Trouble in Little China issues 1-4. Each issue begins with a quotable Jack Burton saying that's worth the asking price alone.

Individual covers. Click for FULL size.