Big Trouble In Little China #4 (Boom Studios)
STORY : John Carpenter (story), Eric Powell (script)
ART : Brian Churilla (art), Michael Garland (colours) and Ed Dukeshire (letters)
This may be the greatest comic ever written.
“Big Trouble In Little China: The continuing adventures of Jack Burton and the Pork-Chop Express.”
When I saw that line, the first time I saw that of all the things in all the heavens and hells, this was going to be a new comic – simply put, I literally jumped for joy. It may not be something most of you know, but this was originally a total parodic, action-adventure movie by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell at his most entertaining. It is hands down one of my favourite movies of all time and so you can imagine the expectation with a comic adaptation 28 years later.
THE REVIEW:
But this comic not only lived up to expectations, it embraced it’s new medium and just went balls-to-the-walls with all the stuff that made the movie so awesome.
Quick recap: Picking up exactly after the movie, unlikely hero Jack (who might be the best-worst hero of all time) is on the road now that the evil Lo-Pan is vanquished only to find an ape-like Demon is trying to ride shotgun. When he turns out to be friendly(ish), Jack heads back to get Egg-Shen to get rid of it but is stuck with it – only to have Lo-Pans apprentice Qiang (I’d love to have seen him played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa in a sequel!) turn up, grab Wang (heh!) during his wedding and so Jack ended up taking on a mission to recover the souls of The Three Storms from a dark dimension.
TO THE ISSUE!
Well now Jack, Egg and Pete (as the demon has been dubbed…) have managed to snatch the three soul-jars from the evil multi-faced woman, thing, whatever, but as we enter the story they are once again faced with the monkeys whose pickled eggs were stolen last ish by… well, Egg. For reasons yet unclear except perhaps he liked eating his namesake? Oh and one of the monkeys pee’d on Jacks truck. From there the action picks up once again and it’s non-stop fun reading right until the jaw-dropping ending that makes me want the next issue so bad I can’t even explain it.
John Carpenters story continues to be great fun and in the full spirit of the original and the icing on the cake for me was that Eric Powell (The Goon) could not have been a more perfect choice for scripting duties, for the humour especially so!
Churilla and Garland do a very nice job on the artwork by keeping a nice balance between just enough character detail to bring out an almost caricature-like resemblance to the actors who played the various parts while keeping everything in a clearly comic-book style and maintaining the lightness of the stories tone in the visuals as well.
THE LAST WORD:
Like Jack Burton (who?) always says: If you liked the original movie, if you like cheesy comedies, puns, cheeky humour, action comedy adventures and a hilariously creative take on supernatural adventure tales – this is THE comic of the year for you.
Okay maybe he doesn’t say that, but you get the idea. Go read it now.
OVERALL SCORE: 10 / 10
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