Publisher: BOOM
Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Joe Eisma, Jay Shaw (Cover), Jorge Coelho (Variant Cover)
Colourist: Gonzalo Durate
Editor: Ian Brill
Release date: 5 August 2015
Price: $3.99

 

If you are looking for the John Carpenter 1986 film of the same name, look away now. I say this only to spare you, the reader, the pain of possible disappointment. Granted, a remake of Big Trouble In Little China is due out next year so may be there is some mileage in a comic book version. However, Big Trouble In Little China #14 leaves this comic book reviewer a little cold.

Not because the creative team on Big Trouble In Little China #14 are some how inept or not up to the task of producing an entertaining and readable comic book. Big Trouble In Little China #14 can raise a smile or two, writer Fred Van Lente likes his comedy and the characterisation of Jack Burton (played by Kurt Russell in the original movie) works well for a while. As the page count mounts, though, Van Lente’s Burton grates, and struggles to get beyond anything other than his film persona. As if Van Lente only desire is to stick to the film script for every thing Jack Burton says and does. And what starts off as humorous and snappy dialogue ends up as dull and uninspired under repeated examples.

Plot wise, well, The Pork Chop Express is missing and Jack Burton, understandably, wants his truck back. Unfortunately, the truck has fallen into the hands of an aficionado and collector of all things 1980. Ho, hum. And if you have a particular thing for that decade then this will be fun for you. Frankly, for me, the 80s were notable as the decade I got laid in. On the downside, comic books were beginning to get dire,’ self-aware and pompous. By the end of the 1980s I will have stopped reading comic books altogether. Fifteen years would go by before I picked up another.

Where comedy is seemingly the main theme in Big Trouble In Little China #14, the artwork will surely follow and Joe Eisma’s cartoon-based style has some fun about it and the characters come alive under Eisma’s guiding hand. The panel progression is suitably frenetic and comedy rich. But, well there isn’t one. If Big Trouble In Little China #14 has a saving grace, it is Joe Eisma.

In the end Fred Van Lente’s writing does not gel and rather than continually mimic the speech pattern from Kurt Russel’s depiction of Jack Burton, there needs to be more character progression. Otherwise, the central protagonist is a one trick pony, going through the motions much like a recently wound up automaton.

And then, my friends, for Jack Burton, it is no longer just in the reflexes.

 

Reviewer: Steve Hooker