Big Trouble in Little China: Volume 4 (2016)

I Hate the '80s! (2016)

Author: Fred Van Lente |  Illustrator: Joe Eisma |  Page Count: 112

"Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I wouldn't mind just getting my truck and getting out of here..."

I don't know how much input creator John Carpenter actually had to the comic book continuation of his film, but his name is absent from the credits of I Hate the '80s!, so perhaps his involvement ended with Volume 3? Time will tell. What's certain is that regulars Eric Powell (author) and Brian Churilla (illustrator) are both gone.

That means it's a new creative team at the helm for Volume 4. I was hopeful that they could rescue it from its Volume 3 slump, return it to the standard set by the first book, and, by Jove, they almost did! BTiLC is good again. Thank you, Mssrs Van Lente and Eisma.

The new setting is kind of crazy, but, in my view, it's a good kind of crazy and, more importantly, it once more recaptures the feeling of fun that the movie had.

Vexing Jack Burton this time is an unscrupulous magnate who's obsessed with obtaining 1980s collectables, and, for reasons that I won't go into (but that you'll be fully aware of if you've read the previous book), Jack is in the rich reprobate's covetous sights.

The nods and references to 80s toys, popular culture, pop music and even the era's economic state are often hilarious, provided you're old enough to have lived through the decade itself, otherwise you might miss a lot of the more subtle jokes.

Joe Eisma's artwork has a slight manga influence and the actor/actress likenesses aren't there in the characters' faces. It's primarily Jack's never-changing wardrobe that makes it possible to quickly identify him. But it captures the madness in the story well enough and is consistent.

It ends on a cliffhanger, so you might want to have Volume 5 nearby before finishing.

Finally, while it has no bearing on the story, sadly, the Jack quotes that preceded each chapter are now absent. It's inevitable that they'd run out eventually, but I enjoyed them very much and would like to have seen them continued with new ones in the spirit of the old.

Volume 4 collects together Big Trouble in Little China issues 13-16.

Individual covers. Click for FULL size: