Adventures of Jack Burton "Old Man Jack" Part 2 Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack #2 BOOM! Studios Written by John Carpenter & Anthony Burch Illustrated by Jorge Corona Colored by Gabriel Cassata Lettered by Ed Dukeshire Cover by Stéphane Roux October 2017

Lo Pan seeks Jack's help to save the world.

Story Summary

Lo Pan explains to Jack that when Ching Dai ascended to Earth ten years ago, Lo Pan thought he would be welcomed as Ching Dai's loyal servant, but the capricious demon lord instead restored Lo Pan to mortal form and banished him to the surface where he would be as good as dead, so he hid out in one of the less-torturous hell levels.

Lo Pan tells Jack he knows how to kill Ching Dai and save the world. He just needs Jack to drive them across the hellscape to San Francisco's Chinatown where Ching Dai has established his Throne of Skulls. After leading Jack back to the surface, Jack betrays Lo Pan and kicks back down the hole. Jack drives off and soon bumps into a beautiful woman who leads a cult dedicated to a being called the Beast, who seeks to find and kill the man responsible for the Hellpocalypse. When they realize Jack is that man, they prepare to feed him to a demonic face in the ground. Lo Pan returns and saves Jack and the truck driver finally agrees to take him to Chinatown to face Ching Dai.

Continued in "Old Man Jack" Part 3.

Notes from the Jack Burton chronology

This story takes place in the year 2020.

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

David Lo Pan

Jack Burton

Ching Dai (in flashback only)

Queen Violence

Children of the Beast (not named until "Old Man Jack" Part 4)

The Beast 

Didja Know?

Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack is a 12-issue limited series published by IDW in 2017-2018.

Didja Notice?

On page 1, Jack throws what he calls the "Alabama death punch" at Lo Pan. On page 2, he retrieves his knife and attempts a "Tuscaloosa face stab", but trips. Alabama is a U.S. state and Tuscaloosa is a city in that state. Might these references suggest that Jack is originally from Alabama?

On page 4, Jack refers to his mullet haircut as "Half business. Half party. All deadly." The quote that is usually heard to describe the mullet is "business in the front, party in the back".

On page 7, Lo Pan tells Jack that a thousand miles stand between them and San Francisco's Chinatown. If they emerged from Hell in the vicinity of Palatka, Florida where Jack entered (in "Old Man Jack" Part 1), they would actually be over 2,000 miles from San Francisco.

As he's driving through the devastated landscape of the Hellpocalypse on page 8, Jack remarks, "This place makes Tucson look like Dallas." Tucson and Dallas are cities in the states of Arizona and Texas, respectively.

When Jack sees a beautiful woman (Queen Violence) on the road in front of him on page 10, he sputters, "Lllllluck be a lady tonight!" "Luck Be a Lady" is a song written in 1950 by Frank Loesser, perhaps most popularly known for the Frank Sinatra version.

Jack tells Queen Violence he's a Pisces, one of the astrological signs of the Zodiac. Being a Pisces would indicate that Jack was born sometime from March 13 to April 13; actor Kurt Russell was born on March 17, 1951.

On page 21, Jack tells Lo Pan he once drove through Albuquerque with busted A.C. and a truck bed full of greased-up hogs, saying a drive through the Ocean of Fire (a region of Hell on Earth) can't be all that different.