Adventures of Jack Burton "Old Man Jack" Part 7 Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack #7 BOOM! Studios Written by John Carpenter & Anthony Burch Illustrated by Jorge Corona Colored by Gabriel Cassata Lettered by Ed Dukeshire Cover by Greg Smallwood March 2018

Egg Shen is rescued, but then arguments ensue about how to proceed.

Story Summary

Centaur-With-Knives takes our motley crew into the Throne of Skulls and they rescue Egg Shen and retrieve Egg's mystical book. But the book is locked shut and the key is missing. Jack recalls that Thunder was wearing a strange necklace piece that may have been the key. After an argument about how to proceed, the gang reluctantly agrees to let Jack try to talk Thunder into handing over the key, as the two "understand each other".

Egg teleports Jack into Thunder's presence and Jack actually manages to talk the elemental being into handing over the key, but the rest of the gang teleports in right at that moment and Lo Pan blows Thunder's head off. They have obtained the key, but Jack is furious with Lo Pan.

With the key, Egg is now able to open the book and he finds the ritual for banishing Ching Dai, but it means killing the flesh bridge that brought the demon to Earth in the first place...that being Jack Burton himself.

Continued in "Old Man Jack" Part 8.

Notes from the Jack Burton chronology

This story takes place in the year 2020.

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

Demon-ox guard

Demon-horse guard

Centaur-With-Knives (dies in this issue)

David Lo Pan

Jack Burton

Wang Chi

Pete (Yaoguai)

Egg Shen

Thunder (dies in this issue)

Ching Dai (mentioned only)

Rain (mentioned only, deceased)

Lightning (mentioned only, deceased) 

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 pages 4-6, Jack and friends are confronted by a mass of ying ling. In Chinese folklore, ying ling are the ghosts of dead fetuses.

On page 10, Egg remarks that Ching Dai is an all-powerful demon who's the size of the Statue of Liberty.

On page 12, Lo Pan tells Jack to let the adults handle taking down Ching Dai, adding, "Why don't you go eat your hot dog donuts, or whatever it is you do." Jack then sounds interested in the idea of hot dog donuts. Possibly, Lo Pan is referring to the Thai dish called donut sai krok, a savory donut in the shape of a log filled with hot dog (or other) sausages.

On page 15, Egg asks the rhetorical question, "Does the Pope poop in the woods?" This is a merging of two classic humorous rhetorical questions, "Does a bear shit in the woods?" and "Is the Pope Catholic?"

Also on page 15, Jack tells the others he believes he can talk Thunder into giving up the key to Egg's mystical book because the two of them "understand each other". But Lo Pan retorts, "Is this gonna be like the time you tried to talk Thunder into not killing us? You know, that time he completely ignored you and still tried to kill us?" This refers back to events in "Old Man Jack" Part 5. But, in fairness to Jack, Thunder did seem to be listening to him and might possibly have been of help if Wang and Lo Pan had not right then destroyed Thunder's brothers Rain and Lightning.

On page 17, Jack tells Thunder he's useless, "You might do something useful by accident, but you're not Curly, you're Shemp." Curly and Shemp were characters in the Three Stooges short films during different times. Both characters were ditzy and could generally only be counted on to screw things up. Curly was the more popular of the two with the general audiences.

On page 18, Jack says that when he feels like a pawn in the game of life he says "Screw it, I'd rather play Texas Hold 'Em." Jack is said to have a fondness for Texas Hold 'Em poker in Big Trouble in Mother Russia and "The Jack is Wild".