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Adventures of Jack Burton
"The Jack is Wild"
Big Trouble in Little China #18 (BOOM! Studios)
Written by Fred Van Lente
Illustrated by Dan McDaid
Colors by Gonzalo Duarte
Letters by Ed Dukeshire
Cover by Joe Eisma
November 2015 |
Jack plays a high stakes game of poker for
the souls of himself and his friends.
Story Summary
While Jack takes on a number of sorcerers in a poker game
for the souls of himself and his friends, Winona is reunited
with her sister, Wang is reunited with his ex-wife Miao Yin and
is invited to dinner with her and her husband, and another
familiar face lurks in the background.
CONTINTUED IN BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE
CHINA #19
Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue
Koschei
Eddie Lee
Jack Burton
Yu Shi
Wang Chi
Winona Chi
Miao Yin
Gracie Law
Margo
Litzenberger
Whitney Chi
Thunder
Rain
Lightning
Egg Shen
Didja Know?
Most of the issues of this series did not have individual titles. I
used the title "The
Jack is Wild" given in the next issue blurb of the previous
issue. The phrase is borrowed from a poker term used by the
dealer when declaring that a certain card or suit will be
considered a wild card for the current hand.
Didja Notice?
On page 1, Winona remarks on her father's attitude with the
comment, "Boy, these happy-happy, joy-joy pills really work..."
The pills she is referring to are the Xanax her father stole
from the pharmacy next to his restaurant. The "happy-happy,
joy-joy" phrase comes from The Ren & Stimpy Show
cartoon series of 1991-1995.
On page 2, Jack points out that
Koschei has a coke spoon hanging around his neck!
Jack reassures Gracie that he's Dysart's Truck Stop Texas hold
'em champ three years running. There is an actual
Dysart's Truck Stop in Bangor, Maine, so maybe that's the
place he's referring to! Texas hold 'em is a variation of poker.
Jack's championship was previously mentioned in
Big Trouble in Mother Russia.
On page 4,
Koschei refers to Jack as "mullet boy". He is referring
to the infamous mullet haircut Jack wears, short to the front
and sides and long in the back.
On page 5, the giant tortoise seen behind Whitney may the same
one ridden by
P'an Ku, first seen in "Fool's
Errand". To the right of Whitney a large, green being in
torn clothing sitting in the background may the Hulk from the
Marvel Comics universe.
On page 6, panel 3, the person seen from behind on the far left
appears to be Gambit
from the Marvel Comics universe.
On page 7, Whitney gives Winona a pack of Coughing Dragon
cigarettes. This is a fictitious Chinese brand.
Also on page 7, a flashback to the sisters' childhood has
Whitney saying that Joe Backy makes smoking look cool.
Joe Backy is the fictitious tobacco mascot cartoon character
introduced in
"The Samurai of Wall Street".
The cartoon character seen on the TV in the background is Joe
Backy (again, first seen in
"The Samurai of Wall Street").
Joe Backy is a play on the Joe Camel (or Old Joe) advertising
mascot of Camel cigarettes, believed by many to have been aimed at
priming children for a future of smoking Camel cigarettes.
The figure with the flaming skull for a head at the bottom of
page 7 may be Ghost Rider
from the Marvel Comics universe. The figure next to him may be
fellow Marvel Comics character Wolverine in his alias as Patch,
known to hang around the Orient.
During Jack's first poker game in this issue, the "Harry Potter"
character previously glimpsed in
"Big Trouble in Little Heaven"
is one of the players. Here, he seems to have a star symbol on
his forehead instead of the lightning bolt shaped one. The man
in the stovepipe hat kind of seems like a cross between the rock
performers Slash and Rob Zombie. The girl with the twisted head
may be Regan MacNeil, the 12-year old victim of possession by
the demon Pazuzu in the 1973 film The Exorcist.
Looking at his poker opponents in the first round, Jack pegs one
woman as a tree-hugger and figures he can finesse her with the
story of how he drove for the underground whale-road to get
orcas away from theme parks. "Underground
whale-road" seems to be a largely made-up, playful term for the
efforts by some people to return captive orcas (killer whales)
to the wild. But this effort has mostly only existed since the 1990s
and up, so it would be unlikely Jack would have participated in
the 1980s and has not been back in the world of the living for
more than a few days since his revival in 2015 in "Encino Man"
(and busy with other things the entire time).
The Three Storms (Thunder, Rain, and Lightning) explain the
rules of Texas hold 'em to the players. This is the first
appearance of the Storms since Jack woke up in 2015. They were
last seen in 1986 in
"The Legendary San Francisco Mystic Kung Fu
Showdown and Knife Fight". The betting structure,
small blind and big blind designations, and other rules
explained by the Storms are legitimate rules of some variations
of the game (though the art panels for the descriptions of the
flop, the turn, and the river don't match the current hand
stated for each description!).
On page 16, panel 2, the person with a skull-like face in the
background may be Skeletor from the Masters of the Universe
franchise of toys, animated series, and comics.
On page 17, the stovepipe hat guy tells Jack he is a Woodooist.
"Woodoo" is another term for Voodoo or Voodou. He mentions the
loa and les invisibles; these are both terms for the
spiritual beings who are go-betweens between humanity and God
and who may grant power or favors to those to who pray to or
serve them.
The black woman at Jack's poker table tells him she is a bluid.
This does not seem to be a recognized type of sorcery by name,
but is likely a play on "druid" considering that Jack earlier
pegged her as a tree-hugger.
On page 19, "Regan" grows impatient with the amount of time Jack
is spending on deciding his next move in the game and she says,
"The demon lord Haggasoth demands satisfaction!!"
Haggasoth appears to be a fictitious demon (as opposed to a real
one).
After being excoriated by "Regan", Jack tells her to keep her
pea soup down. In
The Exorcist, pea
soup was used by the effects crew of the film as the projectile vomit Regan hurls at Father
Karras during a well-known scene in the film. On page 20,
"Regan" does puke up a green substance in her outrage at having
been outplayed by Jack.
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Adventures of Jack Burton Episode Studies