Adventures of Jack Burton "Big Trouble in Little Tokyo" Big Trouble in Little China #15 (BOOM! Studios) Written by Fred Van Lente Illustrated by Joe Eisma Colors by Gonzalo Duarte Letters by Ed Dukeshire Cover by Jay Shaw August 2015

Jack and Winona face the Alpha Group and a horde of bodyguards at the Shido stronghold.

Story Summary

Alpha Group arrives at the Shido stronghold with the intent of robbing Shido's collection blind. But first they have to take down Jack, as well as Shido's horde of female bodyguards.

Meanwhile, Winona attempts to escape from the Alpha Group's van, but is confronted by Joystick, who had been left to guard her. She uses Joystick's erogenous intelligence against it, causing to blow a fuse and explode. Escaping the van, she bumps into Jack and takes down Jheri Lee, proving her battle worthiness in Jack's eyes. Jack tries to take down Attila, but is punched into some kind of mystic picture frame, trapping him in a black-and-white sketch on canvas.

CONTINTUED IN BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA #16

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

John Atilla

Jheri Lee

Gadgeteer

Jack Burton

Shido's bodyguards

Buddy Shido

Winona Chi

Gracie Law (mentioned only)

Joystick

Wang Chi (mentioned only)

Miao Yin (mentioned only) 

Didja Know?

The issues of this series did not have individual titles. I chose the title "Big Trouble in Little Tokyo" for this issue based on what seems to be the overall title of the story arc related in issue #13 ("Encino Man").

Didja Notice?

In this issue, Gadgeteer uses a cabbage gun made out of a leaf blower. It's not clear though where on his person he's storing the cabbages that serve as ammunition!

On page 2, Shido's bodyguards refer to Jack's infiltration of Shido's compound as a "Red Dawn situation". This refers to the 1984 film Red Dawn about the invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union. There was also a remake of the film in 2012 in which the invaders were North Korean instead.

On the double-splash page of pages 4-5, Jack is hiding behind a Buddha statue.

Winona manages to short circuit Joystick by bombarding the robot with verbal invitations to engage in sex. On page 7, she says to it, "Intercourse. It's not just a town in Pennsylvania." There is an actual town called Intercourse in the state of Pennsylvania.

When Joystick overloads and explodes on page 9, we see that its "erogenous intelligence" was apparently stored on a simple cassette tape.

The martial arts moves depicted and named during the duel between Winona and Jheri on pages 14-15 are actual moves in Shaolin Kung-Fu (see how the poses match the comic at Shaolin.org).

The header of "WINONA CHI WINS!" in panel 1 of page 16 is borrowed from a similar header that appears in the Mortal Kombat video games when a character wins a duel.

On page 19, Shido laments the burning of his complete collection of Shrooms. As speculated in "Encino Man", Shrooms may be a parody reference to Smurfs.

On page 21, Jack tells Winona he feels kind of invincible. He also said this in Big Trouble in Little China after drinking some of Egg Shen's specially concocted brew.

Also on page 21, Jack picks up a wrench from inside a pack of Fredo Bros. Plumbing Supplies. This appears to be a fictitious company, but may be a parody of the Mario Brothers characters in a series of video games; the brothers are depicted as plumbers.