Adventures of Jack Burton "No Exit" Big Trouble in Little China #10 (BOOM! Studios) Story by John Carpenter and Eric Powell Writer: Eric Powell Artist: Brian Churilla Colorist: Gonzalo Duarte Letterer: Ed Dukeshire Cover A: Brian Churilla April 2015

Jack tries to finagle and con his way out of the Hell of No Return.

Story Summary

In the Hell of No Return, Jack talks his would-be torturers into a game of poker, eventually winning the directions to the exit from this forsaken realm. Meanwhile, in Chinatown, Egg and Wang discuss an option with Tai Sui Laohu as to how to bring Jack back to life; Tai Sui Laohu tells them that P'an Ku may be able to help and Egg and Wang set out to find him.

Back in the Hell of No Return, Jack makes a friend and they head to the Last Bar in Hell for some brewskis. They find Lo Pan drinking there and a brawl between Jack and Lo Pan results in the both of them stuck washing dishes to pay for the damages.

CONTINTUED IN BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA #11

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

Jack Burton

unnamed demons

Tai Sui Laohu

P'an Ku (mentioned only)

Egg Shen

Wang Chi

Slinky (Guard of the Monotonous Hell of the Gluetnous Bull)

Lo Pan

unnamed owner of the Last Bar in Hell

Didja Know?

The issues of this series did not have individual titles. I chose the title "No Exit" based on the "no exit" sign that is posted at the exit of the Hell of No Return in this issue.

Didja Notice?

The card hands of two pair, three of a kind, flush, full house, and straight flush played by Jack and the demons show that the card game they are playing on pages 1-6 is poker. The hand of "full jack down" on page 7 is, of course, made up by Jack in order to win his freedom from the Hell of No Return.

On page 8, one of the demons gives Jack directions to where he can walk out of the Hell of No Return, part of which are "take a left at the flayed torso of Hitler." Adolf Hitler, of course, was the evil Chancellor of Germany 1933-1945, during WWII.

As Jack heads off towards the exit from the Hell of No Return after winning the poker game, he says, "Inescapable hell, my eye! I've had marriages harder to get out of." We saw in the first four issues of the comic book that Jack has had at least four marriages.

This issue reveals that the old storyteller riding on the back of a tortoise whom Jack met in "Fool's Errand" and who told Jack the story of P'an Ku, who was created by the powers of light and darkness to chisel out the world, was actually P'an Ku himself.

On page 10, Jack approaches another Chinese hell, the Monotonous Hell of the Gluetnous Bull.

The armor Jack won in the poker game has something similar to a ram's head on the left shoulder. Notice on page 13, as the guard to the gate of the Monotonous Hell of the Gluetnous Bull jumps on Jack's shoulder for a ride, that the mouth of the ram's head opens and a tongue lashes out, suggesting the head might still be alive! The head is seen to seemingly react again on pages 18 and 20.

The guard warns Jack that the beer in the Monotonous Hell of the Gluetnous Bull "is always gonna be a little worse than you expect, even by Milwaukee standards." The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin is known for its many beer breweries.

Jack remarks that the Last Bar in Hell reminds him of a place he used to go to in Atlanta.

After getting thrown across the room by Lo Pan on page 19, notice that Jack again sees little stars and Pork-Chop Expresses as he did after getting punched in the face in "A Little Trouble in Dixieland".