Adventures of Jack Burton "Old Man Jack" Part 11 Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack #11 BOOM! Studios Written by John Carpenter & Anthony Burch Illustrated by Jorge Corona Colored by Gabriel Cassata Lettered by Ed Dukeshire Cover by Brett Parson July 2018

The battle for Heaven begins.

Story Summary

Jack is reintroduced to Gracie and the Pork-Chop Express in Heaven. Jack gathers the dead warriors of Heaven to fight back against the assault of Lo Pan's demonic army, but the warriors aren't interested, having lost the fighting spirit during their time in paradise. Gracie comes up with the idea to round up all the Heavenly members of the Chang Sing to fight and Wang thinks he may know a way to bring Egg Shen to Heaven for the battle as well. Jack buys time by plowing through Lo Pan's army in the Pork-Chop Express, specially fitted-out by Esmerelda the giant flying puffer-fish.

As Jack and Lo Pan face off, Egg arrives to lead the Chang Sing into battle, while the Army of the Beast also arrives, forming a pincer movement on Lo Pan's forces.

Continued in "Old Man Jack" Part 12.

Notes from the Jack Burton chronology

This story takes place in the year 2020.

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

Jack Burton

Gracie Law

Wang Chi

Pete (Yaoguai)

Blaine Vink

Eddie Lee

Margo Litzenberger

Esmerelda

David Lo Pan

Thunder

Joan of Arc

Wing Kong (mentioned only)

Chang Sing

Egg Shen

Queen Violence

Miao Yin

Winona Chi 

Didja Know?

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

Didja Notice?

This issue reveals that Gracie married a man named Blaine Vink in the years after she last saw Jack.

Gracie claims that Blaine has an MBA and a Nobel Prize for inventing a serum that prevents puppies from feeling sad. MBA stands for Master of Business Administration, a university degree. The Nobel prizes are awarded once a year by a committee of the Scandinavian countries for work in the studies of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace and are considered the top prizes in the world in each field (I suppose Blaine's dubious prize would fall under Physiology/Medicine).

On page 7, Jack tells the assembled warriors of Heaven, "As the man said, courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway." "The man" in this instance is legendary actor John Wayne (1907-1979).

On page 8, Joan D'Arc, among other warriors, refuses to join Jack's crusade. Joan D'Arc, more commonly known in the English-speaking world as Joan of Arc (1412-1431), was a peasant girl of the 15th century who led the French army to several victories in the Hundred Years War.

The storming of the Gates of Heaven by Lo Pan's demonic minions and Jack's response with the Pork-Chop Express may owe a bit of inspiration to similar scenes in the 1992 cult classic film Army of Darkness.

On page 13, Jack says, "...it's a good thing I'm the best driver in paradise, unless Smokey and/or the Bandit are up here, too." This is a reference to the Smokey and the Bandit films about a small town sheriff (a smokey) who gives constant chase to an "outlaw" trucker called Bandit.

As he drives the Pork-Chop Express straight on towards Lo Pan on page 16, Jack warns him, "I'm a man hauling eighteen wheels of pure American--" (he gets cut off by the crash into Lo Pan at this point). But Jack is only driving the tractor unit, the Pork-Chop Express itself, not hauling a trailer behind it, so it's not an 18-wheeler at the moment, having just 10 wheels.