40K and Jack Burton comics? Sure why not?

Well many years ago I remember pretty awesome cover art for the 40K comic series Damnation Crusade. 

Low and behold they showed up in trade and I nabbed it and Exterminatus, another 40K comic from the people at BOOM! Studios.

Hey look Dan Abnett even penned some of the story too. I love his 40K writings!

Still has fun cover art to…..and then I opened said covers.

The plot of each of these collections is just drek!

Damnation Crusade.

This is a disjointed tale of a Black Templar recruit in his journey to full Space Mari….I mean full Adeptus Astartes. There is also a story revolving around a Dreadnought as well. It is just awful stuff. IF the story wasn’t bad enough, the artwork is beyond terrible. A drek story can be saved by good art, and shit drawing can be saved by a rocking good tale. Sadly, this comic collection is neither of these. What a waste.

Well there is still Exterminatus.

Here is the story of an inquisitor doing his bit to root out some Chaos shenanigans.

A more cohesive and fanboy-ish tale here compared to Damnation Crusade, but that is about it. The artwork is just as terrible as Damnation Crusade. The story is not really good, but it is better than Damnation Crusade, but not by much.

It is a real damn shame that the covers (mostly the original issues) are the best part of these books. Stay away! These are just awful!

Well maybe the next series will be better?

I am a gigundus fan of John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. If you aren’t, well then we probably shouldn’t be friends.

Well it looks like they made a series based on the after events of the movie and the continuing adventures of Jack Burton. The book store was running a trade comic deal, so I nabbed the first four trades in the series.

Hmmm…. BOOM! Studios again. This doesn’t give me a lot of hope……..

Boy howdy was I right to go into this with low expectations.

Right off the bat, the art is better than the 40K stuff above, but that isn’t saying a whole lot. Well maybe the story is good?

Nope. Not really. The continuing adventures of Jack Burton have him resurrecting Lo Pan, dealings with the Lords of Death and the three Storms again. It felt like the writers went back to the well way too soon. Then eventually they pull away only to have Jack Burton pull a Frostillicus (See the Simpsons for the reference you Philistine!).

This is how they get Jack Burton from the mid-80’s to present day. Yeah, they freeze Jack Burton so they can unthaw him in the 2010’s and continue his story.

These four books were a colossal let down. Sure I went in without a lot of expectations. I was hoping for a fun adventure akin to the movie. That I did not get.

Not.

At.

All.

Sure there are brief glimpses of writing that really capture the character from the movie, but those are way too few and far between. It is a rather pitiful series in both look and substance.

 I would steer clear of these as well. A shame since this is a great character that with some dynamite writing could have a fun pulp series about him.