"Lord Buddha, please let his neck be broken" isn't the most traditional of prayers.

All of the friends I had in school or before I got married have long ago moved away; and while I sometimes miss them, I think I miss stupid crap like getting trashed watching kung-fu movies more. Today's book, kinda the same experience? In that you can't be sure about the dubbing and you're going to lose the plot, but it's fine. From 1988, Oriental Heroes #5, art by Tony Wong, script by Mike Baron.

Pretty sure Tegan O'Neil brought up Jademan Comics on BlueSky the other week. It's apparently "Culturecom now, but the rights to their books maybe might be locked up somewhere in the changes. I remember the Jademan preview issue, from back when a lot of manga--or in this case, Chinese manhua--hadn't yet reached the states; and creator/publisher Tony Wong wanted to be a Stan Lee/Walt Disney type; taking his empire global. It didn't really take, even after a run of a few years; but Oriental Heroes is still published to this day, although with new artists. (The "Tony Wong" art here is more of a studio production than just him alone, too: part 1 of a brief "How We Produce Our Comics" feature was on the back cover.)

Plotwise, uh, I'll let the recap page take it: "Gold Dragon fights for his life on Coffin Island, golden armor kung fu is his only weapon! Tiger Wong languishes in Crag Castle Prison, his nine suns kung fu is the only thing standing between him and death." And with that, you're off to the races! Although, the experience isn't unlike maybe your first X-Men comic or first Dragon Ball Z episode: you'll pick up enough. I don't think the character development or interaction was comparable to either of those, but the fights were nice and the book does look pretty.

Oddly, I checked Mike's for December 1988, but I didn't find this issue; or any Jademan searching the site! I was curious on the pricing: this issue was $1.50 cover price, and mainstream books around that time were probably $1 to $1.75. And this issue, anyway, was like 60 story pages! Also, I think for at least the early stretches of Jademan's books, Mike Baron might have adapted the scripts: maybe not straight verbatim translations, but not quite localized like some old Pokemon episodes were, either.