Bruce Lee: The Dragon Rises #1

Bruce Lee: The Dragon Rises #1

When I first heard of Bruce Lee: The Dragon Rises, I thought it wasn’t for me. I have no interest in kung fu movies or nostalgia for same. But they’re doing something with this series that so far, I like (and thanks to the Free Comic Book Day sampler for the chance to try it).

That approach is waking a frozen Bruce Lee in today (well, 2012, for some reason), so he’s got a lot of culture clash to figure out, such as mistaking a cellphone for a transistor radio. Shannon Lee (CEO/President of BruceLee.com) and Jeff Kline (President of Darby Pop, who publishes this) write and Brandon McKinney pencils and inks this story of an honest, just man wanting to find his place in a new world.

Bruce has amnesia but remembers his fighting skills. Conveniently, he soon runs into an old friend, Joe, a PI who can help him navigate the new world and fight against those who are trying to recapture him. There are also a couple of teenage neighborhood kids who get involved.

Bruce Lee: The Dragon Rises #1

While there are plenty of fight scenes, as you’d expect, they are briskly told in abbreviated fashion, so those of us reading for plot will find plenty of content beyond the martial arts. That plot does turn out to be rather predictable — evil organization tries to recapture captive, mixed group of friends try to protect his freedom — but it’s just setup to establish the premise and get Bruce, Joe, and the kids into the next mission of issue #2.

There’s nothing super-special here to draw in someone who isn’t already attracted to the concept of Bruce Lee stories in our current age, but it was more interesting than I thought, given its licensed publishing status.



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