Graphic Novel Review: Bulletproof Monk

So while looking through a vendors graphic novel section at Motor City Comic Con (Michigan's Comic Con), I came across Bulletproof Monk written by Brett Lewis and R.A. Jones. I had no idea that there was a graphic novel that came before the movie, so I had to pick it up. Just so you know, I don't know why, but I really enjoy the Bulletproof Monk movie, it's just a fun movie with some good moral value (as dumb as that sounds), and it also features Chow Yun-Fat, which I'm a fan of. So after picking up the graphic novel and expecting it to be like the movie, or maybe somewhat like the movie, it isn't, maybe a sliver of it is and the main character has the same name, but that's it. The story starts off with Kar (the main character), who was brought to America while his family stayed back in China because of government issues, and his mother gave him an amulet that has been handed down for centuries. According to the story, the amulet was given to one of his ancestors in Tibet when the Nazis took it over, but the bulletproof monk came and saved everyone's life and gave out amulets to the people so they knew where to find him. So Kar is on a mission to find where this bulletproof monk is. On his journey, he joins a gang, works for a gang, gets set up by the gang, and figures out that he was all along the bulletproof monk. yeah... This was the most confusing story with no background on anything, it's as if the author wanted you to read his mind in order to figure out what was going on. There's like three different stories that go on simultaneously throughout the book and all they do is just stumble together and try to make sense at the end, which it really didn't. The artwork in the graphic novel is okay, but in some parts, it'll just show an image of whatever and then that image would be stretch out at another spot somewhere else, to me it just seemed like it was a filler. I'm not recommending this to anyone, yeah maybe it's okay if you are a fan of the movie and you just want to show that you own the graphic novel, but that about it, and the forward by John Woo. I know its been a long time coming, but here's my first negative review. Thanks for reading and follow the blog.

Picture is from amazon.com