Showing posts with label Dragon Chiang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dragon Chiang. Show all posts

Friday, July 25, 2014

Dragon Chiang

'Dragon Chiang' by Tim Truman and Timothy Bradstreet



'Dragon Chiang' (44 pp) is a black and white graphic novel published in 1991 by Eclipse Comics. Truman did the script and art, and Bradtsreet, the inks.

It's set  in the same post-collapse America of Truman's 1985 - 1987 series for Eclipse, Scout.


'Dragon' Chiang is a Chinese trucker making the long, long drive from Beijing, north into Russia, across the Bering Strait causeway, south through Alaska and Canada, to finish in San Francisco. It's a journey he has made before, but as the American economy undergoes further disintegration, waves of refugees have been fleeing the US and entering Russia; as a result, crossing the borders has become more regulated....and more dangerous.


Dragon is known and respected among the border guards, the other truckers, and the rest stop managers all along his route. But that doesn't mean Dragon won't use the unique armaments that his futuristic 18-wheeler has at its disposal.

Nor does it mean that Dragon isn't going to be able to take a piss at the truck stop without getting into some trouble with 'Possum Man' and his fellow road trash......


Things only get more hazardous - and more violent - as Chiang proceeds into the continental US...........


Tim Truman's meticulous draftsmanship is on display here, benefitting from some nice ink work from Bradstreet.

In a three page Afterword essay, author Truman expounds on the inspiration for Dragon Chiang. It's  a long and eclectic list straight out of modern American Pop Culture, and includes the trucker / CB radio craze of the mid-70s; biker movies; sf novels like Damnation Alley; and Trashman, Spain Rodriguez's underground comic classic .


If you like the intersection of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior with Truman's offbeat take on a postapocalyptic US, then 'Dragon Chiang' is well worth picking up. Copies can be obtained for reasonable prices from many vendors; I might suggest MyComicShop.com as one of the better sources (note: I receive no recompense for that endorsement).