You’ve followed his adventures through the Gold Rush, the building of the Continental Railroad, and the taming of the frontier. Now Chen Long the Chinaman, the triumphant creation of Olivier TaDuc and Serge Le Tendre, is back for his greatest adventure of all: finding out he’s a father. Twenty years after his violent past drove away his true love Ada, the Civil War, prison camp, and opium have left Chen Long a broken-down shell of his former proud self. Can the tiger rise to save his son? A fitting conclusion to an epic series that explores forgotten pockets of western history.

This was a really good read. The artwork was good and gave the story a wild west gritty kind of feel. There are bandits and Pinkertons and a chase for justice. And then there is John who joins in the chase to avenge the murder of his friend and he slaughter of his faithful dog. But then there are also so twists and turns which emerge from John's past and take life in his present.

I enjoyed this. It had drama, grit, injustice, and retribution all wrapped up in a good cowboy story.

Copy provided via Netgalley.

A bloody Western about bandits, war, racism in the Wild West and the struggle to live with one's demons. Perhaps most impressively, it is a spin-off to a larger series, yet as advertised, it's self-contained enough that you don't have to know the larger narrative.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Tiger Awakens: The Return of John Chinaman by Serge Le DTendre and Olivier Taduc is a graphic novel the blends historical fiction and action. The plot revolves around Chen Long the Chinaman in a Wild West setting who finds out that he is a father and has a son. First off, as an #ownvoices reader of Chinese descent, I am happy to see representation in graphic novels. I rarely see Chinese people in the Wild West setting, whether in books, TV, or graphic novels, even though it's clear from history that Chinese immigrants contributed a lot to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. It's great to see a historical story that includes Chinese representation.

Overall, The Tiger Awakens: The Return of John Chinaman is an interested and action-filled graphic novel that stars a protagonist of Chinese descent in the Wild West. This is a pretty groundbreaking novel in that I haven't seen many stories like this before. I've often wondered what the stories of Chinese immigrants during that time period were like. What did they do when they finished working on the railroad? What were the rest of their lives like? This graphic novel answers those questions and more. I did take off one star because of the violence toward women depicted in this graphic novel. Even though it's a historical fact that women were treated badly during this time, I did not have to see it on the page. If you're intrigued by the description above or if you're a fan of graphic novels, I recommend that you check out this book, which is out in stores now.

I’m not going to lie, a book with a racial epithet in the title is somewhat of a cause for alarm to me, but seeing that this takes place during the goldrush, put my mind somewhat at ease. The term “John Chinaman” was basically a product of its time, where many nineteenth century people referred to just about any Asian person as such. It was interesting to see this book handle racial tensions of the time as well as it did – I actually loved seeing that. Apparently this is a volume in a long running series by these authors, but I was assured in the preface that it was stand-alone and that I needed no prior knowledge of the material to enjoy this.

“You’ve followed his adventures through the Gold Rush, the building of the Continental Railroad, and the taming of the frontier. Now Chen Long the Chinaman, the triumphant creation of Olivier TaDuc and Serge Le Tendre, is back for his greatest adventure of all: finding out he’s a father. Twenty years after his violent past drove away his true love Ada, the Civil War, prison camp, and opium have left Chen Long a broken-down shell of his former proud self. Can the tiger rise to save his son? A fitting conclusion to an epic series that explores forgotten pockets of western history.”

This is the second western-themed book by Europe Comics that I’ve absolutely loved, the first being Wild West. I have spoken before on the fact that I absolutely adore western comics for some reason, this is despite the fact that I’ve never really been a big western guy when it comes to TV or film, but for some reason I became hooked on them after DC’s new 52 initiative re-launched All Star Western many moons ago. I think the reason being that I’m not sued to them, and they seem to largely be resurrections of long dormant comics from the Golden and Silver Eras that I’ve never heard of.

Being informed that this book is after a long running series of other books definitely makes me want to go back and read the previous material. I have no idea if any of its available in English, but the way we are introduced to Chen Long, internally fighting decades worth of PTSD in an opium den, makes me NEED to know what happened. They especially draw on whatever experiences he had in the American Civil War, and how it has affected him the most. Perhaps if this does well, Europe comics can go backwards? Here’s hoping!

The writing, and more importantly, the translation is top notch – you can tell work was taken to make sure dialogue was made to be like other depictions of “The Wild West”. You always run the risk of having a depiction of American history from Europe come up feeling weird. I’ve listened to Doctor Who audio dramas that did an abysmal job of making the setting feel real, but these French comics always seem to hit their mark. Hats off to them! With great art, and no punches pulled when it comes to mindsets of the time, this book is every bit as dark as an HBO show, and would be a GREAT basis for a TV series or movie if they ever had an inkling to do as such. If you are in a western mood, I’d definitely recommend this!

This book is pretty offensive. There are only two important women in the story. The first one is dead in her only appearance and is strategically positioned so that you can see her nipples. The second is threatened with sexual assault, esapes, and is never seen again. There is one Black man in this story. He dies pretty early on specifically to make the other characters feel bad.

You gotta love the optimism of a publisher telling me I've followed this character to this setting, through that adventure and so on, when I've never even heard of the guy. Either way, after at least eight whole stories in the past, he's back, and to eke out the franchise even further Europe Comics have taken the nasty decision to split a 136pp title into two chunks, purely to get double your buck. Like I say, nasty. (We keep telling them off about it, but you know, deaf ears and all that.) Here, then, is an older hero, frazzled by opium and going nowhere fast. Luckily (or not) for him, someone going places is the man he doesn't know is his son, who's a young Pinkerton investigator, on the trail of some murderous kidnapper types. When said murderous types kill his best friend, our old fella is forced to come along, try and save the day, and get peace from the nasty memories of death and destruction he was intent on drowning out.

There's little here that's greatly original, but neither is there anything that's really a problem, once you have your eye on the itty-bitty font size used. It is, as the creators, alleged, self-contained enough to attract newcomers, but you'll have to be pretty new to narrative fiction full stop to not recognise this as one of those "dangerous last jobs" action pieces. And while there is the character side of things, with our young narrator's voice-over slightly awkwardly addressed to his father, that could only give enough emotional punch if you had followed our man throughout the previous books. As a jumping-on point, about three stars.