‘Search for Hu #1’ (review)

Written by Steve Orlando, Jon Tsuei
Art by Rubine
Published by AfterSchock Comics

Search for Hu wastes little time.

The basic premise follows Aaron Tse, a Chinese-American Army veteran who returns home to San Gabriel, California, to his family and is working some late-night security.

His parents, who own a bar, are attacked in a drive-by, and his mother gives a hospital bed confession: the drive-by shooting was a mob hit! See, his mother is part of a crime family embroiled in a century-old blood feud that she fled to America to escape. Only the war has showed up.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I had the kind of parents where, if someone shot them up, I’d feel ready to unleash hell on those behind it. Would I have the actual means to do so? Probably not.

But what if I were an Afghanistan vet with combat skills, weapons handling experience and resources to gather those weapons, travel to China and wage actual war?

So Aaron is ready to go full John Wick on all of them.

“What else do I have but family?” he says to his former sergeant, a woman named Mi-Kyong whom we first meet in flashback. “What would you do? Trust the process? What fucking skills do I have in life other than this?”

Soon enough, we’re in Dalian, China, in a nightclub full of gangsters. Get ready for an action-packed adventure full of gunplay, screams, hallway fights, hunter intrigue, and a one hell of a family reunion.

Jon Tsuei and Steve Orlando deliver a strong book out of the gate, informed by their own personal back stories and a desire to shed light on a little known dynamic of Chinese society. Russian Jewish immigrants settled in the northeastern region of China after the revolution, and Tsuei’s family was from there before going to Taiwan.

Rubine matches the script with fluid art that shows motion and action well.

This one’s fun, folks. Give it a go!