Chop-Chop

Chop-Chop
Biographical Information
Real Name	Chuck Tanaka
Aliases	Chop-Chop
Gender	Male
Class	Joker
Wild Card Traits	Asian racial caricature
Social Information
Citizenship	Citizen of the United States
Occupation	Delivery service manager
Affiliations	Four Seas Seafood Delivery Service
Allies	Cheetah, Troll
Origin
First Appearance	Card Sharks
Creator	William F. Wu

Chop-Chop is a fictional character from the Wild Cards series of books.

Born Chuck Tanaka, he prefers to be called by his real name, but sadly gets labeled Chop-Chop by Jokertown regulars. When Chop-Chop was introduced, he lived and worked on the border between Chinatown and Jokertown. He had an entry-level job at the Four Seas Seafood Delivery Service.

History

In 1958, Chuck meet Fleur van Renssaeler. He arranged for her to get an illegal abortion and in exchange she told him about an arson plot to burn down Jokertown. They had a brief encounter (mostly her revenge against her father who had raped her). Chuck enlisted help from two jokers, reputed to be really tough, to help prevent the arson attack. A brief mention of it in the newspapers led to the deaths of a reporter and Fleur's father, and became the basis of the Polanski film "Jokertown" starring Jack Nicolson.

By the 1990's Chop-Chop had risen to the position of manager at the same delivery service. At this time he was also a regular parishioner of Our Lady of Perpetual Misery.

Wild Card Traits and Appearance

Chop-Chop is a walking cliché of every bad cartoon depiction of an Asian. This five-foot-tall Japanese-American joker looks at the world from behind coke-bottle thick, black-rimmed glasses, his myopic eyes are comically slanted, the epicanthic folds stretched and exaggerated. He is ridiculously bucktoothed, his upper front two teeth extending entirely over his bottom lip, and his ears stick out from under jet-black hair like twin handles on a jug. His skin is a bright, chrome yellow.

Selected Reading

• Wild Cards Volume XIII: Card Sharks