In August, 1973, the “Bullpen Bulletins” column that ran in Marvel Comics’ offerings each month opened with a self-congratulatory note about what an eventful summer the company had been having, citing the launches of new ongoing series for the Thing and the Black Panther as well as the debuts of such brand new characters as Brother Voodoo and the Son of Satan, before moving on to this item:
Cover to Pyramid Books’ 1965 edition of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (4th printing, 1970). Art by Len Goldberg.
Fu Manchu? Sure, why not? Marvel had been doing a fair amount of licensing of popular prose fiction properties of late, including Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and pulp magazine publisher Street & Smith’s Doc Savage, to say nothing of their series based on public-domain works like Dracula and Frankenstein. Meanwhile, their main rival, DC Comics, had Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and other adventure heroes, as well as their own Street & Smith-licensed crimefighter, the Shadow. And virtually everyone in 1973 had at least heard of the evil Chinese mastermind introduced by English author Sax Rohmer back in 1912 — even people like my younger self, who had never read a novel or seen a movie about Fu Manchu, yet could still recognize him as the obvious prototype for several comic-book supervillains I had read about, including Marvel’s Mandarin and Yellow Claw, and DC’s Dr. Tzin-Tzin. Concerns that the “Yellow Peril” stereotype epitomized by Fu Manchu and his derivatives was offensive to people of Asian descent? I regret to say that such weren’t on my radar at all in 1973 — and while this is no excuse, my indifference was (I believe) common to many, and possibly most, of the white Americans who were consuming (and producing) the pop culture artifacts that continued to perpetuate this stereotype.
Cover to TV Guide, June 23, 1973.
Of course, per the Bullpen Bulletin reproduced above, it didn’t appear that Marvel was planning to simply adapt Rohmer’s novels; rather, Fu would be sharing the spotlight, at least to some extent, with a newly-created character — his son, who was said to have “mastered the martial arts of judo, karate — and kung fu!” That latter italicization was meaningful, because while the Japanese martial arts of judo and karate had long been familiar to American audiences, the Chinese term “kung fu” had only recently come to prominence — but was beginning to outshine those other Asian fighting styles in terms of pop-culture appeal, even so. This surge in popularity was unquestionably due in part to a recent influx of martial arts films from Hong Kong, though in this particular moment, it probably owed at least as much, if not more, to a certain ABC prime-time television series that had begun airing in 1972 — said series likely being the only reason that my younger self was at all familiar with the term, as I wouldn’t see a martial arts movie for years to come, but was a big fan of the Kung Fu TV show.
Regardless of the martial arts angle, the Bullpen Bulletin that ran in August’s Marvel’s comics was quite clear that the name of the new series, and presumably its star, was Fu Manchu. So it’s fascinating that just one month later, the September edition of the column — the one that announced the debut of the new feature in that same month — made it very clear that the direction and focus of the series had changed, at what must have been close to the last minute:
You have to figure that someone at Marvel — my guess is Marvel’s publisher, Stan Lee — looked at what had been the plan up to this point and said, “Hey, you know what? I think our audience is going to care a lot more about the kung fu stuff than they will Fu Manchu.” And I’m pretty sure that person was right (though obviously there’s no way to ever test that particular theory).
In any event, the two creators who’d come up with the new feature in the first place — writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin — must have been pleased with how things turned out, since their original pitch had never had anything to do with Sax Rohmer’s famous creation. As Englehart related decades later for an interview published in Alter Ego #103 (Jul., 2011):
The Kung Fu television program had appeared and was a huge hit. Jim Starlin and I were pals. Alan Weiss, Steve Harper, and various other people — young people in the creative community — were up to my place on a Saturday night and we were about to go out to dinner. Steve Harper said “I’m going to stick around here and watch a TV show.” We all asked him if he was nuts, but he said it was a really cool show, so we stuck around and watched Kung Fu. I think it was the second episode. We really liked it. I mean we really liked it, the whole concept, the way it was set up. Starlin and I were particularly into it…
From that show — and there’s no mystery about it — we decided we wanted to do a Kung Fu comic ourselves. We created Shang-Chi together… [Marvel editor-in-chief] Roy [Thomas] had not been captivated by the show, and when we went to him he was just not sure…
Roy Thomas picks up the story here, via an interview published in Comic Book Artist #7 (Feb., 2000):
Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart came to me with this idea for a book… I was aware that Englehart and these guys were fans of the Kung Fu TV show… It was an interesting show that had the youth market, but because it was a Warner [Bros. Television] show, we knew that we weren’t going to get it as a comic book [since DC, like WBTV, was a Warner Communications company]. We thought about it but decided that all we would do is give DC the idea to do it. DC didn’t need that because [writer-editor] Denny O’Neil and somebody else wanted to do Kung Fu as a comic book and I heard that they went to [publisher] Carmine [Infantino] and told him, “Let’s do Kung Fu. It’s a Warner show, it’ll be good, the kids love it, it isn’t big in the ratings but it brings in the right audience.” I heard that Carmine said, “We’re not interested in that.” So one of the guys said, “But if we don’t do it, maybe Marvel will.” Carmine is reputed to have said, “Don’t worry. If Marvel does Kung Fu, we’ll do Fu Manchu.” [laughter] I heard this story a day or two after it allegedly took place and I didn’t even care if it was true or not, because it was kind of funny. So a little later, when Starlin and Englehart came to pitch the book, my only real creative contribution was that I said, “Hey, guess who we can make Shang-Chi’s father?” I thought that it would be fun to tie in another top literary character with Marvel, so we ended up securing the rights to Fu Manchu. So actually DC ended up with neither Kung Fu nor Fu Manchu.
Years later, in a sidebar to the Alter Ego #103 interview with Steve Englehart quoted earlier, Thomas (the editor of Alter Ego, for anyone who doesn’t know) reflected that the decision to license Fu Manchu came back to haunt Marvel, for reasons that (for better or worse) had nothing to do with the offensiveness of the “Yellow Peril” trope: “Marvel was never able to let “Shang-Chi” be printed in France because of a particular licensing situation there — and today [i.e., 2011], sadly, Fu Manchu’s presence may indeed be the main stumbling-block to seeing the series reprinted in Marvel Masterworks or Essentials volumes. Sorry about that.” (For the record, Marvel was ultimately able to reach an agreement with the Sax Rohmer estate allowing them reprint the series in Omnibus and Epic Collection volumes, beginning in 2016.)
Whatever second thoughts Thomas (or others at Marvel over the years) might later have had about melding Fu Manchu with kung fu, back in 1973 the die had been cast. “Master of Kung Fu” reached newsstands on September 4, 1973 — though not in its own title. Rather, Englehart and Starlin’s first story of Shang-Chi (the hero’s name translates to “the rising and advancing of a spirit” in English, according to Englehart — though some Chinese language speakers might disagree) appeared in the fifteenth issue of Special Marvel Edition — an all-purpose title which up to this point had been devoted to reprinting old Thor (issues #1-4) and Sgt. Fury (#5-14) stories.
In “Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu!”, the two creators (joined by Al Milgrom on inks) told how the young son of Fu Manchu, raised in seclusion in the Honan Province of China to believe his father was a force for peace and progress in the world, was sent to England to assassinate Fu’s enemy, the aged Dr. Petrie. He was successful in his mission, but before he could escape, he was confronted by Petrie’s friend and colleague, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who told Shang-Chi the truth about his dad — including the details of how Fu had put Smith in a wheelchair, years before. A shaken Shang returned home to question his mother (a white American woman never given a name in Marvel’s comics*), who confirmed his suspicions; then, after traveling to New York City to confront his father in the heart of his international headquarters, he renounced his heritage, declaring himself Fu Manchu’s implacable enemy from this point forward.
Two months later, the Englehart-Starlin-Milgrom team continued the story in Special Marvel Edition #16, as Fu Manchu dispatched his operative Midnight — a young African man who’d been raised alongside Shang-Chi — to kill his errant offspring. Shang was unable to dissuade his lifelong friend from this course, and in the climax of their battle, Midnight fell to his death (a seemingly final end that, naturally, wouldn’t prevent the character from making multiple future appearances in Avengers, Silver Surfer, and other titles. Comics, y’all.).
As regular readers of this blog may have already guessed, your humble blogger didn’t buy either of these issues when they were new on the stands. I don’t recall making any specific decision to pass on them; rather, I suspect it was just a matter of “Master of Kung Fu” being a new, untried feature competing for my attention (and money) against a whole lot of other comics, and not having quite enough appeal to my sixteen-year-old self to make the cut… at least, not until January, 1974. By that time, however, I’d become a big fan of Jim Starlin, thanks to his work on Captain Marvel, as well as an even bigger fan than I already had been of Steve Englehart, thanks to his recent standout work in Captain America, the “Doctor Strange” strip in Marvel Premiere, and elsewhere. If Englehart and Starlin were collaborating on a series — any series — I knew I needed to check it out.
And so, when the 17tth issue of Special Marvel Edition Master of Kung Fu showed up in the spinner rack with its cover of uncertain provenance (Ernie Chan certainly had a hand in the inking, but other than that, who knows?), I snapped it up and took it home to read…
Our storytellers employ a “split-screen” effect on the first three pages of “Lair of the Lost!” to present different scenes simultaneously; it’s a device we’ve seen Starlin use before in Captain Marvel, so I’m guessing he’s responsible for its presence here, as well (though it could have been Englehart’s idea, of course).
According to the Grand Comics Database, “Al”, “Jim” and “Steve” are indeed based — visually, at least –on exactly who you think they must be.
Black Jack Tarr is an original creation of Englehart and Starlin; not so Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who made his debut in the same 1912 short story by Sax Rohmer, “The Zayat Kiss”, as saw the first appearance of Dr. Fu Manchu himself, and then went on to serve as the villain’s primary adversary throughout the series.
“…sending his son to assassinate a man the fiend had sworn not to harm again!” According to an interview with Jim Starlin published in Comic Book Artist #7, Shang-Chi’s killing of Dr. Petrie in Special Marvel Edition #15 came about through a misunderstanding between him and Steve Englehart — one that came to cause Marvel some trouble with Sax Rohmer’s family:
When we were working on it [i.e., SME #15], I mixed up the two British characters, and the wrong one ended up getting killed off in my notes. [laughs] Englehart saw this, and thought I had definitely wanted to switch the killings, so we went on with it with the wrong one being killed. This went on for years until the widow of Sax Rohmer came back at us saying, “You’ve got to change this” (This was long after I’d been off the book). There’d been some story where Fu Manchu had promised not to kill the one guy. So he ended up getting brought back later on.
For the record, it would up to writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy to reveal in Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #3 (Mar., 1975) that the “Dr. Petrie” “slain” by Shang had been a lifelike robot, and that the real Petrie was still alive and well.
At this point, it behooves us to address the issue of Asian skin coloration in this and other issues of Master of Kung Fu (and also, to a limited extent, in other American color comics of this era). In the panel shown above, all of the human characters whose faces we can see present as Asian, regardless of skin tone. But while the majority are all colored with the same hue that comics used for white characters, Fu Manchu is presented as having skin of a pale, chalky yellow. Meanwhile, as we’ve already seen, Fu’s half-Asian son Shang-Chi has been given an equally unnatural pigmentation — a shade I’ve seen variously described as “golden”, “bronze”, or “pumpkin-orange”.**
The choices regarding Asian skin tone in Master of Kung Fu appear to have been made by Steve Englehart, who handled the coloring as well as the scripting for the first Shang-Chi story in Special Marvel Edition #15. His reasoning was set forth in the letters column of Captain America #172 (Apr., 1974), of all places, where in response to a comment from Harvey Phillips of Houston, TX about the unnatural yellow tint used for the Yellow Claw and other Chinese characters in recent issues of that series, the anonymous Bullpenner handling the column (identified by the Grand Comics Database as Englehart himself) replied:
The problem with coloring comics, Harvey, is that the so-called “four-color” process we use allows only 32 possible color combinations — not nearly enough to make all the distinctions we’d like. We can get good approximations of Caucasian, Negroid, and American Indian flesh — but Oriental coloring is simply not available. The closest we can come is Caucasian.
However, in the early days of comics (when there were only 16 colors, by the way) the practice was to color Orientals solid yellow, and many people in the industry still automatically color that way. Even newer folks usually use a pale yellow out of respect for convention. That’s not a good reason, but it’s the truth.
Still, change is in the air. When Steve colored the premiere issue of MASTER OF KUNG FU himself, he used Caucasian for Shang-Chi’s Oriental opponents (although Fu Manchu, the personification of the Yellow Peril myth and a man who always dressed in yellow, was given pale yellow skin as a motif — and Shang-Chi, he of mixed blood, was orange).
Naturally, Marvel isn’t trying to slur anyone; we’re just doing what we can within the limits of the medium. But we’d be more than interested in hearing Marveldom Assembled’s opinions on this subject. Any takers?
The information regarding the technical limitations of the comics coloring process of the time is accurate, but, of course, the focus on those limitiations avoids confronting the reasoning behind the choices Englehart made within them. As critic Douglas Wolk observes in discussing this same lettercol exchange in his 2021 book All of the Marvels (highly recommended, BTW):
The larger question Englehart’s note doesn’t address is why any Asian characters would not simply be colored with the closest available skin tone to reality — why it would be important to defy verisimilitude to differentiate them from white characters at the coloring stage.
Add to that the fact that “Caucasian” coloring had been used for years for such prominent Asian characters as the Iron Man villain the Mandarin (like the Yellow Claw, an obvious Fu Manchu analogue) without it being an issue — not to mention it being used for Englehart’s own recent creation of Mantis, currently appearing over in Avengers — and the decisions the writer made in 1973 regarding the coloring of Fu Manchu and Shang-Chi seem even more misguided and unfortunate. For years to come, even after virtually all other “Orientals” began to routinely be given the same skin coloration as white people, these two prominent characters remained locked into the yellow and orange visual identities established in 1973. And though “Marveldom Assembled” did indeed weigh in on the subject in response to that CA #172 lettercol invite — regularly and frequently, throughout the rest of the decade — I’m not sure that they ever got a better answer than what was offered there.
The “Murder Mansion”‘s next trap is a huge chandelier that suddenly detaches from the ceiling and falls when Shang-Chi passes beneath it. Shang somehow avoids its crushing weight just in the nick of time, prompting an exasperated Sir Denis to wonder: “Did he hear the rushing air of the chandelier’s fall? Did he see its descending shadow?” Never mind, he decides; the next one’ll get him, for sure.
That next one comes in the form of heavy oaken panels that fall on either end of the hallway in which Shang stands, confining him within as the space begins to fill with poison gas…
Asked in a 2010 interview for Back Issue #48 whether he used reference material as a basis for the martial arts stances and moves in his “Master of Kung Fu” stories, Jim Starlin replied:
No, no—I was just making this stuff up as I went along. There were books out at the time, but I was pretty much just faking it. [laughter]
Thankful for the years of physical conditioning that are the only reason his hands are simply bruised after punching the heads off robots, and not broken, Shang-Chi proceeds to make his way through the Murder Mansion, until, on a narrow balcony, he faces the house’s most dangerous threat yet: its owner.
Shang-Chi sends Black Jack Tarr crashing through the banister to fall to the ground floor, far below. Looking down, he’s unsurprised — but pleased — to see that Tarr has survived the impact, and is already struggling to rise to his feet. Shang is already sprinting forward, however, guided by the sound of the aged Smith’s labored breathing, so that he quickly arrives at a locked door behind which he knows he’ll find his quarry:
It’s a strong, dramatic ending, and one that takes a large step towards what will eventually become the series’ ongoing status quo — though that’s a journey that would ultimately be completed by other hands than those of Master of Kung Fu‘s creators. MoKF #17 would in fact be the last issue of the title that Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin would work on together — though it wasn’t quite their last collaboration on a Shang-Chi story.
That’s because just two weeks after this comic arrived on stands, Marvel released the first issue of a new black-and-white magazine devoted to the martial arts phenomenon, The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. And though Neal Adams’ painted cover put the spotlight on the late (and already legendary) film and TV star Bruce Lee, the lead comics story in the issue was — what else? — a 15-page “Master of Kung Fu” tale by Englehart and Starlin. It’s a sign of just how fast the popularity of martial arts was growing at this time — or, at least, a sign of how eager the Marvel brass were to cash in on what they perceived to be the trend’s pop-cultural heat — that, a mere six months after deciding to feature kung fu in a new “Fu Manchu” strip, Marvel had not only given that (re-named) strip its own designated title, but had made it the sort-of flagship of a whole new martial arts mini-line (the third title of which would, like Deadly Hands, come out in February, 1974 — and, thus, will be discussed in this space next month).
Englehart would remain involved with the feature for another few months, writing two more issues of Master of Kung Fu (which went monthly following #19) and one more Shang-Chi story for the bi-monthly Deadly Hands of Kung Fu before the added workload made it impossible for him to continue. But Starlin was out as of DHoKF #1. As he explained to interviewer Shaun Clancy in Back Issue #48:
I had never read any Fu Manchu… they asked us to put him in Master of Kung Fu, and we did. Only after the first book came out did [Japanese-American comics creator] Larry Hama come up to me and ask, “Have you ever read a Fu Manchu book?” [laughs] I said no, and he advised me to go down to the bookstore and pick one up, which I did, and I was horrified as it was some of the most racist stuff I had ever read.
Steve Englehart doesn’t seem to have shared his friend’s distaste for the Sax Rohmer material, regardless of it having been foisted on him and Starlin by Roy Thomas. In an interview for Comic Book Artist #7, published in 2000, he stated:
Roy and I have very similar reading backgrounds and we were both big Fu Manchu fans, as we were both big Doc Savage and big Robert E. Howard fans — we were very much on the same wavelength. I was very happy to do Fu Manchu, and I liked the idea of marrying the two concepts…
Fairly quickly, we got letters from people saying, “Fu Manchu is an evil racist stereotype and what the hell is he doing in a Marvel comic?” I have personally never bought that argument. My feeling is that Dr. Doom is an evil Latverian stereotype, but with no Latverians protesting his depiction. Fu Manchu is just a villain; he’s not evil because he’s Chinese; he’s evil and he’s Chinese.
Not having ever read one of Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories (and unlikely to do so in the future), your humble blogger is not the best person to speak to the question of whether Fu really is “just a villain” who happens to be Chinese in them. Still, I can’t refrain from making the obvious rejoinder to Englehart’s comparison with Dr. Doom: that the reason that no Latverians protest Doom’s depiction is that there are no Latverians in the real world. There are people of Asian heritage, however, and if some of them find the portrayal of their cultural identity in Rohmer’s work to be offensive, or even harmful, it seems that that opinion shouldn’t be dismissed. In the end, these concerns don’t prevent me from considering Master of Kung Fu #17 to be a very well-crafted and entertaining comic book, or from considering the series as a whole to be, in Douglas Wolk’s words, “a genuinely special, doggedly idiosyncratic piece of art” — but they do make both assessments a bit more complicated.
UPDATE, 1/21/24, 8:45 p.m.: Per a tip received on Facebook from my friend Neill Eisenstein, here’s a scan of the unused cover that Starlin and Milgrom produced for Master of Kung Fu #17. Why was this illustration passed over in favor of the very similar one that saw print? You got me.
*According to Steve Englehart’s interview in Alter Ego #103, the decision to make Shang-Chi half-Chinese, half-white was imposed upon him and Jim Starlin from above, after “somebody decided that they needed a white hook for the audience.” It’s worth noting that, in doing so, Marvel was following the lead of the Kung Fu TV show, in which the half-Chinese, half-white protagonist, Kwai Chang Caine, was portrayed by David Carradine (a white actor).
Adam Warlock in Marvel Premiere #1 (Apr., 1972). Text by Roy Thomas; art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.
**Believe it or not, Shang-Chi wasn’t unique among Marvel heroes of this period in having this particular skin color — although the other series star sharing his unnatural pigmentation, Adam Warlock, was 1) an artificially-created inhuman being, and 2) otherwise pretty much came across as a white guy.
I saw these, but never bought them, though liking what I saw of Starlin’s and Gulacy’s work on the title.
Loved that Deadly Hands cover by Neal Adams. It became apparent at that point that he would only pencil one or two comics stories per year, but became prolific as a cover artist on the Marvel mags for a few years, then a few Tarzan paperbacks for Ballantine Books, before returning to DC for Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, and producing another flurry of covers for DC (Superman, Action Comics, World’s Finest, House of Mystery, etc.). Then (to my eyes, at least) it seemed like Neal Adams had vanished in 1978. I didn’t see any new comics work from him at all until 1981 when he showed up in Epic Illustrated #7 (an old story he drew in the 1970s for a failed Eric Burdon album project) and Bizarre Adventures #28 (with Larry Hama).
I *did* find one Neal Adams-Dick Giordano story which saw print in 1979, but it was drawn back in 1974 for Red Circle’s never-published Black Hood #1. It is called “Life’s Not Like a Comic Book,” and can be seen here, with the rest of the issue:
http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2009/12/if-you-blinked-you-missed-black-hood.html?m=1
As for the colouring of Shang-Chi and other Asian characters, he did look too much like the Man of Bronze (Doc Savage) in complexion. Making the color a bit less saturated might have helped. But Marvel was pretty clumsy with its initial efforts at colouring non-whites. Background characters who were supposed to be African-American in Ditko’s Strange Tales (#146, for instance) or Amazing Spider-Man (#33, for instance) were grey, not brown.
Of course, the “real” surprise ending of that story is that Sir Denis is actually Oliver Queen/Green Arrow. Shang-Chi helped him complete his post-op recovery:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wfhfkqPckoM/VnuKC7CuyGI/AAAAAAAAOvw/9cGpntornYs/s0-Ic42/RCO031.jpg
HAH!
🤣
Any of the covers that Adams produced for the B&W mags meant they were must-buys for me – his Conan and Dracula covers were as impressive as his Tarzan ones. I think I’m right in saying that he used coloured inks on them to impressive effect.
I bought quite a few issues of Deadly Hands with his covers – definitely a few from Enter The Dragon, and there was one that had Shang-Chi on it, I think. His cover of Billy Jack was also my introduction to that film, although I still haven’t seen it.
Billy Jack hasn’t exactly aged well over the years and the sequels are definitely not worth the effort. It is, however, notable for being the first film appearance of Cheech and Chong, one of the few really stand out parts of what was otherwise a mid-level seventies action/drama film.
I could find no reference to Cheech & Chong appearing in BILLY JACK (1971). But BILLY JACK was, itself, a sequel to THE BORN LOSERS (1967).
I believe Howard Hesseman, later famed as Dr. Dr. Johnny Fever in the US TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, was in Billy Jack.
You know, it’s funny. I saw Billy Jack in theatres when it came out in the seventies and probably never watched it again. One of the few strong memories I ever had of it was the comedy routine the two stoners did in the middle of it. At some point in the early 80’s, somebody told me those two stoners were Cheech and Chong and since this was before VHS and I had no way to check, I took them at their word and never thought about it again until I wrote the above response. Once I was corrected, I made the simple trip over to IMDb and saw that I’d spent the last fifty years misinformed. It was Howard Hessman and some other dude. Mea Culpa. You learn something new every day. My apologies.
I picked up the first issue of MOKF and skimmed to see if it was worth buying. Saw Fu Manchu send his son to kill Dr. Petrie and lost interest.
The thing was, I had read the Fu Manchu books and loved them — wild, outrageous thrillers with the most sinister of masterminds the villain (the racist aspects of this flew over my head as a kid) — but at the same time, part of what made Fu Manchu stand out was that he was an honorable man. If he gave his word, he kept it, and the spirit rather than just the letter (none of the “I said I’d let you sail away from my island — didn’t say I wouldn’t blow up the boat once you were ‘away’!”). While Starlin shrugs it off (“There’d been some story where Fu Manchu had promised not to kill the one guy.”) it was a fundamental part of Fu Manchu’s character and if they weren’t going to get that right …
Rereading the books as an adult the racism was obvious, but Fu Manchu was a more interesting character — an anti-imperialist dedicated to liberating China from Western control (which does not, however, erase the racism). Of course this was in an era when ending “the dominance of the white race” as Smith once put it was inherently a Bad Thing for Rohmer and his audience, but it would have been an interesting take for Marvel (though given the baggage Fu Manchu carries, I don’t know it would fix things).
(This got much more complicated as the century wore on and Rohmer had to position his villain within the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and post-war Communist China, as i blogged about here: https://atomicjunkshop.com/twentieth-century-geopolitics-and-east-west-relations-in-the-shadow-of-dr-fu-manchu/).
Speaking of stereotypes, the ending, while dramatic, is very much a disability cliche — “you can walk if you only try!” which ties in with a broader view that no, disability and discrimination against the disabled aren’t tying you down — you can overcome them if you just work hard (https://frasersherman.com/2013/05/16/comic-books-of-isolation/)!
Okay, all that venting done, great analysis as usual, particularly of the color question. And much as I love Englehart’s work, his “Doctor Doom is a Latverian stereotype” is … not a good argument.
I will recommend William F. Wu’s “The Yellow Peril” for anyone who’s curious about the pre-Rohmer cliches of “sinister orientals” and how he built on them to create the definitive character (dubious achievement though that is).
Thanks for your thought-provoking comments!
I do think, though, that the bit about Sir Denis being able to walk was not so much a knock at disabilities (a cliche you accurately point out) as it was to indicate that Shang-Chi was so attuned to others that he could sense this was a case where the character really COULD walk. It was not intended to make a statement about all people with disabilities. Or maybe I’m just rationalizing…
I did love Fu Manchu’s cameo in the Black Lama arc in Iron Man. When someone asks why the A-listers like Doom, Red Skull and Fu Manchu aren’t playing, it turns out Fu Manchu told the Black Lama “I know exactly what your real game is. I’m not fool enough to play.”
I recall a M*A*S*H episode where a soldier came to the 4077th paralyzed due to a psychological block of some sort. I’ve heard of such a thing in real life, though I believe it’s extremely rare. (The episode, if I’m not mistaken, came out after this particular comic, so it couldn’t have been an influence of Englehart and Starlin.)
Yeah, it’s not that it can’t happen but it’s a common enough trope to bug me. Though not as bad as “the disabled dude is faking it!” which I’ve also seen quite a bit.
I recall some M*A*S*H episodes with Larry Hama in them—yes, the comics creator! He hid his long hair under his helmet. Multi-talented fellow.
I had forgotten about that! He wrote G.I. Joe for Marvel after he left M*A*S*H, if I recall correctly?
That was an interesting write-up about how Rohmer attempted to pivot the character of Fu Manchu during the Cold War.
Thank you. That kind of transition over time fascinates me.
Around this time, DC published a facsimile addition of Detective Comics # 27, the first Batman (or as the story had it, “Bat-Man”). One of the back up strips was an adoptation of Sax Romer’s Fu Manchu, a reprint of a comic strip by Leo O’Mealia.
Where I lived, the first Master of Kung Fu book never hit the stands (I assume the RPI comics fans reserved the copies). The Second issue hit the stands and promptly sold out, The third issue was the first I bought.
It was nice work and it cetainly matched something in the zeitgeist. GCD has the cover as being by Ron Wilson and Earnie Chan (with possibly some retouching by Romita and/or Starlin).
The sense I get now, reading these storiies is less racism and more unfamiliarity and exoticism. As an old guy, early 1974 does not seem that long ago. However, much has changed and a kot of things that seemed exotic snf neat in Asian (or even Hispanic/Latino) culture has become more mainstream. People are people; talents vary among individuals, but worth doesn’t. Cultures differ but all have artifacts and tropes that will become broadly popular (American-style Chinese Food is popular in Germany, Chicken Vindaloo is the carryout/comfort food chsmpion of the UK and Pizza and Tacos rule the world.)
Hi, John,
DETECTIVE COMICS ran a few Fu Manchu stories in its early days, and I doubt they were any more enlightened. In fact, have you ever seen the cover of DETECTIVE COMICS #1? Yikes…
f
That first issue has so many sinister Asians after reading the Millennium special reprint I told a friend they should have worked that into the title.
“Yikes,” indeed. (Drawn by Vin Sullivan, one of the guys who thought Siegal & Shuster might have a viable idea woth Superman.
Karate and judo in Silver Age Marvel were treated like ninjutsu would be down the road, an uncanny system that made you invincible (“Captain America taught me strength doesn’t matter when I can use judo to turn it against you!”). Learning there was another kind of martial art, this kung fu thing, was quite mind-blowing as a teen.
“GCD has the cover as being by Ron Wilson and Earnie Chan (with possibly some retouching by Romita and/or Starlin).”
GCD is actually much more tentative in its attributions than your phrasing implies, John. They put question marks after the names of both Wilson and Starlin, as well as for Chan’s credit as penciller.
Which is why I wrote “uncertain provenance” and included a link to the actual GCD entry.
Hi, Alan,
As for the meta- scene at the beginning of this story, Starlin by this time knew he was leaving the book, which is why the “Jim” character goes tearing off. (And someone can correct if I’m wrong, but I believe that the only issue that Starlin did the full pencils for was #15. Issues #16 and 17 were him doing breakdowns, leaving Milgrom to do the finishes.
In the letter column to DR. STRANGE #14, when that book went monthly, Englehart wrote that he saw Shang-Chi as a character who grow and change over time (the rising and advancing of the spirit, right?), and when Marvel decided to do a separate black-and-white book with the character AS WELL as the color comic, Englehart saw that as a watering down of what he wanted to do and decided to split, which he would do with issue #19. He didn’t mention the workload that you cite, although that might have been a factor. (Englehart had a sometime problematic relationship with deadlines back in those days.)
In any event, I always was curious about the direction Englehart would have taken with this character. I can see Fu Manchu becoming less of a direct presence leaving the focus more on Shang-Chi. And I definitely recall reading somewhere that Englehart would not have had Shang-Chi working for British Intelligence, but that was a choice made by Moench and Gulacy (and, presumably, Thomas), so he let that go.
When Brunner left DR. STRANGE after the Silver Dagger arc, I remember there was a teaser to a black-and-white series that he and Englehart would do featuring Fu Manchu in the 1930s. That never happened, but I do remember that Englehart planned to do a three-part story in DR. STRANGE in late 1976, illustrated by Brunner and guest-starring Shang-Chi. THAT is one of a number of stories I was really looking forward to seeing in print. But then Gerry Conway became editor, and wellll….
You’ll notice in all this I’ve mentioned nothing about skin tones and racism. I’m with you, Alan, that these things were not really much on the radar of a soon-to-be 15 year old white kid from NJ. Those were different times (to quote the Velvet Underground). I didn’t find the coloring all that distracting (it’s comics, right?), and I thought the characterization of Fu Manchu himself was an attempt to create a villain who could easily have been portrayed as identical to Dr. Doom or other world-conquering villains. Yes, I look back and realize how I should have reacted, but you can’t change the past. The best you can do is try to be a little better going forward.
I was reading comics books for cool story-telling and interesting characters, and I found that with these first issues of the Shang-Chi strip. But I didn’t so love the character that I felt the need to continue after Englehart left.
Thanks for another interesting review, Alan! Cheers!
Another excellent piece, Alan!
Sax Rohmer, the creator of Fu Manchu, said that he once had a visit from his creation, in which the doctor told him:
“It is your belief that you created me. It is my belief that I shall exist when you are but smoke.”
(But, of course, as Spider-Man tells Shang-Chi in *Giant-Size Spider-Man* #2, Fu Manchu is just a fictional character…right? Right?)
(Naturally, Spidey! Just like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, unless you take Vincent Starrett’s poem seriously, that is:
“221B”
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears—
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.)
Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Charlie Chan, based him on a real-life Chinese detective named Chang Apana, thinking that given the popularity of evil Asian masterminds, a heroic Asian investigator might prove a novelty and find an audience. (Which he did.)
Like Fu Manchu, the Chan of the novels is a richer character than you’d expect from cinematic portrayals. In one of the books, he muses on feeling that he’s not sure of his place in the world, unlike his mother (who considers herself Chinese though she hasn’t lived there in fifty years) or his children (who are contentedly and solidly American; his eleventh child, a boy named Barry, may feel himself especially so, as his name comes from a young American who helps Chan on a case).
For those who are interested: Dr. Petrie narrates the first three Fu Manchu books; the talking stick passes to Shan Greville for the fourth and fifth entries; a third person narrator handles the next three; Bart Kerrigan claims the narrative chores in the ninth and tenth books; and the remaining works are back in the third.
When the series begins, Fu Manchu’s nemesis is simply “Nayland Smith”; in the interval between *The Hand of Fu Manchu* and *Daughter of Fu Manchu,* King George V has seen fit to knight him, and he becomes “Sir Denis Nayland Smith.”
Here are the titles of the Rohmer volumes:
The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1913) (U.S. title: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu)
The Devil Doctor (1916) (U.S. title: The Return of Dr Fu-Manchu)
The Si-Fan Mysteries (1917) (U.S. title: The Hand of Fu-Manchu)
Daughter of Fu Manchu (1931)
The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
The Bride of Fu Manchu (1933) (U.S. title: Fu Manchu’s Bride)
The Trail of Fu Manchu (1934)
President Fu Manchu (1936)
The Drums of Fu Manchu (1939)
The Island of Fu Manchu (1941)
Shadow of Fu Manchu (1948)
Re-Enter Dr. Fu Manchu (1957) (U.S. title: Re-Enter Fu Manchu)
Emperor Fu Manchu (1959), Rohmer’s last novel published before his death
The Wrath of Fu Manchu (1973), a posthumous anthology containing the title novella, first published in 1952, and three later short stories: “The Eyes of Fu Manchu” (1957), “The Word of Fu Manchu” (1958), and “The Mind of Fu Manchu” (1959).
Time to listen to the New York Dolls’s “Bad Detective” and to add Rohmer’s *She Sleeps* to this year’s binge list from Abebooks (should have bought it at that thrift shop in Canada six years ago)…
“Charlie Chan” by Yunte Huang is an excellent biography of Chang Apana and the Charlie Chan character. The films, despite Chan being played by a white guy in yellowface were popular in China for giving a Chinese guy the hero role.
Thank you for the recommendation. When time permits, I’ll check it out.
Correction:
The Rohmer title is not *She Sleeps,* but *She Who Sleeps.*
Back in ’74, I was no more interested in martial arts comics than I was horror books, so I easily passed over MoKF on the spinner rack without even a second thought, despite the presence of Englehart and Starlin, who I loved (in fact, I probably didn’t even notice the book enough to check to see who wrote and illustrated it in the first place). I was a fan of Kung Fu (though not the reboot that came out on the CW a few years ago) and I believe at that point, I’d even seen a Bruce Lee movie, but Shang-Chi and later, Iron Fist and whoever else followed that was not my thing, so I have no fifty-year old thoughts to dredge up about this book.
As for the racism inherent in the use of Fu Manchu, almost all use of Asians in American entertainment was racist (except for Sulu in Star Trek) and therefore, this racism was not only not a surprise, but expected (and probably accepted as normal). As we saw with both Caine and Shang-Chi, the only way an Asian character could be a hero was if he was half-white, as if Chinese heritage alone, with it’s standards of honor and dignity were not enough to lift them to the level of white hero-worship. Not true in the case of Bruce Lee, of course, but he was a Chinese creation, exported to the US and that was different. Looking back, some of Englehart’s comments in defense of this characterization (as well as his coloring choices) don’t read as being very enlightened. I won’t call him racist, myself, but someone else might.
In regards to the coloring, I’m aware of the severe limitations of four-color printing in 1974, but had Englehart or anyone else at Marvel, truly cared about the depiction of Asians in American comics, I’m sure it could have been addressed and handled more effectively than it was here. The reality is, no one thought about it, because we hadn’t been made to see how defamatory it was, and how insulting to an entire race of people. What a shame.
While I may have sampled his solo book abit during Gelacy’s heyday, the vast majority of my experience of Shang-Chi came from his team-ups with other heroes. None of those team-ups stuck with me enough to remember them off the top of my head now, I have a vague memory of reading a few. I did see the Shang-Chi movie a couple of years ago appreciated the efforts to correct the injustices of earlier stereotypes, even though I didn’t think the over-all film was all that great. Fun and enjoyable, yes, but not great. Anyway, thanks Alan for the rundown. Once again, you take a book I never cared about as a kid and make it interesting to look at as an adult.
Bruce Lee was one-quarter European (from his mother’s side) and three-quarters Chinese. The “Kung Fu” story premise was his, but Bruce didn’t look 50% western, so the role went to David Carradine. Lee was displeased, to put it mildly.
Which, in a backwards way, proves my point. Lee may not have been 100% Chinese, but he was perceived to be, and that was a strike against him in anything other than a Chinese film. That changed a bit down the road as he became a bigger star, but unfortunately, he passed away before much could be done with it.
No, the “Kung Fu” creator had been pushing the series since well before Lee pitched a Western martial-arts series: https://www.cbr.com/bruce-lee-kung-fu-tv-series-idea-warrior/
Bruce Lee was also educated by the LaSallian Christian Brothers in Hong Kong and was born in the USA and had birthright US Citizenship.
Able man, interesting life.
Matthew Polly’s “Bruce Lee” is an excellent biography.
Did you see the Shang-Chi MCU film?
I’m not much of a movie guy but HAD to see this on the big screen. Kung fu madness done Marvels tyle was iirrestible and it was amazing to watch!
I was a little disappointed the rings/bracelets didn’t have the diversity of effects the rings did in comics. otherwise it was awesome. And I was happy Aquafina was just a friend and not secretly pining for her buddy all these years.
I did, Mike. And I liked it a lot!
50 years ago, although I liked the Kung Fu series, and my brother Terry, my “Irish twin” (10 months younger than me) was a big fan of the growing number of Martial Arts films being shown on tv, I never got into them myself in a big way, although I found them entertaining enough. I was also familiar with Fu Manchu — I recall seeing at least one film featuring him on tv, but never read any of the novels.
Anyhow, when it came to Master of Kung Fu, initially I was wary, thinking it was just a faddish thing. I did happen to get issue 24, but didn’t get another one until # 51, and I can’t say why I happened to get that one, just pure happenstance that my finances had increased enough for me to get more comics and I took a chance on another MoKF. Yep, alas, just after Gulacy’s celebrated run had ended, but at any rate I liked it enough to keep on collecting from then on until the very end of the series several years later. Eventually, I also managed to get all the back issues I had missed, including issue #17. Starlin’s version of Black Jack Tarr looked quite a bit different than the model I’d encountered in those much later issues, much bulkier and balder – on the cover, he looks unnaturally tall! I was also a bit mystified as to just how Shang Chi could know that Sir Nayland Smith actually had the capacity to get up and stand and walk again after having spent so many years in a wheelchair. Were Englehart & Starlin having their hero play the role of a faith healer? By the time I read this, I’d already read
Moench’s much later story in which Tarr & Chi returned, now as allies, to the “murder mansion” (and much later I read about the notorious Henry Holmes genuine “murder mansion” in Chicago, wherein he reputedly murdered at least dozens of unwitting guests trapped in their rooms in the 1890s). MoKF was a key issue in the series, both for introducing Tarr and for getting Nayland back on his feet and setting the stage for them forming an alliance with Shang Chi, so certainly interesting in those aspects, as well as for Starlin’s artistry. Seems if not for the Fu Manchu connection, Starlin may have stuck with the series a bit longer at least, although I suspect he wouldn’t have stuck with it all that much longer as he already seemed much more interested in crafting his own stories rather than illustrating those of other writers.
As to the changing of the title and focus of the series, it certainly worked for the best in the long run that Marvel did not make Fu Manchu the star of the series, which would likely made it too much like Tomb of Dracula (hmm, is Dracula an evil stereotype of Transylvanians or Romanians, who actually do exist?). Also, it was a very good thing that Moench was able to get away from having to feature Fu Manchu in every issue and do many multi-issue stories in which Fu Manchu wasn’t involved at all. I loved the Fu Manchu epics Moench did with Gulacy, Zeck and Day, but wouldn’t really have wanted to see Fu Manchu as the main baddie in every single MoKF story, just as I wouldn’t want to see the Red Skull in every Captain America story or Dr. Doom in every FF story, etc.
BTW, just out of curiosity, I looked up to see how Japanese, Chinese and Indian comics colorists of the 1970s showed people of their ethnicities in their comics — based on what came up, and certainly not an exhaustive overview, they predominantly colored them as “white” or occasionally a very light brown, but no pale yellow or bright orange. I think the only reason Fu Manchu is problematic in U.S. comics is that there were so few prominent Asian characters in U.S. pop culture of the late 1900s, particularly in comics, and the most prominent were Fu Manchu or obvious variations of him. It’d be, say, similar if the Kingpin or variations of him was the most prominent Euro-American character in popular Asian comics, with white readers protesting, “hey, we’re not all pale, fat, bad-tempered gangsters”. Of course, it would have been more of an apt comparison if all people of European ancestry were shown with porcelain white skin. Despite our language, as best as I can tell no one is ae actually pure white or black or red and only someone sick with jaundice has skin that remotely looks yellow. Even albinos’ skin is more of a very pale red than genuinely white and the darkest “black” skin is still really a very dark brown than genuinely pure black. Our language is based more on rough approximations than exactness.
I admit that back in the 1970s, the coloring of Chi and Manchu didn’t put me off much, although I took note of Bill Wu’s many letters published in MoKF and elsewhere, and they at least raised my consciousness of the offensiveness of the coloring. Thomas and Englehart, et al, should have known better than to use the colors they did in depicting them. There was no good reason to do so, but simply a matter of inertia in holding onto old stereotypes or even creating a new one for Euro-Asians (Terry married a Filipina he met in high school in California and had two sons with her, and while their skin is rather light brown, they certainly aren’t pumpkin orange! One of those sons just retired from the Air Force this month and is currently living in Okinawa, staying there while his wife, also in the Air Force, completes her tour of duty there). A shame about the complications of the stereotype problems in MoKF as I don’t believe any of the creators involved in the series had any racist outlooks, even if they couldn’t fully overcome the biases or outlooks of the culture they grew up in, and overall IMO, Master of Kung Fu was one of the best comics series of the ’70s and early ’80s, in both writing and art.
Another great overview of your own response to this issue and outlook on the cultural aspects, Alan! Lot of fuel for thought.
Interesting analysis of color.
I agree a lot of the issue is the lack of alternative Chinese representation. Some years back I watched a Chinese TV series, “Deja Vu,” and it has a stereotypical Asian mystic spouting cryptic wisdom — but it’s also got Chinese businessmen, a Chinese ballerina, a hypercritical Chinese mother (some character types, it seems, are universal) so it’s no big.
In the case of Fu Manchu/Mandarin/Yellow Claw, it’s also a stereotype that had been around decades which makes it that much more sensitive.
At least unlike Rohmer Fu Manchu wasn’t presented as embodying the Chinese people, just a singular individual. As opposed to “Rising Sun” a couple of decades later in which Michael Crichton warns us not to trust the Japanese because they’re an alien race that doesn’t think like white people.
As if all white people, or any other people of the same ethnic background, all think alike. There are extreme differences of thinking even among biological siblings raised together. If Crichton really believed otherwise, he wasn’t nearly as bright as he was made out to be. But plenty of people can be very intelligent in some areas and total dunces in others, no matter how highbrow (or meager) their educations.
Never knew Shang-Chi was supposed to be half-white, as I’ve only read a handful of the Moench & Gulacy issues from the original run, plus the 2002 miniseries they did. I suspect that it’s an element of the character that was quietly swept under the carpet over the years, because the requirement of a starring character having to be part-Caucasian definitely has not aged well.
Neither have Englehart’s comments aged well. I am, like Alan, a great fan of Englehart’s work, but occasionally I’ve seen his commentary in interviews, both from the times that the works originally appeared, as well as in more recent articles, and I’ve definitely frowned. That comment about how no Latverians are offended by Doctor Doom is especially bad. And he actually used the word “Negroid” in that explanation about skin colors in comic books? Yeah, I guess the mid-1970s were still a very different time.
Anyway, I feel Alan did a great job looking at the origins & early development of the Master of Kung Fu series, as well as its controversies. I hope he’ll do retrospectives on future issues, especially once Moench & Gulacy become the creative team.
See also the “Mohammedans” in the Crusades issue of Defenders. Another thing which makes me wince much more now than it did then.
While MOKF was a book I never more than glanced with, the half-caucasian thing feels like a sop to whoever made the decision (“There, we said he’s part-white, that’s what you said it needed to sell, right?”) as it never came up again. Similarly the Mandarin claims Eurasian parentage in his origin story but it has zero effect on anything in his character or the plot. I guess it’s because mixed-race were another stereotype back when Stan Lee would have been growing up (the fiendish cunning off the oriental mind enhanced by the superiority of the white brain! as the stereotype ran).
Alas, I’ll only be able to touch on the very beginning of the Moench/Gulacy run, Ben, as I foolishly dropped the book just as it was starting to find its post-Englehart footing. 🙁
Believe it or not, “negroid” is still used in archeological forensics and related fields, apparently without controversy. That said, Englehart wasn’t exactly writing a scholarly thesis.
I didn’t think twice about the coloring at the time; however, when they reprinted the series in omnibus format, they missed a big opportunity to color Shang-Chi and Fu Manchu more appropriately. Very disappointing, as the series overall is quite good.
That’s an interesting point. In general, I support Marvel’s decision to reproduce the original colors in their reprint and digital editions — it’s the main reason I’m comfortable using those editions for this blog, as opposed to hunting down (or making my own) direct-from-newsprint scans — but there’s certainly a good argument for an alternative edition in this case.
In this case, they did do some recoloring of other things. I forget where I saw it, but somewhere on line they shared a comparison of some pages recolored of some Gulacy artwork. Normally I, too, prefer the original to be preserved, but since they had abandoned that and were going to the expense of recoloring anyway, it seemed a missed opportunity. I bought the omnibuses anyway, though.
Like so many others here, I also came late to MOKF. I blogged about this almost five (gulp) years ago here: https://crustymud.paradoxcomics.com/kung-foolin/
There was also an interesting article in The Comics Journal on MOKF and Fu Manchu from issue #77; if it’s available on tcj.com, it might be worth checking out for Shang fans. I believe you can also sample most of Rohmer’s Fu Manchu books for free via Project Gutenberg at gutenberg.org.
Another aspect of Master of Kung Fu that I appreciated in my adult years in a way I might not have in my early years of Marvel fandom as a kid was that it was mostly separate from the rest of the Marvel universe. As a kid, I liked how connected much of the Marvel universe was in the ’60s and ’70s but in later years I grew to prefer series that were either entirely separate or at least didn’t require getting 10 or 20 other series to get the full story as seemed to increasingly become the case in many Marvel & DC titles in mid-80s and onwards, with so many mega-events, etc. To my admittedly imperfect recall, the only guest appearance by Marvel characters from outside the MoKF mini-verse were Man-Thing and Dr. Doom. Spider-Man or Thor never happened to just drop by to help save the day or get into a fight over a ridiculous misunderstanding within any issue of MoKF, although Shang Chi made a few guest appearances in other mags, mainly Giant-Size Spider-Man (which I never got) and Marvel Two-In-One. Otherwise, in his own mag, Shang Chi might as well have been off on another planet. I think that much better fit the mood Moench established for the series during his run. I haven’t read any of the stories in which Shang Chi gains a variety of mystical powers. That just strikes me as dumb. Sort of like having Spider-Man evolve into Spider-God!
Shang Chi also guest starred in a couple of really good issues of Rom Spaceknight in late 1982 that had gorgeous Gene Day covers. I think those might have been my introduction to the MOKF characters.
Random thoughts…
An instructive contrast—in 1973… Don McGregor was miles ahead of Englehart in this regard. He took the whole notion of Jungle Action seriously and wrestled with it. In Panther’s Rage, McGregor (and Billy Graham, Rich Buckler) came up with something powerful that has stood the test of time.
Shang-Chi really had a spark of greatness despite problematic Orientalism… It would not have taken much to color both Fu and Shang pink and to edit the dialogue.
Bill Wu did a lot of valuable work in the later letter columns and also Moench/Gulacy were so dedicated that the series cannot be written off…
The Shang Chi movie and later versions of the character lose his Caine-like weirdness. (something similar with MCU Dr. Strange).
You’re right about MacGregor’s work. Part of that may have been that awareness of black issues was way ahead of Asian representation issues at the time, or so I remember it
It’s rather fascinating, I think, how similar yet distinct the issues related to how different ethnic/”racial” groups – blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Catholics from southern or eastern Europe, etc, – were treated in life and in the media by dominant Euro-American Protestants throughout U.S. history. And, of course, there were many distinctions even within the large ethnic blocs in the 1900s, including blacks whose African ancestors were forcibly taken to North America in previous centuries; those from the Caribbean or Latin America; and those who had only recently immigrated from Africa; and Asians from China, Japan, the Philippines, India, etc. And white Americans even stereotyped one another in often hateful manners. And, to some extent, still do so.
Pink skin would be a bad choice for Shang-Chi. Most of my Chinese friends are a light tan in complexion. There are 56 recognised ethnic groups in China, with Han being the largest (and largest in the world). If you look at the coloring of Talia in Batman #255 (as opposed to shirtless Batman) you’ll see a better attempt at Asian complexion than what we see in MoKF.
In the UK in 1974, I had no concerns over the colouring of Fu Manchu or Shang Chi; in the black and white reprints put out by Marvel UK, skin tone was never an issue.
My father and younger brother had been practising Atemi Jiu-Jitsu for many years prior to the Kung Fu explosion of the early Seventies and tended to be a bit sniffy about any mainstream popularization of the martial arts. As one might, therefore, have expected, they were absolutely scathing about MoKF when I was foolish enough to leave that week’s copy of “The Avengers featuring The Master of Kung Fu” lying around. Nevertheless, they always somehow managed to bring themselves to watch David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine come Saturday evening, though. Funny that.
It would have been around 1977 or ’78 that something of a surprising change occurred. We were on holiday in our mobile home in one of the old resorts of North-West England – my memory fades with the years, but I’ll guess at Southport – and I was cruising the newsagents looking for any full-colour Marvel comics that might be available. Unbelievably, I found five issues of MoKF from the Moench / Gulacy era and one by Moench and Pollard. Leaving them on my bed one day, I returned to find my father engrossed in them. I said nothing – always a good policy with my father in those days – and waited for him to lambast both the comics… and me for spending money on them.
He didn’t.
Getting on for half a century later (and he having been dead for thirty six of them), I can hear him now:
“These,” he pronounced, “are good.”
Whilst I later bought the comic during the Moench / Day era, I never did get to read all the early stuff until Marvel published the two Epic Collection editions a few years back. There was supposed to be a third (I even had it on pre-order), but that was inexplicably cancelled. As I understand it, there are contractual rights issues that now prevent Marvel republishing the rest of MoKF, which is a shame because I for one would relish the opportunity to read them in collected form.
Thanks, Alan, for yet another great review.
No offence, but I had always thought of Southport as a failed community. Didn’t know anything was really happening there. Frank Hampson, great artist of Dan Dare and other Eagle strips once lived there, and my old friend Bob Bond, a great footballer cartoonist did as well. Bob’s son Philip made a name for himself with Vertigo in the US.
“Kung Fu” was entertaining, but not on the level of “Porridge.” 😉
Huh. I know the Fu Manchu rights blocked reprints for years but I can’t imagine why they could do some but not all.
side note: When Marvel was doing a B&W Doc Savage magazine a few years from “now” they’d planned a Doc Savage/Fu Manchu crossover (Doug Moench was writing the magazine). I’d have loved to see it but they couldn’t work out the rights issues.
Yep. On my summer holidays at home in Scotland or down south in Blackpool, first thing to do on arrival was to visit all the local newsagents to see what American comics they had. Because they were often hidden away in back streets, they might have issues sitting there from months and even years before. Got myself a whole bunch of Detective and Batman issues that way on a small Scottish island in the early 70s, almost all featuring art or covers by Neal Adams.
I think Moench and Gulacy would forgive you for seeking out pirated scans in this case! Issues 29-31 if you haven’t read them are what that film ought to have been.
That quote from your father is so good, thank you for sharing it.
That reminds me of something, Frank McLaughlin, the inker and friend of Giordano (who did Judomaster for Giordano during the “Action Hero” period), was a martial artist, I think, a judo player. I also think Larry Hama had some level of exposure, beyong his combat service as a Combat Engineer in te RVN (where Starlin spent part of his hitch in the Navy).
When MoKF was launched in 1973 (and subsquently, during the Moench/Gulacey period), there were some people around who had some first hand knowledge of at least some of the Martial Arts. It was not like when Cagney made Blood on the Sun in 1945 (although he took an interest and actaully practiced Judo, thereafter in addition to dance as a way to stay in condition).
Thanks for an excellent article on the genesis of MOKF. Yes, good pals Englehart and Starlin created Shang Chi but their involvement in the title was so brief that their creative contribution pales somewhat compared to that of Moench. If Deadly Doug hadn’t taken this title in a different direction from #29 onwards, it would have died swiftly like so many other 70s fads. Instead, we had a further 100 or so issues of one of the finest comics ever to hit the stands. Together with the superb Gulacy, the talented Zeck and the incomparable and much-missed Gene Day, Moench produced a thrilling and thought-provoking monthly ride, more Ian Fleming than Sax Rohmer. It was a run that swept aside some of the more questionable — and, in my opinion at least, largely forgivable — early choices made by an editorial team that was primarily interested in the commercial possibilities of a Kung Fu book. But the talent and vision of Moench are what made this title truly great.