Back in January, we took a look at Master of Kung Fu #17, a comic which presented the third installment of Marvel Comics’ first ongoing martial arts feature (albeit only the first one under that title, as the two previous episodes had seen print as Special Marvel Edition #15 and #16). That third installment was also the last to involve artist Jim Starlin, who had been instrumental in conceiving and developing the feature with writer Steve Englehart (although the idea of making the strip’s hero, Shang-Chi, the son of the famous fictional villain Fu Manchu came from Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas).
Replacing Starlin as the series’ artist would be a young new talent, Paul Gulacy. Like his fellow Ohioans Val Mayerik and P. Craig Russell a year or two before him, Gulacy had recently broken into comics’ professional ranks with the help of the veteran artist Dan Adkins, who’d introduced his work to Thomas. Gulacy’s first published work for Marvel had been the initial installment of the “Morbius, the Living Vampire” color comics feature, which ran in Fear #20 (Feb., 1974); following a one-issue stand inking Bob Brown’s pencils for Daredevil #108 (Mar., 1974), he was next offered Master of Kung Fu as a regular gig, and happily accepted (as he told Comic Book Artist‘s Jon B. Cooke in a 1999 interview, “I would’ve grabbed anything, like anybody when they first started.”).
Art by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia.
Englehart and Starlin’s final story for MoKF had ended with a major plot development, as after having spent most of the issue avoiding being captured or killed by Fu Manchu’s longtime foe, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, Shang-Chi was finally able to convince Smith that they were on the same side. In Englehart and Gulacy’s first outing, MoKF #18 (Jun., 1974), the two men’s tentative new relationship as allies advances to the next stage, as Shang accepts a tip from Smith about Fu smuggling some unknown cargo into Florida. Refusing the MI-6 agent’s offer of transportation, our hero stows away on a plane flying from New York City to (somewhere in) Florida, then makes his way to the smugglers’ presumably secluded cove — arriving in time to see the ship sail into safe harbor, with not only its mysterious shipment on board, but Fu Manchu as well. Under the cover of darkness, Shang-Chi then proceeds to sneak onto the vessel…
It had been pretty clear from Paul Gulacy’s “Morbius” story in Fear #20 that the young artist was heavily influenced by Jim Steranko. But his work here (which we should note was inked by Al Milgrom, who’d also collaborated with Jim Starlin on the previous three issues) showed that this influence extended beyond his basic drawing style, or the way he laid out panels on a page, to Steranko’s penchant for poster-type, psychedelia-tinged graphics — as exemplified by the remarkable full-page splash shown directly above.
Shang-Chi awakes to find himself his father’s bound prisoner; and Fu, in the grand tradition of evil masterminds everywhere, proceeds to explain the details of his fiendish plan…
The mimosa-laced gasoline fumes will fill the air from coast to coast, and if noticed at all, will be taken for smog (hey, in the U.S.A. of 1974, that just might work). “In three months,” Fu Manchu boasts, “the concentration will be such that all of America will be mine to command!”
And now that the villain has satisfied his need to gloat, it’s time for his son to die. Fu gives the job to an assassin who Shang-Chi has already fought and defeated once; but as punishment for the man’s earlier failure, he’s first dosed with a drug that will kill him within nine minutes. but until that time will increase his speed threefold. This proves to be a miscalculation on Fu’s part, for before the assassin can either kill his intended victim or expire himself, the excruciating agony caused by the drug drives him to commit suicide by first setting himself on fire, then leaping into the smugglers’ gunpowder magazine…
MoKF #18 ends with a blurb promising that the next issue will feature not one, but two guest stars; and when issue #19 showed up in spinner racks in late May, 1974, its dynamic Gil Kane-Tom Palmer cover made it instantly clear that one of those guests would be the macabre Man-Thing. (Incidentally, is there any other cover that captures the genre-fluid spirit of mid-Seventies Marvel Comics better than this martial arts-monster mash-up does? I don’t think there is — which is probably why I included it in the latest version of this blog’s header banner.) But the other one? That was something you’d have to read the issue to find out; and if you’d missed issue #18, or had skipped or simply forgotten its closing “next” blurb, you might actually get through all eighteen pages of “Retreat” without realizing that there had even been a second “guest star”.
But we should probably go ahead now and take a look at the story, so you can see for yourself what I’m talking about…
Dahar and Jekin prove to be formidable fighters, but Shang-Chi is ultimately able to use an uprooted tree trunk to knock both of them into the swamp waters, evidently ending the battle…
And so does the second of this issue’s “two most incredible guest stars of the year” — the man who calls himself Lu Sun — enter our narrative.
If your humble blogger is to be completely honest with his readers, he must admit that he doesn’t remember exactly when his younger self caught on to just who “Lu Sun” really was, half a century ago — though I’m fairly certain that sixteen-year-old me put Master of Kung Fu #19 down after my first reading feeling somewhat mystified about the whole thing. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that I didn’t “get it” until three months later, when the letters column of MoKF #22 featured missives from one correspondent after another correctly pegging the character’s inspiration (although Marvel would officially neither confirm not deny their deductions, citing legal considerations). On the other hand, it seems just as likely to me that I had re-read the comic at least once by that time and worked it out on my own. (Yeah, let’s go with that.)
For anyone out there still scratching their head, Lu Sun happens to be a dead ringer — in personality as well as in physical appearance — for Kwai Chang Caine, the character portrayed by actor David Carradine in the 1972-75 ABC television series Kung Fu. (OK, so Lu Sun wears blue pajamas rather than the more-or-less authentic Western garb favored by Caine in the 19th century-set TV show. And he has a mustache.* And he’s orange. But, other than that, they’re the same guy.)
By their own accounts, both Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin had both been inspired by Kung Fu when they’d come up with their idea for a Marvel martial-arts comics hero. And now that Englehart was preparing to follow Starlin off the series — “Retreat” would be his swan song writing Shang-Chi — he was apparently using his exit as the opportunity to tip his hat more directly to the feature’s origin point than he had previously. Or, he may have been attempting to show that Shang-Chi wasn’t just a Kwai Chang Caine clone, by using the two characters’ philosophical dialogue (forthcoming over the next several pages) to contrast their individual motivations and values. Perhaps it was something of both.
It’s been decades since I watched an episode of Kung Fu, but the pacifistic philosophy espoused here by Lu Sun seems very consistent with what I remember of the moral code followed by Kwai Chang Caine on that show. Although I also seem to recall that Caine was routinely driven by extenuating circumstances to engage in violent martial arts action at least once every episode, so, y’know, there’s that.
The armed men lying in wait for Fu Manchu’s lorries are state and federal law enforcement agents under the command of Nayland Smith. That may seem a little confusing at first, considering Fu’s expressed concerns on the final page of MoKF #18 that the escaping Shang-Chi needed to be stopped before he could alert the authorities to the mastermind’s plans. But, of course, Fu had no way of knowing that Shang had been tipped off by Smith in the first place, so it all tracks, in the end.
The law enforcement agents succeed in stopping the convoy, though Fu Manchu’s minions are both numerous and armed, and they’re not going down without a firefight. As the bullets fly overhead, Smith’s associate Black Jack Tarr sprints for the cab of the lead vehicle…
We’re going to take the opportunity provided by this close-up view of Jekin and Dahar to make an observation or two on the continuing issue of how Asian characters’ skin color was depicted in the Master of Kung Fu series in the 1970s. As we noted in our MoKF #17 post, Steve Englehart indicated that his intention was to have such characters colored identically to white ones, with the notable exceptions of Shang-Chi and Fu Manchu themselves. Setting aside for the moment any concerns about the advisability of the latter decision, that guideline clearly hasn’t been followed in these last two issues. (For the record, the coloring of issue #18, in which Jekin and Dahar are introduced, is credited to Petra Goldberg, aka Petra Scotese, while that of #19 is attributed to Stan Goldberg — although, just to make things extra confusing, the letters page of #19 indicates that Englehart himself handled the colors for his last issue. So who knows who was actually making the calls here.)
Dodging a sword-thrust from Jekin, Shang-Chi steps backward… into quicksand. Oops.
Is this double-page spread the most spectacularly incendiary take on the “whosoever knows fear…” bit yet to have been presented by Marvel, circa May, 1974? I think it probably is, though I haven’t gone back through all my old issues of Man-Thing, Fear, Monsters Unleashed, etc., to make sure.
(Just in case you’re wondering — as best as I can determine, this issue represents Lu Sun’s one and only appearance in any Marvel comic. Of course, now that I’ve said that, someone will probably bring him back next week…)
In our story’s final panels, Shang-Chi silently walks away from his new acquaintance — as well as from us readers — without answering the pacifist’s final question. Clearly, in the ongoing continuity of the Marvel Universe, Shang will continue to contend against Fu Manchu, as well as other evils — the latter, as early as June, 1974, as Master of Kung Fu goes monthly with issue #20. But Steve Englehart appears to have left the matter slightly ambiguous on purpose, as a way of giving some finality to his own run on the character. As he explained decades later in an article published in Comic Book Creator #27 (Spring, 2022):
Starlin and I did the book together… But the sudden intensity of the reaction caused Marvel to flip the book to monthly, and start a black-&-white version, and start throwing in Annuals and [Giant-Size quarterlies] — and that had nothing to do with what Jim and I envisioned. So he bailed after the third issue and Paul came on in the fourth, and I bailed after the fifth. I said at the time that Paul was a great talent, so there was no drop-off in the art, but, as I said before, I was already contemplating my exit rather than envisioning a long run with him. In fact, that fifth issue is basically Shang-Chi bailing himself, in an ambiguous way, so that I could consider it the end of my very short era, and Paul and Doug [Moench] could continue with Marvel’s new enthusiasm.
The next era of Master of Kung Fu would indeed belong to Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy — but it would take more than a couple of issues for that creative team to fully lock in. Alas, by the time they had, my younger self’s attention had begun to wander, so I experienced relatively little of their era first-hand. But as that ill-advised disaffection on my part is still several months away as of May, 1974, we’ll postpone further discussion of the matter until a future post.
*Per the “Lu Sun” page at the Appendix to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe web site, the mustache seems to have been a last-minute element, added when someone at Marvel got cold feet about the character resembling Carradine-as-Caine just a little too closely. And by “last minute”, I really do mean last minute, as the version of the story that was published in the United Kingdom showed Lu Sun sans any facial hair (see left) — and that version appears to have first seen print in Marvel UK’s Avengers #36, which, according to Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, was released at virtually the same time as Master of Kung Fu #19 (the UK comic’s official publication date having been May 25, whereas the U.S. one’s was May 21).
Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books 
As a point of interest UK Marvel actually had Shang Chi as first story each week in The Avengers comic and The Avengers second which really bugged me in 1974 as I always felt the comics lead should be first in the stories. No colour issues over here with the Asian characters though as all of our weekly Marvel comics were black and white still at this point. We had only recently progressed to glossy covers!
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I was big on the whole Kung Fu craze at the time and was delighted to get the Shang Chi stories, even if it was just in the B&W Marvels. I liked Starlin’s art but wasn’t sure about Gulacy’s stuff at first, although he improved quickly. Strangely, although I couldn’t get the colour comics, for some reason I was able to get the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu B&W magazines, with their glorious Neal Adams painted covers. I don’t remember if Shang Chi was in them, although Adams did a cover with him on it.
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Huh. I bailed on this series sooner than I thought. Shang Chi’s overwrought thoughts and dialog turned me off for nearly the whole original run. Being a completist from the get go, it was weird of me to pick up a second issue of a new series and drop it so I REALLY disliked OG Shang Chi. I did return for patches here and there but the book never clicked for me despite loving Gulacy and Zeck. It’s weird to me (and accurate) that you compare Gulacy and Steranko when I have disliked Steranko’s art since first seeing it and don’t understand an artist who did so little comic work being revered so much.
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One of the two swordsmen appears to be Arab or middle eastern (or possible, South or Central Asian) rather than East Asian.
All of this was just after 10 years of war in Southeast Asia (but decades prior to 20 some odd years of war in Southwest and Central Asia).
The bright side is that we are less prone to what the late Dr. Edward Said called “Orientalism” and seeing something “exotic” or “bizarre” in the cultures of most of the world’s inhabitants.
I really liked Gulacy’s art (the Morbius story in Fear # 20 was one of the best most atmospheric horror stories I’ve seen in comics. However, Mike Friedrich told Steve Gerber that he no idea where the story was going when Gerber took over on the next issue.)
An odd take I had on Gulacy’s first issue of MofKF was that Gulacy really handled the assassin given superspeed really well and he would have been a good artist for a Quicksilver story Superspeed has never been a power used routinely at Marvel. Spider-Man’s speed powers have been used about as frequently as his Spider-Signal belt light. Both things were plot points in the Spider-Man/Human torch Team Up from Strange Tales Annual #1 and were used in the first <Man Mountain Marko story (both reprinted around he time this story appeared)
This was my last regular issue of the monthly MofKF, however, i continued to collect the Giant Sized book because of the Yellow Claw reprints by Joe Maneely and what I thought was Simon & Kirby but latter learned was rare work both penciled and inked by Kirby. .
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I mostly missed Gulacy’s run on MOKF when they were new on the racks but got them all much later. His early issues seem a bit awkward but improved very quickly. Although I was late coming to the party, once I did latch on to it, I was impressed enough by both Moench’s writing and Gulacy’s art to regard their run as among the best of the 1970s.
As to the issue at hand, I’m not sure I would have immediately recognized the mysterious guest star as a stand in for Caine right away, although my family regularly watched Kung Fu while it was on, and Gulacy did draw a good likeness of him. Rather darkly amusing that Englehart resolves the main plot of the master assassins by having them fall prey to the Man-Thing’s touch and their own fear, hence saving Shang Chi from having to kill them himself. Seems to me, the Man-Thing’s touch, as typically depicted, is more deadly to those filled with both fear and evil rather than simply fear itself, although admitting that wouldn’t have made for a great catch phrase. But right off, I can’t think of a situation wherein Man-Thing inadvertently killed someone who was truly innocent but also truly frightened by him. Maybe Manny also had the uncanny power of somehow calming fear in people who weren’t consumed with evil desires. Having Shang Chi’s body be stuck within Manny was also rather amusing. And somehow, Chi kept his calm through it all and didn’t succumb to fear and get himself set on fire! As far as I know, this was the first and last time Englehart wrote Man-Thing in one of his stories, although it’s entirely possible I missed whatever other story he may have written featuring Man-Thing.
Overall, an entertaining story, bringing up some philosophical quandaries that could not be easily resolved in life or in comics, certainly not one that by its very nature had to regularly include action and responses to evil intents and actions which strict pacificism could not successfully overcome.
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It was an issue that Englehart (a conscientious objector, who established his status while serving in the Army), had in real life.
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I also assumed when I read this story that the chemicals they were exposed to by Fu Manchu had something to do with the conflagration . . . .
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I think it’s more that Gerber played fast and loose with the rules to suit the plot.
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And everyone else tended to follow Gerber’s lead on that in regard to Man-Thing’s touch. They didn’t want to make Man-Thing too monstrous in behavior as well as in appearance! Thinking on that, I don’t think a series starring Wendigo — a near mindless cannibalistic monster – would have done all that well in the comics marketplace. “Ooooh, let’s see who Wendigo will eat this month!” Jeffrey Dahmer may have enjoyed that ….
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See, e.g,. Atlas’s Morlock 2001 and The Brute . . . .
One could say Mike Fleisher’s 1975 Atlas work was an acquired . . . eh . . . taste.
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I remember when all those Atlas titles started appearing on the racks. I perused a few of them, but never purchased any of them. Reading up on what Fleisher was writing for Atlas, the fact that he sued The Comics Journal and Harlan Ellison for publishing supposedly disparaging remarks about his sanity as based on his stories boggles the mind. I enjoyed some of his writing on Ghost Rider, have no memory of his run on Man-Thing or anything else he wrote for Marvel, but just based on the excerpts I’ve read on his Atlas stories, I’d think those would be far more damaging to his reputation that anything Ellison or Groth (TCJ publisher) were transcribed as saying about him.
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That was pretty much the opinion of the Court.
They were also influenced by he fact he made MORE money after the alleged defamation.
Ellison was almost complementary about Fleischer’s creativity A Controversial Harlan Ellison Interview Won a Victory for Free Speech (cbr.com).
After Fleischer left comics, he got his doctorate and became an internationally recognized authority on cattle rustling in Africa and South Asia.,
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It astonishes me that the direct-to-DVD Man-Thing movie of about 20 years back was so divorced from the comics it didn’t even use “Whatever knows fear …”
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There was a Man-Thing movie!!!? Is it on YouTube? Sounds like my kind of Z-movie fun.
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Just found it on Dailymotion. Never seen it . Had a very quick scan. Character looks more like 1950s sci fi than 1970s Marvel . Seems reviews at the time were not good..
There are characters named after Mike Ploog, Steve Gerber, and Val Mayerik…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Thing_(film)
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I also had no idea that Lu Sun was supposed to be Caine when I read this issue 50 years ago for the simple reason that I had never seen the Kung Fu TV series and in fact would not actually see an episode of that series until many years later. When I finally did see the TV series once in syndication I am sorry to say I found it kind of boring and was not interested. I found out who Lu Sun was by seeing comments in later letter pages as you had mentioned, Alan, but it did not mean much to me. Actually I was not a fan of Kung Fu movies or anything related. The fact that I had picked up Special Marvel Edition 15 in the first place was a tribute to Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin that I was curious enough to read it and the quality was high enough to keep me coming back…at least for the moment. But I had missed the subsequent Deadly Hands of Kung Fu magazine which began coming out in early 1974 because of poor distribution in my area. I did some research on the Grand Comics Database. Steve Englehart wrote stories for the first 2 issues of DHOKF and Special Marvel Edition 15 was actually reprinted in the second issue (less than a year after it first was published). I’m not sure if I would have bought this magazine even if I had seen it (although there were some very nice Neal Adams covers) because of the limited amount of new material and the large amount of Kung Fu articles which would not have interested me very much.
I am fascinated by two points. The first is Steve Englehart’s departure from this book. He is a co-creator of this series and it is really amazing to me that he chose to walk away, but it is now clear that he was worried about quality control…and he was correct. Englehart was deep into his runs on Avengers, Captain America and Doctor Strange, and if he stayed with MOKF something else would have had to give….but also as you pointed out there was more going on. In June 1974 MOKF went monthly, and in the same month a new Giant Size MOKF appeared (incredible when you realize MOKF was only its 6th issue in June 1974!). Also in the same month DHOKF 3 came out and by issue 4 that went monthly too. The Kung Fu craze at Marvel was officially in high gear. Personally I thought the first 5 issues of MOKF (including the 2 Special Marvel Edition issues of course) were of very high quality. But problems began almost immediately. Paul Gulacy was already good and rapidly improving but at this point was not ready for a monthly book. And Doug Moench, good as he became, was, with MOKF, just about to start his second monthly book (the first being Werewolf by Night in May 1974) and it took him some time to find his footing. Unfortunately I did eventually leave MOKF (although would return), after staying for the next year, which sorry to say was a pretty shaky year, with some good spots such as MOKF 29-31. It must have been very difficult for Steve to leave this book but it is clear that he was probably facing a lot of editorial pressure to write the Shang Chi character in a different manner than he envisioned.
The second point is, where might Steve have taken Shang Chi if he had remained on the series and been able to write in his way? In interviews Steve stated that he respected what Doug and Paul (and others) had done with Shang Chi (the secret agent direction), but it is not what Steve would done. However even Doug realized that constantly using Fu Manchu could get quite tedious (which it did), so Fu Manchu had to go away for awhile (just as how many times could you have Thor trying to stop Loki from taking over Asgard….again? Obviously quite a lot). Steve had written himself into a bit of a corner with a pacifist character who has to fight but doesn’t want to, and I just noticed sounds a little like the Silver Surfer from his 60s series. So it is really not clear where Steve would have taken Shang Chi but I am sure it would have been entertaining.
Some final thoughts..as you noted Man-Thing was popular enough that he was the first Marvel character to cross over with Shang Chi and would turn up over the next 2 months in DD 113-114. Paul Gulacy’s art would look better with each issue and his art would evolve very quickly…and who wouldn’t love a Gil Kane/Tom Palmer cover? A great issue. Thanks Alan!
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Now that you mention, for the remainder of the run of Master of Kung Fu, Man-Thing was the only crossover character to appear in the series, unless one counts Dr. Dooms brief appearance, but even in that story, Doom was manipulating events from a distance and didn’t confront Shang Chi in person. But no guest appearances by Iron Fist or Iron Man or Spider-Man, or fights with villains from other titles. Up to its cancellation in 1983 or so, MoKF was probably Marvel’s longest run series set in the present Marvel continuity with the least interaction with the rest of the Marvel universe.
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There was a Spider-Man team up in Giant Sized Spider-Man # 2. I don’t remember any others.
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Yep, and Shang Chi also showed up in Marvel Two-In-One, IIRC, but those were not in MoKF itself and not even referenced therein. For the most part, MoKF might as well have been in a separate universe from the rest of Marvel. Not that I minded that at all once I really got into the mag.
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I was a big Kwai Chang Caine fan but I doubt I’d have spotted this. And I never got into the book. Part of that was that they never got Fu Manchu right (having him break his word in the first issue for example). This was nicely done but as someone said above, the wordy brooding and pondering generally didn’t give me what I wanted from a comic.
Mimosa was, indeed, the basis for a powerful anesthetic Fu Manchu developed in the Sax Rohmer books. That was a nice touch.
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Well, my problems with Word Press continues. I wrote a nice little reply to this post yesterday WP decided I wasn’t logged in and ate it and I didn’t have time to re-write it. Today, I seem to be signed in, but it won’t let me “like” anyone’s posts. Go figure. Let’s see what happens this time: [what happened is, I’ve so far had to log in three times to try and post this to no avail. Argh]
Even though I loved Kung Fu on TV back in the day, I wasn’t really a fan of martial arts. I had an aesthetic appreciation of Bruce Lee and had enjoyed him in The Green Hornet and Longstreet, but I didn’t watch martial arts movies and I didn’t read martial arts comics like MoKF or Iron Fist. I also was not a fan of swamp monsters, so I did a double pass on this one in 1974.
I think my major problem with Man-Thing, aside from the whole swamp monster thing, is his own lack of agency and purpose in his own book. Manny just shambles from one situation into another, usually not of his own volition and then stands around while other characters drive the story forward until it’s time for him to fight some monster or someone feels fear. It just doesn’t make for a very satsifying book, nor does it cast Man-Thing as a very satisfying hero. Even in this cross-over with Shang Chi, the two don’t interact, even when they’re on the same page together. Once we get past the obligatory “hero fight” in the opening pages, Shang Chi and Li Sun all but ignore Manny like they would a mascot or a pet. Frustrating.
As to Li Sun looking like David Carridine’s character Caine from Kung Fu, I caught that right away, but at first dismissed it as coincidence, until I realized it was supposed to be an homage to the character.
As to the skin color issue, I doubt I blinked an eye at it in 1974. If there was a criticism back then at all, it was in the direction of the limitations of the four-color printing process making such things necessary. I could live with the orange skin tone because it almost looked like normal caucasian skin with maybe some sort of bronzer (which were just becoming popular back then) applied, but the sickly yellow-white of Fu Manchu made him and others look alien and inhuman.
It’s nice to go back and read this book now, when I’m much more open-minded to different kinds of books and different kinds of stories, but I still find I really don’t care for this one. Englehart wrangles the difficulties of a Man-Thing story as well as anyone, but Gulacy’s best work is clearly ahead of him and this story doesn’t do him any favors, despite the truly lovely Carradine portrait. Thanks, Alan!
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Man-Thing’s lack of agency never bothered me at all. Admittedly, back in the day, I only got three issues of Fear featuring M-T, and issue 21 of M-T (vol. 1) itself when they were new on the racks — mainly with a tight budget and being more into the costumed heroes at the time, getting any other type of comic – including Man-Thing and Master of Kung Fu – was mostly a splurge when I had enough coins in my pocket after making my “must have” selections. But a decade or so later, my tastes had changed enough that I regarded Gerber’s Man-Thing and Master of Kung Fu among the best comics ever (although I have a preference for Moench’s run, once he really got into high gear, to Englehart’s brief run. I get the sense Englehart was writing himself into a corner on this series that it would have been difficult to get out of and keep the series entertaining enough to maintain enough of a readership to stay in publication. As with Dr. Doom in the Lee/Kirby era FF, Fu Manchu became much more interesting as his appearances became less frequent but much more consequential and epic when they did occur. And having Shang Chi get into the spy business, however reluctantly, to oppose other villains, made the series itself more interesting, IMO.
I don’t know what directions Englehart may have taken if he had remained on the series for several years but either having Shang Chi in constant battle against his father’s minions or just wandering around the country (with no explanation as to how he earned any income to keep himself fed, clothed and sheltered) and just happening to get involved in situations where he had to get into action to protect himself or others, as seem to be directions Englehart may have taken, would have gotten rather tedious after a year or so. But, then again, we can only speculate on what might have been but never was.
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Thanks for persevering, Don!
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And – we’re back with another installment of “Attack of the 50-Year-Old Steve Englehart Comic Books!” (C’mon, Alan – you KNOW you want to rename it that!)
Re-reading MOKF #19 after quite a long time (along with the pages of #18 you included in this installment), I’m struck by the ways that Englehart understood how to let the art do the heavy lifting as far as storytelling goes, which freed him to concentrate the script on Shang-Chi’s internal conflict. I see that a few of your regular readers were not fans, but that philosophical underpinning is what distinguished MOKF from the other martial arts books, which were much more action-oriented – and, to me, much less interesting.
Like a number of you, I’m curious where Englehart would have gone with Shang-Chi if he had stuck with the series. He did, after all, come up with “the rising and advancing of the spirit” as a touchstone, and I believe this book would have gone in a number of intriguing directions. I thin it would have been a bit of a slow burn. Englehart has been complimentary about what Moench and Gulacy did, while still acknowledging that “his” Shang-Chi wouldn’t have gone to work with Smith and Co. (Having said that, those two guys DID do some cool stories, culminating in that final battle with Fu Manchu that ended in #50.)
Actually, we WOULD have had the chance to see what Englehart might have done with the character had he not left Marvel abruptly in 1976. When DR. STRANGE went monthly with issue #13, Englehart felt he had to do something to free up Colon and Palmer, who were still knocking out TOMB OF DRACULA. So he plotted a three-parter that was to have been drawn by Frank Brunner, in which Doc goes to London to help Lord Phyffe (think that’s how his name was spelled) and ends up meeting Shang-Chi. Sigh – one more story I’d like to go to an alternate universe to read. (Along with the Englehart-Brunner Fu Manchu series set in the 1930s.)
Thanks for revisiting this one, Alan!
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And thanks to you for that nugget about the aborted Dr. Strange/Shang-Chi team-up by Englehart and Brunner, Bill — if I’d ever heard that, I’d forgotten it. 🙂
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Alan, in the letters page of DR. STRANGE #13 (well, actually there were no letters – it was all one column by Englehart), Steve explained his rationale for staying with the book even though it was going monthly – something he had resisted. (“This book is a labor of love – accent on the ‘labor,'” eh wrote. He mentioned Shang-Chi and how that series was meant to be a long dive into a character’s “rising and advancing.” When Marvel wanted to not only up the series’ frequency AND do a Giant-Size book AND do a black-and-white title, Englehart knew he couldn’t do what he wanted with the character and so stepped away. (Now, I think I’ve since heard that Englehart was asked to leave the book for whatever reason. I love Steve, but he does have a bit of an ego, so the truth – as always – is somewhere in between.)
In that same column, Englehart mentioned his plans for the book, which included the crossover with TOMB OF DRACULA in the next issue, as well as a three-parter with Shang-Chi illustrated by Brunner. (He wrote something to the effect of “Maybe Gene Colan won’t need the months off, but who’s going to complain about having BOTH of the ‘only artists who should draw Dr. Strange’ on the book.” In the back of my mind, I thought I head Steve Ditko going “ahem.”)
A few years later, Englehart had an extensive interview (forget which publication – it might have been THE COMICS JOURNAL, but I’m not sure) in which he talked about his plans for DR. STRANGE after issue #18, his last issue and the second part of the storyline about the magical origin of the United States. Englehart indicated that that arc would run two more issues, concluding with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
After THAT would be the three-parter with Shang Chi. The idea is that Lord Phyffe (who had appeared in a couple of previous issues and who had appeared rather flustered when he departed from Greenwich Village in issue #15) had a curse on his family that was supposed to bring ruin to the 10th Lord Phyffe. Since our guy was the 9th Lord Phyffe, he decided not to have any children. But then the end of the world happened (“Planet Earth Is No More”), and all of a sudden now HE was the 10th Lord Phyffe. THAT was what would bring Dr. Strange to England and eventually into contact with Shang-Chi. (In the interview, Englehart admitted that, at the time of his abrupt departure from Marvel, DR. STRANGE was the only book he had specific long-term plans for. He was playing it a little more by ear on AVENGERS, I guess.
This is more than you (or anyone else!) wanted to know, right? But when it comes to Englehart, you should know I’m your go-to guy!
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I enjoyed Colan’s work on Dr. Strange immensely but would also have loved it if Englehart & Brunner had been able to do that Dr. Strange & Shang Chi story. Yet another volume in Lucien’s vast library that we’ll never get a peek at in our waking hours.
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Watch it, Fred! Alan may not like it that you’re reference SANDMAN, a comic book that’s only 30 years old!
Although I think I have an idea for a question to ask on FB…
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Frank Brunner could draw a airline safety brochure and I’d hunt it down to read it! A 3 part Dr.Strange arc would have been brilliant! I still don’t understand how Marvel let so many talented people go!
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At the end of the day, Marvel is a business, and an artist who can only turn out so many pages a month, no matter how gorgeous, has less value than the workhorses who could do layouts for five or six a month.
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When Marvel had a B&W Doc Savage magazine they’d also planned to do Fu Manchu vs. Doc Savage. Rights, however, could not be worked out.
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When Brunner left DR. STRANGE- to the sound of a LOT of hearts breaking – Englehart mentioned that he was still going to work with Frank on a period Fu Manchu book. No idea what it was about other than that.
I really like the idea of a Doc Savage/Fu Manchu story!
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Me too. IIRC their fallback was a John Sunlight story. That fell through for some reason so we got an unremarkable final issue.
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