You will never understand
How the reptile mind
Struggles

Shang Chi seems to have entered the scene fully formed. It’s as if the shock of discovering that his father is one of history’s greatest villains has inured Shang Chi to further surprises, giving him a confidence beyond Marvel’s penchant for neurotic characters. Most telling is Shang Chi’s plan of attack, choosing to chip away at Fu Manchu’s empire instead of launching a frontal assault. It’s rare to see such a calculated, proactive approach in a serial comic, like if Batman were to concentrate exclusively on dismantling Ra’s al Ghul’s criminal empire over a ten year period.

The fight scenes had me double checking the Comic Code Authority at the time of publication. Shang Chi squares off against an Indian dacoit in two absolutely brutal clashes that wouldn’t be out of place in today’s comics. I have to admit, my dislike of Paul Gulacy’s artwork was the one thing holding me back from taking on this project, but I can think of few artists as capable of drawing a man setting himself on fire and jumping through a plate glass window.

Most accidents
Happen
Buddah be praised

There are so many ways that a martial arts comic can develop. The transition to regular series brings with it the introduction of supporting cast member Black Jack Tarr, whose presence solidifies the title’s path into the espionage genre.

Strange that the company we keep has such a large impact on our own lives, but it rarely affects fictional characters in quite the same way. Imagine if the first people Shang Chi met in the Western world were astronauts or motocross drivers. What a wonderful comic that would be.

Your concrete paths
And overflowing gutters
Are not welcome

It’s obvious that the team behind this issue were uncertain whether it would last one issue or one hundred. The villain is a former friend of Shang Chi’s named Midnight, and is presented as being Shang Chi’s equal in Kung Fu, but he’s introduced and dismissed so quickly that it doesn’t really mean a thing. Worst of all is Midnight’s outfit, with a clumsy fedora and cloak marking him as a fourth-rate Shadow knock-off instead of a martial artist.

Shang Chi’s distance is interesting. He shows a detachment to the alien streets of New York City, puzzled only momentarily by a squalor he’s unaccustomed to before banishing it from his mind. Unlike so many other heroes, he’s less interested in saving a world he neither understands or cares for then he is destroying an evil he is already familiar with and leaving us to wallow in our own filth.

Paper warm
With slashing bodies
And neglected evils

Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom delineate the action with stiff poses caked in meaty feathering that gives off the kind of creeping panic one would feel upon waking up alone in a theatre on the Deuce. If powerful drawings are out of the question, pages that reek of stale bong water and black light posters aren’t a bad substitute.

In its way, Fu Manchu’s mastery over outdated methods of domination is brilliant in that this modern world seems to have forgotten how to cope with his archaic villainy. Master of Kung Fu is not only the tale of a boy and his estranged father, but a story about how tradition can be as dangerous as innovation.

I’m not able to attend Noir City this year, so I’ve decided to hold my own film noir festival at home, starting with The Money Trap featuring the considerable charms of Elke Sommer.