The Strange Case of Shang-Chi (Special Marvel Edition 16)

[knight_moves]

Controversial is an overused term in comics fandom, usually meaning a story that everyone thinks fucking blows except for the jackass writer. The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, is a case where I feel the term is warranted.

On the one hand, it's a genuine and deserved smash hit, created by a murderers' row of talent that resulted in an iconic work of seventies counterculture.

On the other hand, it's dated, of its time, and arguably behind the times, as antagonist Fu Manchu was becoming a subject of parody and condemnation after several cheapie Bond-wannabes produced in the previous decade (starring Christopher Lee (!) as the good doctor). These days, 'Master of Kung-Fu' is looked back on seemingly little. Heavily retconned to bring Shang-Chi up to snuff as a presentable modern character and largely dismissed when the time came to "adapt" it to the MCU, it seems destined to fall between the cracks.

So let's take a look at it, warts and all, and see what all the fuss is about, no?







In the seventies, you could introduce a character and immediately have them break someone's spine. Second page of their existence and somebody's getting Bane'd.

Shang flashes back to his last talk with dear old dad, where in a fit of irony, F.M. declares that his opponents from the Sax Rohmer books were the real bad guys.







You can see the moral ambiguity of the period, as our hero is reintroduced killing an innocent, feeble, and even courageous old man. Shades of Cassandra Cain's origin story, where she realizes her father's villainy only after damning herself by carrying out his wishes. The core of Shang's character being one fateful mistake he must continuously take responsibility for is, of course, very Marvel.



Goddamn, that's a splash page.



Shang does some soul-searching, including a visit to his white mother (who F.M. seduced for eugenic reasons; that's getting retconned out), before going to confront his father. He fights his way through various guards, including the sumo wrestler who crippled Nayland Smith and...



AN APE THAT FU MANCHU GAVE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE JUST TO DRIVE INSANE. Comics, hell yeah.

After pushing through to his father, Fu Manchu deploys talk no jutsu on him.





Well, there it is, Shang-Chi's first appearance. He would rapidly grow popular enough to take over this particular magazine, which became Deadly Hands of Shang-Chi starting with issue 18. Fu Manchu would go on to be played by Peter Sellers and Nicolas Cage, which not many literary characters can claim.

Comments

[aperturedreams]

I'm no fan of Zeb Well's Amazing Spider-Man but calling him the jackass writer by using the tags just seems like breaking community rules to me, I mean let's keep things civil, the post isn't even related to him or that run at all

[thanekos]

Fu Manchu's honestly the easiest part of Shang-Chi's backstory to replace - he's impressive here, but this still isn't Sax Rohmer's " Terrifying, Formidable Archvillain and these other people" - it can't be, because Shang-Chi's the focus.

So long as that's the case, his Evil Dad might as well be an original character - not really meaningfully leveraging the cachet of someone else's fictional character, otherwise.

[deh_tommy]

True, but... c’mon, it’s Fu Manchu. That’s awesome! It’d be like saying “oh no, this was never Godzilla, it’s Leviathan Rex” or “this isn’t Conan the Barbarian, it’s Konan the Conquering Hero”, sure functionally they’d be identical but they lose that punch, y’know? At least Fu Manchu has the benefit of going by multiple aliases.

[michael_ellis_day]

The thing that bothered me most about this comic back when it came out was the skin color choices. I thought they were offensively bad at the time and they haven't improved with age. I could accept Fu Manchu's pallor as caused by age and weird life-prolonging serums -- they meant him to look like a walking corpse -- but that was the way Marvel colored regular Asian characters as well. And it doesn't explain how Shang-Chi ends up a cantaloupe colored hue.

The weirdest part is that the unnamed goons including the sumo wrestler were given flesh tones matching the white characters in the original comic, which just makes Fu Manchu and his son stand out even more.

To be stringently fair, the original comic was printed on cheap light beige colored paper and the colors were a lot more faded, not nearly as saturated as they look here. Shang-Chi's skin was a little bit less intense than you see above. But this is still pretty faithful.

[scorntx]

Seems like if you wanted to raise your kid to kill at your command, it might've been an idea to skip teaching him the bit about valuing all life or that revenge solves nothing.
Scored a bit of an extreme own goal there.

Not doing a good job on letting the staff know what the boss's son looks like either.

[knight_moves]

Well, when you're one of those "actually, I'm doing this for the greater good" types, you assume anyone who's virtuous and in their right mind supports you, while anyone else is deficient in some way. Dr. Doom Syndrome.