Retro Reviews: Master of Kung Fu #102-125 by Moench, Day, and others

Master of Kung Fu #102-125 (July 1981 – June 1981)

Written by Peter B. Gillis (#102), Doug Moench (#102-120, 122), Steven Grant (#121), Alan Zelenetz (#123-125)

Co-plotted by Gene Day (#110-111)

Penciled by Gene Day (#102-111, 114-118, 120), Mike Zeck (#102), Rick Magyar (#112-113), Mark [sic] Silvestri (#119), David Mazzucchelli (#121), William Johnson (#122-125), Alan Kupperberg (#125)

Inked by Gene Day (#102-105, 108, 114-118, 120), Armando Gil (#106-107), Jack Abel (#109-111), Rick Magyar (#111), Joe Rubinstein (#111), Ricardo Villamonte (#112), Alan Kupperberg (#113, 125), Kevin Dzubin (#119), Vince Colletta (#121), Ernie Chan (#122), Mike Mignola (#123-125)

Coloured by Bob Sharen (#102-103, 107), George Roussos (#104, 123, 125), Christie Scheele (#105-106, 108-122, 124)

Spoilers from forty-five to forty-five years ago

I originally started picking up reader copies of Master of Kung Fu before I learned that a Marvel movie was being made featuring the character. As much as I’d always admired artists like Paul Gulacy and Mike Zeck, and wanted to see what their runs on this title were like, the artist that actually inspired me to start collecting this series was Gene Day. I’d barely started reading comics when Day died in 1982 at the young age of thirty-two, but as a Canadian, I heard his name a lot at the early conventions I attended. 

I saw bits of his art here and there, and was struck by how much I liked it. Anyway, something I read got me interested, and it’s from there that I decided to track down his much-heralded run. When I started picking up issues, I hadn’t thought there’d be an omnibus of this series, given that the Sax Rohmer characters were then out of reach of Marvel for reprinting.

Anyway, despite the year and a half I took off this project, I’m excited to finally get into the issues I’d been looking forward to reading all along. Writer Doug Moench altered his approach a little for both Gulacy and Zeck, and I’m curious to see how he wrote to Day’s strengths. I’m also curious to see how he spun another two years out of this series, having gotten rid of most of Shang-Chi’s biggest antagonists.

This book features the following characters:

Villains:

• Diadem (Luciane D’Hiver; #102)
• Cat (Shen Kuei; #103-104)
• Razor-Fist II (#105-106)
• Razor-Fist III (#105-106)
• Carlton Velcro (#105-106)
• Sata (#107)
• Zaran (#109)
• The Ghost Maker (Grigori Sovchenko; #110-111)
• Red Reaper (#113)
• Death-Dealer (Li Ching-Lin; #115-118)
• Wang Yu-Seng (#115-116)
• Bolo (Golden Daggers; #116)
• Kimba (Golden Daggers; #116)
• Fu Manchu (#116-118)
• Cho Lin (Si-Fan; #118)
• Ducharme (#118)
• Dark Shang-Chi (Shang-Chi’s unnamed clone; #118)
• Brynocki (Master of Kung Fu #119)
• Vienna (#121)
• Carrington Scullers (#122)
• Shang-Chi’s Mother (#123)
• Thugben Sung (Lama; #124)
• The Noh Master (#125)

Supporting Characters:

• Lord Burtonwil (#102)
• Dame Peyraud (#102)
• Anton Paulve (#102)
• Dr. Lugash (#102)
• Georges Kalougine (#102)
• Black Jack Tarr (#103-106, 108-113, 115-118, 123-125)
• Leiko Wu (#103-106, 108-119, 122-125)
• Clive Reston (#103, 105-106, 108-110, 112-113, 115-119, 122)
• Juliette (#103-105)
• Sir Denis Nayland Smith (#105-106, 108-119, 121-122, 125)
• Cat (Shen Kuei; #105)
• Mr. Harkins (MI-6; #105)
• Fah Lo Suee (head of MI-6; #105, 109, 113, 115-118, 122)
• Pavane (#105-106)
• Dark Angel (Mia Lessing; #107-110, 112-113, 115-119)
• Melissa Greville (#109, 115-116)
• Mandy Greville (#109)
• Morris Talon (MI-6; #112-113)
• Gaboa (#113)
• Li, the blind archer (#114)
• Mara Ling (#114)
• Dr. Petrie (#115-118)
• Rufus ‘One-Eyed’ Carter (#120)
• Jock McBridie (#120)
• Migou (Tibetan snowman; #124)

Let’s see what happened in the comics, with some commentary as I go:

• Issue 102 is guest written by Peter B. Gillis. He has Shang-Chi in the south of France, where he has been tapped by a British Lord to help a woman named Dame Peyraud who owns a refinery. Shang meets Luciane D’Hiver, who seduces him with a dance. When Shang meets Peyraud, he learns that a cartel called IDIC (International Data Integration and Control) had attempted to take them over, and now there have been a string of accidents. She’s closed her refinery and fears for her life, which is why she wants Shang to help her. Her assistant, Anton Paulve and Luciane tell Shang that they think the threats are in the old woman’s head. He sits outside her room all night, but the next morning at breakfast she reveals that she’s been blinded, presumably by poison. Shang and Luciane talk of their mutual attraction, but she makes it clear that she follows her own path. Anton watches them embrace. That night, Shang waits inside the old lady’s room and fights off a robotic flying scorpion, but doesn’t notice a fly that has paralyzed her. Shang goes for a walk and gets attacked by a masked man (and about a half dozen more). He fights them, and discovers that Anton is their leader. He’s not the assassin, but he loves Luciane. Kalougine, another refinery employee, turns up with a gun, thinking that Shang is the assassin. Things get a bit chaotic, until they hear a siren. They learn that the Dame has had a heart attack. The next morning, Lord Burtonwil says he will reopen the refinery, and Shang says he knows who the killer is, but he’s going to go for a walk first. He did this as a trap, so the killer would come to him. Dr. Lugash shows up first, but Shang knows he’s not the killer. Luciane also turns up in a yellow outfit, holding a green gem. She calls herself Diadem and attacks, while telling Shang not to fight back. Since Peyraud is expected to recover and the IDIC got what they want, she figures they don’t need to do much. She claims she loves Shang, and when he grabs her arm, she hugs him, paralyzing him. She leaves. The issue ends with a few pages of art by Mike Zeck showing Shang fighting, with some typical boilerplate narration by Doug Moench. There are then two landscape portraits, one of all of Shang’s friends and allies, and another of his enemies.
• Moench returned with issue 103, which opens with an anthropological treatise on life aboard the ‘junks’ of Hong Kong, where merchants live on boats year round, forming floating island cities. This lecture is provided by Black Jack Tarr, with Shang-Chi, investigating the fact that many boats appear to have changed ownership recently, and are no longer going about their mercantile matters. In a flashback, we learn that when Shang-Chi went to accompany Leiko home from the hospital, she’d already left. Her friend pointed Shang in the direction of Tarr, who explained that Leiko had come to him looking for a solo mission to help her get her sense of control back in her life (she’d been injured in the Ripper case, and only just recovered). There’d been an offer of a mission to Hong Kong that Tarr had rejected, but he gave Leiko the information about it. He then told Shang that he figured they could follow and be her backup. In the present, the two men sneak across the junks looking for one with three flags, which is where their contact is supposed to be. They get discovered and fight some guys, and meet their robed contact. She reveals herself to be Juliette, whom we’ve seen a few times before in this series. Shang revisits his former feelings for Juliette, and once Tarr leaves them alone to stand guard, we learn that she is working for someone. We learn that back in the second world war, the Nazis sent a ship to Hong Kong for the Japanese, but it was sunk in the harbor by an American bomber. Now it’s believed the ship had a secret weapons system, and Juliette’s employers want to raise it. We also learn that Leiko has gone to the centre of the island. Tarr calls on Shang to point out that the junks are being chained together, and they are moving. Shang figures out that they’re going after the sunken ship, and learns that Juliette has slipped away. He figures that Leiko might be in the centre of the floating island, so Shang and Tarr start to cross the boats, getting in fights as they go. They find scuba gear and dive beneath the island, where they see the sunken ship. The men are using hoses to pump it full of air. Shang heads to the tugboat in the centre of all the junks, leaving Tarr to watch what’s happening. Shang sees Leiko through a window and is saddened to see her talking to a man, whom she embraces. Just then the sunken ship rises, sending junks flying. The boss of this operation emerges with Leiko to see what happened, and we realize that it’s Shen Kuei, The Cat. When he sees Shang, he says he wants to fight him.

• Shang-Chi and Cat prepare to fight, but first Shang speaks briefly with Leiko, who he assumes is pretending not to care for him as part of her mission. Cat starts the fight, and Shang joins in. Cat notices that Shang is not as formidable as he was before. While the fight continues, Black Jack Tarr returns to the surface, and Cat’s men find the canisters on the Nazi ship that they were looking for, and load them on a speedboat. Tarr, climbing onto the tugboat where the fight is happening, is surprised when Leiko takes his gun and forces the two men to stop fighting. She gives the gun to Cat, just as he learns that he has what he was looking for from the Nazi boat. He leaves with Leiko, while Shang and Tarr fight all of his goons. They dive into the harbor to escape, and while they dodge through the various junks, Juliette has them come to hers and hide. She explains that Cat was after a Nazi-developed particle beam weapon that supposedly solved the issue of energy dispersion that has hampered other similar weapons. We learn that Cat is working on his own, and wants to hide away the weapon and keep it out of various interested parties’ hands. He has gone to a crumbling temple where he and Leiko burn all the Nazi papers and his men bury the canisters. We see that Cat feels guilty for being with Leiko while still in love with Juliette, but that his sense of pride will not let himself return to her. At the same time, Cat realizes that Leiko still cares for Shang-Chi. They agree to spend one more night together. The next morning, Shang, Juliette, and Tarr arrive at the temple, and Juliette guides only Shang inside. The find Cat, who still thinks that Shang works for the British government. They start to fight again, and Day sets up some cool sequences that have them fighting through the temple. Leiko arrives and concocts a plan with Juliette to get the men to stop fighting. The two women hold guns on each other and threaten to shoot if the men don’t stop fighting. This gets them to stop, and they each embrace their true loves. Later, we see the Nazi ship blow up and sink, and the two couples part, secure in knowing that the weapon is hidden for all time.
• Razor-Fist turns up in a bar in Hong Kong looking for Cat. Astute readers will notice that he has only one razor-fist this time around, his right one. The men won’t give up Cat’s whereabouts, but when he threatens to kill a woman, he also makes it clear that he’s really only looking for Shang-Chi and Pavane. The men have no problem telling him that Shang went back to London the week before, and that Pavane went there over a year before that. Back at Nayland Smith’s townhouse in London, he, Tarr, and Clive Reston discuss a dossier that arrived, outlining how someone has been killing people involved in the Carlton Velcro affair (covered in my first Master of Kung Fu column). At the same time, we see Razor-Fist report to someone over a radio, who orders him home, and mentions his brother. As Nayland Smith talks, Shang meditates outside his window, but listens in. We get a multi-page recap of the adventure involving Velcro, a secret base, and the supposed death of both Razor-Fist and Velcro. In Hong Kong, Cat learns of the attack, and he and Juliette debate letting Shang-Chi know that trouble is headed his way; Cat seems jealous of Shang’s dalliance with Juliette, but he says he’ll warn him still. Nayland Smith and the others continue to discuss the threat against them, and are surprised that Shang was listening. He heads to Leiko’s, where she’s heard from Cat. Nayland Smith goes to MI-6, which is supposed to be reformed, and meets with Harkins, the man who now has his old office. Harkins knows nothing of any file being sent to Smith, but Fah Lo Suee shows up and admits she sent it. She’s consulting with MI-6 now, and tells Smith where Pavane lives. We see Razor-Fist receiving some information too. Leiko and Shang head to Pavane’s house, where they have to climb a fence and evade some panthers. They break through a window to stay away from the cats, and find Pavane ready for them. As they are about to fight (she’s not listening to them), they hear one of the panthers cry out in pain. Razor-Fist enters the house and starts fighting Shang while Pavane continues to fight with Leiko. Soon Razor-Fist says he wants to kill Pavane, at which point she realizes that Leiko is there to help her. Shang fights Razor-Fist (I noticed that his blade is now on his left hand), and Shang and Pavane work together to knock him out. Pavane explains that Carlton Velcro is still alive (at the same time, we see Razor-Fist, with his blade on his right hand, talking with the cybernetic Velcro (who looks a bit like Silvermane now). Pavane explains that there are three Razor-Fists, and that they are triplets.

• As it turns out, two of the Razor-Fists are brothers, but they are not related to the original. RFII explains this to Shang-Chi, Leiko, and Pavane when they interrogate him. He hasn’t realized that it was actually Carlton Velcro who mutilated him and his brother, and replaced their missing arms with knives. He does reveal that Velcro is on an island in the Marquesas, and Pavane decides she wants nothing to do with going after him. On that island, Velcro, who has a metallic arm and leg now, explains to his army of assassins that they need to prepare for a coming attack. He also talks to RFIII about attacking Nayland Smith’s castle in Scotland. Shang and Leiko return there to prepare for their attack on Velcro’s base, and discuss how they both think doing this mission as a duo (Tarr and Reston are still in the Caribbean) will be good for them, to help them regain their confidence. They are flown to the South Pacific, and parachute onto Velcro’s island. They are approached by killers as they prepare their gear, and kill them with swords they brought with them. They make their way through the island, and we see that they are both wearing a variation of samurai armor (Shang looks a bit like the Silver Samurai), complete with metal facemasks. They enter Velcro’s estate, and keep having to fight his men, who don’t seem so difficult for them. They split up, and Shang soon finds the room that Velcro and Razor-Fist III are in. He starts to fight RFIII, while Leiko finds a number of other guys to fight, and happens to set the building on fire while doing it. Tarr and Reston approach the island on a boat. Shang continues to fight RFIII when Velcro gets impatient and starts shooting at him, hitting Razor-Fist instead. Shang takes off his armor to fight Velcro, but didn’t realize that Velcro’s metal arm rotates and is covered in sharp spikes. It doesn’t matter much, because as Shang fights him, Leiko finishes off the goons and Tarr arrives with local police. Velcro begs for mercy, but Shang knocks him out as Leiko arrives. They meet up with the others outside and head back, with both Shang and Leiko feeling refreshed and more confident than before.
• Shang-Chi is taking a retreat to Italy to work on his sense of having lost his mojo (not his words). To do this, he spends ten days on an ocean liner fasting and meditating, and upon arrival heads out to break his fast. He’s about to eat when he’s approached by a youth with a cable from Nayland Smith, commanding him to head to Rome to find someone named Dark Angel and return to him with them. He’s to talk to a mermaid in the docks. He takes a train but its dining car is closed, so he’s still hungry when he heads to the docks. Some racist tough guy with a hook hand decides to attack him, and Shang takes him and his friends out quickly. He finds a man with a mermaid tattoo, who tells him that he has to go find an assassin named Dark Angel, who is being targeted for death. This guy leads Shang to a boat and then disappears. He finds an old man in the boat, who tells him they need to leave, but first need to get to his daughter before they are found by Sata, an assassin that is chasing him. The man wants to eat something, but sais fly out of the shadows, killing the man first. Sata reveals himself (he’s kind of a ridiculous-looking trident-themed villain). Shang chases him into the Colosseum, and as he does, he reflects on how his fast is holding him back instead of empowering him. He sees Sata in shadow, and learns from him that he was once Si-Fan, working for Fu Manchu. Shang strikes, knocking his head off before realizing he was duped by a statue. Sata reveals himself, and they start to fight. They are both surprised by how hunger has dulled Shang’s prowess, and then Shang starts to hallucinate that he is a gladiator in ancient times. He continues to fight Sata, who appears different to him, and he manages to take him down. Shang leaves the Colosseum, and breaks the window of a butcher’s shop. Before he can grab any food, a woman with white streaks in her dark hair approaches, and tells him she is Dark Angel. The old man was going to betray her. She tells Shang that they’ll go get breakfast before he takes her back to Nayland Smith.

• Shang-Chi is at Dark Angel’s new London apartment, lost in a reverie while watching her new pet chameleon. This becomes a theme for the issue, as he continues to reflect on people showing their ‘true colours’. Leiko comes to accompany Dark Angel and Shang to Nayland Smith’s London townhouse, where he gives the defector the new identity of Mia Lessing. She’s been giving MI-6 information, but knows of a spy cell that she wants Nayland Smith’s group, and especially Shang-Chi, to take care of. She reveals that there is a mole in MI-6, Winston Markham, and she knows when he’s going to be in touch with his Soviet contacts. They decide to lay a trap in a cathedral, but it seems their enemies were waiting for them. A priest grabs Dark Angel, and various nuns and believers attack Shang when he tries to rescue her. Clive was hiding in a confessional, but he’s not much help either. The men run out of the church, where Leiko is waiting with a car. She rushes after the bus that they stuffed Dark Angel into, and Shang climbs on it. The bus crashes, but the villains get to a van before Shang can catch up. Leiko continues to chase, and the men throw Dark Angel out. She’s so furious her voice goes hoarse. Later, everyone reconvenes at Nayland Smith’s, where they interrogate the mole (I guess they did manage to secure him). Dark Angel says the cell they’re after is using a pet store as a front, and when asked, claims that’s why she went to buy the chameleon. That night, Shang has trouble sleeping and finds Dark Angel poking around Nayland Smith’s house, despite the fact that she was supposed to be at her own place, guarded by Reston. When she sees Shang, she tries to kill him and flees. Reston pulls up just then, and they follow. They slip into the pet store and are fired on by some KGB goons. It becomes clear that Dark Angel has been playing them, and soon she and Shang are fighting. He has a bit of a sexist internal monologue about how she’s more than a woman, like Leiko and Pavane (which is half the women he knows). He knocks her out, while Reston takes out the other goons. Just then, a second Dark Angel reveals herself, tied up and gagged, and they realize that the goons switched her with a duplicate (hence the change in voice).
• Shang-Chi and the whole gang are spending time at Nayland Smith’s castle, where we learn that Mandy Greville is moving her school for the blind to London, and that Clive is going to break up with Melissa now that he’s in love with Dark Angel. At the same time, Zaran talks to himself as he practices his marksmanship by trying to knock cards out of the sky after he throws them. Fah Lo Suee comes to see him, but she makes it clear that she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. He gets angry and she uses mimosa dust to drug him, and when he pursues her, she has her thugs knock him down. After she leaves, he decides that she is rejecting him because of the time she’s spending debriefing Dark Angel, and decides to kill her. We see Clive and Melissa split up, and the Greville sisters leave. Clive looks sad for a moment, but then walks off with Dark Angel. The others recognize that he’s a creep. We see Zaran call the KGB (as one does) to arrange some backup and learn the location of Dark Angel. Clive and ‘Angel’ talk and make out. The next day, Nayland Smith and the others are going on a fox hunt on his property, but Shang is not interested. He follows them at a distance, and spots Zaran and five men in the trees. He sees Zaran knock Dark Angel off her horse, and intervenes before he can kill her. Zaran decides to retreat when the others come, and while they fight the KGB guys, Shang pursues Zaran. They end up in the cemetery on the castle grounds, where their fight knocks over statues and causes a grave to collapse. The fox is also in the cemetery, giving Moench space to compare the two struggles. Shang defeats Zaran, and Clive and ‘Angel’ embrace.

• Gene Day co-plotted issue 110, which helps explain why the layout of this issue leveled up in numerous places. Shang and Leiko are sparring, but his mind is elsewhere (he’s thinking about the struggles that come with integrating his Eastern upbringing and his Western reality), and this makes her mad. Dark Angel tells the others about yet another plot coming from Russia – this time, she is concerned with an operative who trained in China who has taken the name The Ghost Maker. She knows that he plans on attacking a secret British military base in Sussex to steal a dangerous weapon that the UK government has shelved. Nayland Smith assigns Tarr to go deal with this, and he decides to take Shang and Leiko with him. These two are arguing though, and it seems that Leko has broken up with him (but I can’t remember if this is a previous break-up or a new one). Their car ride to Sussex is tense, and shortly after they arrive at the base (which is built into an old manor that was donated to the government, with a particularly tall spire), the Ghost Maker and his men attack by launching sleep gas canisters all over the place. Our heroes and the base commander are the only ones who don’t succumb. They find masks and move to the room that runs the base’s defenses; the commander thinks they will be enough. He’s wrong, and after he’s killed, the others need to make their way to the top of the spire, where the weapon is. The Ghost Maker’s men also scale the spire from the outside, and take out a helicopter that tries to stop them. Tarr wrenches his back after the chopper explosion’s shockwave hits them, but he soldiers on. Shang saves him from a grenade, and finds himself face to face with The Ghost Maker, who has a cool design that makes him look like a Cobra villain. Their fight is very cool, and takes them outside. We learn that Ghost Maker has a jetpack, and he flies off, leaving Shang to climb the spire (which is now super-hot because of a fire inside) by hand. Leiko and Tarr are at the top of the spire when part of the floor collapses, leaving Tarr dangling. Shang arrives as Leiko, who has been hit in the leg with a throwing star, crawls towards Ghost Maker. Shang rescues Tarr, but Ghost Maker gets the weapon (it’s pretty small) and flies off. Leiko grabs his boot and holds on, so she is essentially taken prisoner. Shang makes a difficult jump into a helicopter while holding Tarr. We learn that the device Ghost Maker took is able to turn natural rain into a type of acid that burns flesh, and that he’s planning on using it on the Queen of England during an upcoming parade.
• The Statement of Ownership for 1981 reports an average press run of 256 000 copies, with average newsstand returns of 129 000.
• Shang and Tarr get to a jeep and pursue the Ghost Maker, who is flying slower than normal due to having Leiko hanging off his boot. He manages to kick her loose in a grove of trees, and she falls to the ground, still injured. She lights a fire and Shang and Tarr find her. She tells them to hurry after Ghost Maker, who she figures is heading to Paris where the Queen is set to appear, but Shang wants to talk about their fight. She convinces him to get moving, but he leaves Tarr behind. He is able to keep up with Ghost Maker, who runs out of fuel over a small town. He steals a motorbike, so Shang continues to pursue him in the jeep. They fight a bit from their respective vehicles, and in their fight, the canister that contains the ‘acid rain’ gets a puncture. Ghost Maker ends up in control of the jeep, and drives it onto a ferry heading to France. Shang gets a tugboat operator to chase him, and when they arrive in Calais, they both make their way onto a train where they continue to fight (I should mention that the number of double-page spreads showing their fight is impressive for this era). Shang manages to time a maneuver just right so a wire sends Ghost Maker into a lake, where he commandeers a canoe; Shang jumps into the water and swims after him. When they come to shore, Ghost Maker grabs a bicycle, so Shang does the same, but still can’t quite catch him. Shang is impressed with how Ghost Maker is able to continue powering through exhaustion. He rushes up a hill where a container with a special gun is waiting for him, just as the Queen’s parade begins below. Ghost Maker realizes he’s lost most of his ‘acid rain’ (which really, would have been diluted when he was in the water), but figures he has enough left to seed a single cloud. Shang catches up and they fight some more, but Ghost Maker takes his shot. Apparently it takes ten minutes for the acid rain to start, and they realize that their solitary cloud is moving, and that more clouds are coming in, creating a storm. A helicopter arrives to help Shang, and pulls him away as the acid rain falls more or less just on Ghost Maker, killing him. (Really, it looks like had he used a sniper rifle instead of this elaborate acid rain stuff, he probably could have taken the queen out much more easily). Nayland Smith goes and gets Leiko and Black Jack, and we learn that Leiko wasn’t really all that mad at Shang, who is catching up on his rest in a Paris hotel.

• Issue one hundred twelve is drawn by Rick Magyar, which is a bit ironic, given that it’s set in Gene Day’s home city of Toronto (which also explains why the iconic CN Tower looks like the Seattle Space Needle). Anyway, the story starts with Shang-Chi, Leiko, and Reston arriving in Toronto and looking for an MI-6 agent named Talon. We learn that a couple of days prior, he’d gone to see Sir Nayland Smith to get him to sign some non-disclosure-type forms finalizing his exit from MI-6. While they chatted about how the organization has purged itself of untrustworthy elements, Dark Angel brings in a package that just arrived. Inside it is a dead mole, which Nayland Smith throws through a window just before it explodes. Talon believes that this is a symbol that Nayland Smith himself is some sort of double agent, and accuses him of being too close to a number of Chinese people. Shang and the others follow Talon when he takes a limousine somewhere. Before, Nayland Smith explained that by creating doubt around his status as a mole, whoever is working against him is putting him at danger of both their efforts, and what will happen once MI-6 decides he can’t be trusted. He, Dark Angel, and Tarr will look into his past while the others follow Talon. Talon gets out of his limo in the portlands, and while Reston hangs back to watch, Shang-Chi and Leiko follow him into a large cargo ship. They follow him to the hold, where Talon is attacked by a group of Chinese fighters. Shang and Leiko join in the fight, until the attackers flee. They give chase, and Reston is about to join them when the injured Talon approaches him. He stays back to talk to the agent, who now believes that Nayland Smith is innocent (at least of this). Shang pulls ahead of Leiko and chases the bad guys into a forested park. They surround him and are about to fight when Leiko joins in as well. They take down two of the seven attackers, but don’t give chase when the remaining five run again. The two prisoners take cyanide capsules so they can’t talk. Talon and Reston turn up and we learn that Talon knows who they work for. They call Nayland Smith and tell him that someone named Yung Sing, the “Red Reaper” is involved. He tells Dark Angel and Tarr that fifty years prior he was involved in a secret mission named Operation: White Heat, and that he burned the file for it. He makes a comment about needing to be destroyed now, because he committed. 
• Rick Magyar continued to draw issue 113, but he was joined by Alan Kupperberg, and the art feels rushed and lacking in detail. Talon leads Shang, Reston, and Leiko to a bar where his contact is, but the guy freaks out when he sees the Chinese members of the group. Talon gets him to talk, but he’s shot in the neck with a poison dart. Some of the Chinese assassins from the last issue are seen on a nearby roof, and they lead Shang and Reston into an ambush. This ends up with two more dead assassins. They return to the dying guy and learn that the White Heat document that Nayland Smith once committed to memory was actually a code. This info is relayed back to England, and Nayland Smith gets to work dictating the whole file to Mia (she doesn’t like being called Dark Angel anymore). While they work on this, someone takes a shot at Nayland Smith through the window. Tarr manages to kill the guy. Hours later, Mia figures out (apparently she was a top KGB code breaker) that the old file was about special blue diamonds that can be used to focus light to make ‘maser’ technology, and it says where to find these diamonds. Shang, Leiko, and Reston are sent to Africa (I guess it’s just one country?) where a guy named Gaboa, who is an old student of Nayland Smith’s, leads them to a remote area where they suspect a large asteroid once struck the Earth. When they arrive at this uninhabited place, they find that the Chinese have constructed a mine in the dense foliage. Shang and Leiko creep close to learn what’s going on, and spot the Red Reaper running the show. Shang slips into the nearby jungle, finds some panthers (there’s been a lot of talk about how there aren’t any animals in the region), angers them, and leads them back to the mine, where he tricks them into attacking miners and remaining assassins from Toronto. Reston, Gaboa, and his men start shooting at the miners as well. Shang fights the assassins while trying to buy Leiko time to dismantle a detonator (the Chinese are close to getting the blue diamonds). One of the guys manages to set off the detonator while Shang is in the mine, causing an explosion that reveals a large concentration of the diamonds. There is a fault line under the mine (which doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially if you consider that a meteor once struck it), and it splits open, causing a bulldozer to explode. Shang can’t get any of the Chinese to follow him out, and has to fight off one last assassin before he escapes through a fire ball and the mine’s collapse. Later, Talon arrives in a helicopter with Fah Lo Suee, who is upset at the loss of the diamonds.

• Gene Day returned for issue 114, which he inked himself. Shang-Chi is meditating while listening to the Rolling Stones when Leiko comes to tell him that Nayland Smith wants to speak with him. Smith tells him that he’s been contacted by MI-6 to help with a woman in Hong Kong who has contacted them claiming she’s been pursued by an assassin for forty years. The assassin is Si-Fan, part of Fu Manchu’s cult, so Shang immediately wants to help. While we see him go to an airplane, bid farewell to Leiko, and fly around the world, we also see an older blind man firing arrows at a target in a garden. A cabbie takes Shang to his destination in Hong Kong, and along the way we learn he’s arrived at the same time as the Festival of the Autumn Moon. We see the assassin enter the blind archer’s garden, and they fight. Shang hears this and leaps over the wall, attacking the assassin, who recognizes him. Their fight is graceful and fluid, and interrupted when the woman, Mara Ling, steps onto the porch. The assassin throws a knife at her, but Shang knocks her down and the blind archer, Li, grabs the knife out of the air, as the assassin flees. Li is upset that Shang touched his wife, who is decades younger than him in appearance. They go inside and Li goes to rest. Mara tells Shang the legend of the Autumn Moon, which involves a young woman of high birth whose love of a blind archer was forbidden. The two lovers gave up everything, and received the blessing of a dragon to wed; the woman drank from the dragon’s pool and gained immortality, left to watch as her lover grew old and died. In despair, she killed herself so they could stay in love together in the autumn moon. Mara explains that she has been drinking Fu Manchu’s elixir vitae, and explains her backstory. Like the legend, she was from an important family and fell for a blind archer. Her parents had arranged for her to marry Fu Manchu though, although she refused to consummate her marriage to him out of loyalty to Li. Fu didn’t care a whole lot, but told her that he’d give her the elixir if he could spend one night with her. She gave in, and then took the elixir to Li, who refused to drink it. That’s when the assassin started coming after them, and they spent forty years on the run. Li overhears this conversation (Mara lied to him about lying with Fu) and sneaks out. Shang goes looking for him and finds him hanging from a tree, dead. The assassin reveals himself, and they start to fight again. Shang beats on the masked man, who trips and falls on the arrows that Li had fired into a target earlier (although the art does not clearly show how the tips would have gotten into his chest). Shang carries Li’s body to Mara, and she reveals that she has drunk poison knowing that Li will know of her betrayal now that he’s dead. Shang places Li next to her now-dead body and leaves.
• Everyone (including Dr. Petrie, whom I’d forgotten about) is gathered around a table for a meeting with Sir Dennis Nayland Smith’s accountant, who informs them that due to some bad investments and the costs of carrying a castle, Smith is broke and the people who hold the mortgage on the castle are foreclosing. Smith seems less worried than the others, as he departs for a meeting in London. In London, Fah Lo Suee asks Miss Greville, who has returned to working for the organization, her opinion of an agent, Li Ching-Lin. Melissa thinks he’s talented but a bit brutal, and Fah Lo Suee admits that she sees him gunning for her job. Smith arrives and meets with Fah, who wants him to eliminate Li in return for forged mortgage documents that will allow him to keep his castle. Smith agrees, and has a brief chat with Melissa, who wants to know if Clive and Mia are still together. They are together that very moment (although I guess it’s hours later, as Smith returns). He gathers everyone again and tells them that he needs Shang to take out Li (Mia reacts to that name but doesn’t say anything). After getting to London, Shang heads to Li’s address, where they immediately fight before Li slips away. Shang tries to track him, but with no luck. We follow Li to a dark room where he meets with a man named Wang Yu-Seng, who is orchestrating events. Wang wants to take control of MI-6, and has Li put on a costume and use the name Death-Dealer to first kill Shang-Chi. Black Jack Tarr is watching all of this from outside the window. Shang goes through Li’s apartment for clues and learns he’s part of MI-6, which makes him doubt Nayland Smith. He heads to Leiko’s flat, where he finds her and a very drunk Clive Reston. Reston tells them that Mia remembered Li as a very loyal servant of the queen. As Death-Dealer approaches the building, Reston says he went through Smith’s desk and found the false mortgage papers. This is when Tarr comes in and says that Li must be a double agent (revealing that he was sent to watch Wang); the group argues a bit, at least until Death-Dealer fires a rifle-grenade through the window. He enters the ruined flat and starts dealing out playing cards. Shang, Leiko, and Black Jack are fine, protected by a collapsed wall. They argue about who will go fight Death-Dealer; Shang lies about picking the short straw and starts to fight Death-Dealer in a gorgeous sequence. Shang disarms the man, who has three-bladed swords, but won’t use them to cut or stab him. Reston, who everyone thought was dead, shoots the remaining sword out of Death-Dealer’s hand, and the killer jumps out the window and into the river below. Back at Stormhaven, Shang looks for the false documents in Smith’s study and thinks about how his father lied to him. Smith enters and points out that he burned them; he’d never intended on accepting Fah’s prize, but needed to play along to get information on Li, who he was already suspicious of. He tells Shang he can’t tell him everything, but that someone they both know tipped him off to Li the week before. Later, the friends are playing cards with Death-Dealer’s deck, and when Clive spills some booze on one, they realize they have false fronts. Shang peels one back, and while we don’t see what’s on them, he announces that they’ve come from Fu Manchu, and that Smith must have seen him the week before.

• Shang continues to remove the faces on the cards, revealing pieces of a photo that assemble to show Fu Manchu’s fortress in Honan. Somewhere, we see men in shadows training to fight Shang-Chi. Shang talks to Nayland Smith, learning that he also believes Fu Manchu is alive, and that Wang Yu-Seng works for him. Shang, Leiko, and Black Jack leave to investigate Wang, and on their way out of Stormhaven, come across a constable who is there to serve an eviction notice. As the three friends drive to London, they talk about their fears (Shang’s is of being less than he is). They climb onto the roof of the building where Wang was seen before, and see him doing something in front of a fire. He turns to look at them through the window, and just then they are attacked. They fight the mystery men (I think they are the shadowy figures from a few pages before), but then those guys run away. They enter the building and Tarr almost drops through a trap door; he sees Wang speeding away in a boat. At Stormhaven, some guys kidnap Smith, and Reston is unable to stop them. Shang goes to see Fah Lo Suee, taking Mia’s scheduled appointment with her. When he enters her office, she momentarily reacts in fear, and then reveals that she knows that Fu Manchu is alive and that he wants their blood (literally). Tarr gets a call on his big car phone and learns about Smith; he and Leiko leave Shang to return to Scotland (they do a lot of commuting in this book). Shang decides to head to Reston’s flat and takes a shortcut down an alley where he’s attacked by Bolo and Kimba, the Golden Daggers, who we haven’t seen since issue forty-five. They fight, and then the two men realize that it’s Shang they’re fighting, and apologize. Fah Lo Suee told them to watch over her and not harm Shang or answer his questions. They run. Shang follows, and discovers their bodies. He jumps on a truck that is speeding away (it’s driven by Death-Dealer). It takes him to a graveyard, and when he looks in the truck (it’s one of those old canvas flap deals), he discovers a giant scorpion-like creature. He fights it but gets stung and passes out. In Scotland, the rest of the crew discuss their plans. Clive examines the picture of Fu Manchu’s fortress, and realizes there’s someone in a window. When he looks closely with a magnifying glass, he sees that it’s Shang-Chi, but he has facial scars. Shang wakes up to find he’s been tied to a table. Wang stands over him holding a vial of his blood. He drinks it, and undergoes a transformation – it’s Fu Manchu, only now he looks much younger than ever before. He explains that his elixir vitae stopped working, but when combined with the blood of either of his children, it works better than ever. He promises that he will keep Shang as a source of blood, and then leaves him alone on the table.
• Fu Manchu repeats himself, explaining again why he needs Shang-Chi’s blood, and while this happens, we see that some people are taking Nayland Smith to a building in Limehouse. Back at Stormhaven, the others get tossed out by a police officer, and as they leave, the phone starts to ring. We see that Fah Lo Suee has learned where Smith is, and wants to pass that info on. Shang is left strapped to a gurney with an IV draining his blood. He’s able to maneuver things so his blood spills on the straps holding him down, while with his feet he frees a cage of rats that Fu was keeping; the rats chew through his straps. He moves through the vast underground crypt beneath the cemetery, and finds Fu. Fu reveals that he is the true owner of Stormhaven, and that he was able to swim away from the crash that we thought killed him. Fu wants Shang captured again, and Death-Dealer attacks. Despite having lost a lot of blood, Shang fights back, crashing a wall that causes an underground spring to start filling the crypt. Fu escapes while the two men keep fighting (these pages are incredible). Thinking Shang unconscious, Death-Dealer leaves him to drown, but Shang chases him until he comes across three badly mutated creatures that we’ve seen before. They attack him. He takes the fight outside, and manages to defeat them, as he sees his father and Death-Dealer leave in a helicopter. Shang decides to walk to Reston’s flat, as that’s the only safe place he knows in London. We see that one of the creatures is not dead. Clive, Leiko, Petrie, and Tarr are at Reston’s place cooking breakfast when they hear from Fah Lo Suee. They leave immediately, and then Reston’s home explodes. Shang turns up just then. Nayland Smith talks back to his captors and gets slapped. Shang wakes up in a hospital with Leiko. She fills him in but wants him to rest. After she falls asleep, he gets up and leaves. He heads to his sister’s, where Mia attacks him. At first he thinks she’s a traitor, but we learn that she was guarding Fah, and that Shang already came and attacked her, taking Fah with him. Leiko breaks up their fight, and they figure out that the other Shang-Chi, the one with the scar that was in the photo on the card, must be in play. Shang sends the women to look for Smith while he rests, but he is woken up by the mutated creature (I have no idea how it would have found him without being noticed). They fight, and he kills it. It apparently had a false eye, which rolls out of its head. Inside the eye is a note summoning Shang to Honan. Shang leaves to meet the others, and we see some random guy with a cane mention what a nice day it is; I have no idea who this guy is, but feel like I’m supposed to.

• Issue one eighteen is double-sized and one of the most gorgeous books of this entire series. Day really outdid himself on the layouts and backgrounds. Shang, Tarr, and Reston parachute into the forest outside of Fu Manchu’s Honan fortress, while Nayland Smith gets beaten on by his Si-Fan captors. As Shang and his friends approach the place where he grew up, they are attacked by dozens of Si-Fan, representing all the different factions we’ve seen in this book so far; the forest itself catches fire. Inside the fortress, Fu talks to Fah Lo Suee, explaining again why he needs her and Shang’s blood to continue to be immortal. Having taken down twenty Si-Fan, Shang slips away from the fight and enters the house, avoiding traps based on memory and careful listening. Fu speaks to Shang-Chi’s scarred duplicate, who I guess I’ll call Dark Shang because of the era and his dark blue gi, revealing that he cloned his son when he was still young, and raised them separately. Shang finds the lab that contains all the blood Fu took from him, and he smashes it. Leiko and Mia are searching London for Nayland Smith. As Shang explores the fortress, he finds his brother’s room and takes one of his gis. Death-Dealer attacks him, and when Shang burns him with an incense brazier, his costume catches on fire and he dies. Shang finds Fah and frees her, but disagrees when she wants help recovering her gun from a locked box. Shang enters the courtyard where he took lessons, and finds his old teacher, Cho Lin. They fight, but Fah shows up and shoots him, which angers Shang. Fu enters his bath, which Ducharme has filled with serpents. He’s about to swallow a vial of blood when Shang arrives disguised as his brother. He smashes the blood, and then Fah shows up, shooting Ducharme. Fu swims away. Nayland Smith manages to maneuver his way to a window and pushes himself out, while still tied to a chair. He hurts his ankle but manages to escape his captors. Fu talks to Dark Shang, who he sends to lay traps for Shang. Shang, meanwhile, enters a room filled with candles, and finds himself engulfed in snakes. A giant preying mantis shows up and attacks him; that fight is visually interesting, and ends with a toppled statue crushing the insect. Tarr and Reston have finished off the Si-Fan outside, and enter the fortress with a bunch of gelignite explosives. They spend twenty minutes placing them around the building, and discuss how they are set to a thirty minute timer, so they need to find their friends before they set it off. They are attacked by more Si-Fan, and the denotator device falls through a grate, landing on the button. From here, we start to see a clock counting up to thirty. Nayland Smith hides from his pursuers in an alley. Shang thinks he sees his brother, but it’s only his reflection in a mirror, until Dark Shang shatters it and attacks him. They fight for many minutes, without talking, which means Moench fills these pages with Shang’s inner monologue. Finally, Shang tosses Dark Shang off a roof, and he falls into another lab, where a visibly aged Fu Manchu wails. He tries to collect Dark Shang’s blood as it flows. Shang arrives and they argue. Tarr and Reston hear the crash and come running, just as Fah finds them. They look through the hole in the roof as Shang tells them to leave him alone with his father. They take off (there are three minutes left on the clock) and Shang pours out the last of the blood on the ground. His father starts to lick it up. The others clear a stone wall just as the fortress explodes. We see Shang standing in the collapsing building, and then he disappears. The others look sad, and also assume that Nayland Smith is dead. The Si-Fan find Nayland Smith just as Mia and Leiko do, and they shoot them dead. In China, Fah sees an area of the fortress that is still standing, and they find Shang-Chi, covered in snakes, meditating. He approaches his friends and Fah remarks that he seems to be glowing from within now. He also seems to know that Smith is okay, which is confirmed when they reach the helicopter. Later, the whole crew is back at Smith’s castle (the bank let up after Fu died) when he returns from the hospital. He doesn’t know what to say when he sees all his friends with him, and Shang tells him that he’s the father he never had and that he loves him.
• I was surprised to see that Mark (this is how it’s spelled on the splash page) Silvestri was the guest penciler for issue 119. I wouldn’t have recognized his work compared to how he was drawing six years later on the X-Men. Brynocki, the very annoying cartoonish robot is on Mordillo’s island, where he talks to his dead master’s skeleton. He recaps things, and talks about how he dislikes Shang-Chi. At Stormhaven, Shang checks in on Nayland Smith, and they talk about how Shang feels different after confronting his father. Nayland Smith talks about how Shang has become a man now. On Mordillo Island, Brynocki carries his master’s skull around, showing it the various places that Shang and the others ruined. His anger seems to centre on Leiko, who we see is hanging out with Shang. Brynocki decides that he should kidnap Leiko, kill her, and place her bones next to Mordillo’s. He’s got six deadly robots he calls Ultra Men, and he loads them into a flying craft. Reston and Mia ask Leiko and Shang if they want to go with them to London. Mia’s got some work to do at MI-6, and since it’s a Sunday, there will be no one around to bother them. They agree, and Shang spends some of the ride thinking about his relationship with Clive, who seems protective of any time Shang spends with Mia. Upon arriving at MI-6, which is not even guarded, they split up to go about their business. Shang goes to look for rackets so he and Leiko can play tennis, and finds Brynocki and the Ultra Men in the locker room. He starts to fight them, and the noise draws Leiko in. They fight more, taking out some of the robots. Clive and Mia figure out something’s wrong, and they shoot more of the Ultra Men. Shang and Leiko end up fighting them in a war room that has a miniature of the British countryside. Clive and Mia join them, and they keep taking down more Ultra Men. One of the robots knocks out Leiko and moves away with her. Shang manages to jump into their flying craft as they leave, and knocks Brynocki out of it. He and Leiko stop the last Ultra Man, and the craft crashes into the Thames. Our heroes manage to swim away from it, and we see that Brynocki, his head now detached, has survived his fall and walks off into London. This issue was dumb.

• Gene Day returned for issue one twenty, which again made great use of thin vertical panels and statuary to make the book look terrific. Shang-Chi is meditating in the garden of Stormhaven when Rufus Carter, the martial artist and ex-CIA operative sneaks into the garden and starts sparring with him. Carter has gone freelance and wants Shang’s help with a case right there in Scotland. With nothing else to do, Shang heads out with him, and Carter talks a lot. We learn that this is his first case, and it involves helping an older Scottish gentleman in defending his rights to his family’s land. They go to meet Jock McBridie, the man in question, who spends his days playing bagpipes on a cliff. Once dusk falls, he stops playing and talks to the two men, giving them an education in Scottish words. He takes them to the hovel of a cottage he lives in and explains that his family’s castle is in terrible disrepair. He also speaks of ghosts, and when Shang asks about this, he tells the story of how his many greats-grandfather brought riches to the land, and buried it to avoid it falling into the hands of his enemies, the McKinnons. There was a fight, and the McBridie they called the Eagle was killed, and the McKinnons stole the treasure map. The next morning, Shang and Carter find a pair of men in suits threatening McBridie on his cliff. They have a fake deed and plan on taking the land from him. Carter and Shang get involved, and it turns violent. After the men run off, the two heroes head into the nearby town and find the proof of McBridie’s ownership. They return and tell him, but he wants them to stay for another night. Sure enough, as it gets dark, the McKinnon guy and four others show up with boxes of TNT. They want to blow up the castle, but not the dam that holds the lake back. They set off an explosion, and Carter and Shang go to investigate, leaving McBridie alone. This was a diversion though, and McKinnon and some of the others enter the cottage and start beating on McBridie. Carter takes out the two diversion guys while Shang rushes back to the cottage, finding only a puddle of blood. He finds the men digging in the graveyard and assumes they are going to hide McBridie’s body among his ancestors. The guys that Carter is fighting set off more dynamite, damaging the dam. Water floods the property, unearthing many of McBridie’s ancestors. Shang is almost killed by one of the men but he manages to defeat him and emerges from the water in front of McBridie. They find that the coffin Shang saw them dig up held all the family gold. Carter refuses payment, figuring he wants to stay away from anything haunted, and the two heroes leave McBridie playing bagpipes on his cliff.
• Behind a very cool Armando Gil cover, issue one twenty-one was written by Steven Grant and penciled by David Mazzucchelli (!!), and inked by Vince Colletta, which was maybe not the best pairing. The story opens in Paris where Shang-Chi stops a British man from selling a notebook to some KGB agents. He grabs the book and flees, and while the Russians are miffed, the Brit plays it cool. On his flight back to London, the Brit comes and sits next to Shang-Chi, threatening to shoot him (oh, the early 80s when you could still bring pistols onto airplanes). The stewardess clumsily spills coffee all over the man, so Shang-Chi takes the opportunity to knock him out with an elbow to the head.. He notices a Russian on the plane, so when he lands and clears customs, he starts to run. The Russian gives chase but Shang easily knocks him out. Once he’s in a taxi on his way to a safe house, he looks in the notebook and sees it’s blank; he realizes the stewardess got the real one. He finds her and chases her, but the Brit, now awake, notices them both. The woman gives Shang the book, explaining that she’s freelance like him. At Nayland Smith’s safehouse, an MI-6 agent paces. We learn that he’d lost an American code and wanted it back. Shang arrives, and they realize that he got cheated again. The woman, who Nayland Smith calls Vienna, turns up in the room and offers the MI-6 guy the real codebook, for more money than what he agreed to pay Nayland Smith. The man shoos Nayland Smith and Shang-Chi out of the room, and then the woman comes on to him. We see her swap books again, and then leave. He realizes what she did and catches up to Nayland Smith, asking him to go get the book (he agrees to pay more). We see Vienna call someone else to sell them the book, and that she’s observed by the first Brit. The next day, there’s a very slow chase as Nayland Smith tails the Russians to Vienna’s safehouse, and while Shang doesn’t know where exactly they went, he notices the first Brit and follows him. The KGB buy from Vienna, but then the Brit enters with a gun. Another KGB agent is about to open fire from through the skylight, but Shang pounces on him and they all end up in the room. There’s a fight, until Vienna manages to get the book, the money, and the gun and tells them all to not follow her (she probably could have just slipped away, really). She doesn’t know that Nayland Smith is behind her, and he takes the gun and book. They leave, with the Russians and the Brit chasing, but can’t find any of them. Later, we see Nayland Smith counting the money he got from the original buyer, but Shang slips away after he spots Vienna. She goes into a pub and meets with an American, giving him the real book in exchange for American cash. He leaves, and then Shang approaches her. They talk about her ethics and games of deceit, but Shang figures there’s no point in telling anyone what he learned. They walk across a bridge when a car speeds up. Kiley, the original Brit, shoots at Vienna, hitting her in the arm and causing all of her cash to fly off the bridge and into the water. He collapses in rage, and Vienna leaves.

• Moench returned to write issue one hundred twenty-two, with new artist William Johnson (more on that momentarily). Clive Reston narrated this issue, and in an annoyingly faux-British way. He was summoned to a potential job for Freelance Restorations, and meets an oddly dressed guy tossing a coin repetitively, who takes him to the back room of a sleazy bar, where two mountain-sized guys try to rough him up. Their boss explains that he wants to hire Reston to track down an escaped mental patient named Carrington Scullers. Reston knows him – he was a former MI-6 agent who also worked for the KGB, and went mad and tried to kill Clive and Leiko years before they met Shang-Chi. The two then-lovers tracked him through rural Italy and captured him. They give Reston a clue – that he was seen in a pub called the Seahawk, and Clive leaves. Fah Lo Suee comes to see Nayland Smith, and tells him that Scullers is loose and wants to contact Reston. They get Shang and Leiko. Clive goes to the pub, but it’s locked. It turns out to be a trap, and he is knocked out. Leiko and Shang leave to try to help Reston. Clive wakes up in a car, and tries to escape. He finds his body sluggish, and is confused to see he’s been left outside of Stormhaven. When he goes inside, following Scullers, he finds that the interior is different, and that a number of madmen (dressed as Native American caricatures, no less) are there to attack him. He gets past them, chasing Scullers, who is writing notes on a clipboard. Clive realizes he’s been drugged, and falls through a trapdoor (as Shang and Leiko pull up outside the address, which they were given by Fah Lo Suee; they are surprised to see that it looks like Stormhaven). Clive finds himself in a room full of clowns and fights them. He manages to catch up to Scullers, who tries to convince him that Reston is mad and that Scullers is dead. Leiko shoots Scullers in the shoulder. Scullers runs, Clive chases him, and Leiko reads his fallen clipboard, which shows that he was experimenting with drugs on Reston. Reston catches Scullers, but the two mountain guys from before, now dressed like barbarians, are there. Shang and Leiko fight them, while Clive beats on Scullers. Shang gets him to stop, and they figure things out. Clive learns he’s in the asylum, which Scullers took over and started using to experiment with drugs for the KGB. He learns that Scullers was posing as the guy that hired him, so there is no money for capturing him. Reston collapses. As they leave with him, they realize that only one facade of the building was made to look like Stormhaven; the guy with the coin, now wearing clown makeup, watches them leave. This was an odd one.
• There is a textbox in the letters page of #122 where Archie Goodwin explains that Gene Day died of a heart attack in October of 1982. I’d always known that Day had passed away around that time, but hadn’t realized he was still drawing this book when he died. Goodwin’s obituary is lovely, and acknowledges what a loss this was. More on that later.
• Issue one twenty-three was written by Alan Zelenetz, and Johnson’s pencils were inked by Mike Mignola (not that I would have ever guessed that from looking at the art). Shang-Chi is in New York, where he’s gone to have a reunion with his mother, a character who has barely been mentioned in this series, and I think, not once in Moench’s issues. When she doesn’t answer the door at her apartment, Shang-Chi kicks it in and finds her place trashed. A Si-Fan attacks him, and Shang kicks him out the window. Worried about his mother, he listens to her answering machine to learn she had reservations at the Metropolitan Museum. He’s attacked by another Si-Fan in the elevator, and thinks about how they must be looking to avenge his father, although he thought their organization would crumble without him. We see some shadowy figures talking though, and see that the opposite is happening. Shang does not find his mother at the museum, but he is attacked by a pair of Si-Fan in suits of armor. Next he walks to Central Park to meditate, trying to calm his mind, but he’s interrupted when a child asks for help getting his kite out of a tree. As a thank you, the boy’s mother offers to get him food at the restaurant where she works. They sit and talk, and weirdly, she works at Rockefeller Centre. When she goes to work a couple of tables, we see that she is also Si-Fan and led Shang to that spot, where he is attacked by a man on the skating rink with shurikens. He defeats him, but learns that his mother is at a place called The Joss House. The man calls Shang an orphan, and as he walks downtown, he thinks about that (not noticing that he walks right past Luke Cage). As he walks through the Bowery, he’s offered drugs and sex, and almost kicks a panhandler in the face because he’s still so jumpy. He overhears shouting and goes to investigate, getting in the middle of a dispute between a man with a gun and his father over money. His attempt to mediate goes nowhere, so he walks away, but when the man with the gun tells him to stop, he kicks the man’s gun hand, setting off the weapon and grazing the father’s head. They immediately realize how serious things are and reconcile, which leaves Shang more rattled, because he never achieved reconciliation with his father. He finds the Joss House in Chinatown, and is immediately grabbed by a Si-Fan who wraps a thread around his neck. The Dacoit leads him to a back room where he finds his mother. She explains that the Si-Fan came to her and told her what happened to Fu Mancho and how it was her son that put him down. She says she always wanted Fu’s power and immortality, but it was denied to her because she’s white. Now she’s angry with Shang for killing Fu, and explains that she trashed her apartment herself because of her rage. She slaps Shang and tells him that the Si-Fan are going to get their revenge, but not on this day. She calls him a false son, and he runs off. A man takes his picture on the street and he beats him. Shang walks around and wonders once again if it is his fate to become evil, and feels he has to face himself again.

• Shang-Chi has left New York and gone to Tibet (without, apparently, informing Leiko or the others). When he enters a rough inn at the base of Minya Konka, the locals threaten him because of his Chinese background. After he fights the local tough guy, Yak, the innkeeper befriends him and warns him of his plans, which involve climbing the mountain to find its hidden wisdom, and also to visit Rachë Churân, the ‘monastery of fear’. The next morning, Shang heads out with some provisions from the innkeeper. As he climbs, he rescues a hare from a fox, and spends a night meditating on the shapes he sees in the wind. He comes across the Migou, a local snowman, but when neither detects animosity in the other, he continues on his way. When he arrives at the monastery, he has to fight the guards before he is allowed inside. He comes before the lama, Thugben Sung, who speaks to him with his mind. Sung tells him that Fu Manchu studied at that monastery for many years, and saved the lives of many of the monks through his practice of medicine. The other monks attack Shang, and he does well against them, but there are so many that soon he gets knocked out. When he awakes, the lama stares into his eyes, mesmerizing him. He orders Shang to continue to climb the mountain, and then to throw himself off it as penance for killing his father. Shang fights to regain control of his body, but only comes to as he is falling. The Migou grabs him, and without speaking, sends him to the cave he was searching for. Inside it, he hears a voice but never sees who is speaking to him. That voice urges him to seek out his father’s grave and complete the duties of the son.
• For the final issue of this series, Zelenetz, Johnson, Mignola, and artist of a few pages, Alan Kupperberg, gave Shang-Chi a double-sized send-off. Shang is in his father’s Honan fortress (which is not as damaged as it seemed when we last saw it), meditating on his father’s death, his role as a son, and his place in the world. Zelenetz doesn’t have his voice down as well as Moench did, but it’s fine. He goes outside to meditate further over a reflecting pool, when a giant ‘tortoise’ comes out of the water and attacks him (it looks a lot more like a turtle to me). This is one of Fu Manchu’s experiments, and to stop it, Shang douses it in oil and then throws a lit candelabra at it, burning it. Shang picks up his father’s ceremonial cup and leaves. On his way down the mountain, he comes across some men plotting the death of the ‘dog-son’ and attacks. It turns out they are actors rehearsing a play, and their leader invites Shang to come with them to the nearby town. He travels with a woman, Hsi-Fan (whose name is way too similar to his father’s organization, but nothing comes of it) and thinks about living a life as a travelling actor. Back in Scotland, Leiko misses Shang, but Nayland Smith and Tarr reassure her that he will return. That night, Shang watches the play, which is about an old man who allowed his father to die so he could be emperor, and a young woman who wishes she could give her husband a son. They travel together to see a priest and ask for blessings. The priest turns out to be the old man’s father’s ghost, who calls his son false and accursed; this impacts Shang, and he runs away. He travels across China for a while, and helps some people in a fishing village. That night he trains with some locals, and then falls asleep. He’s woken by the appearance of a man in a death mask who makes him have some strange visions. He remembers his ‘brother’ Midnight, and we learn that this villain, the Noh Master, has technology in his robes that lets him control what Shang can see and hear. He shows him his mother, Leiko, and the day he poured out his father’s elixir. Shang breaks free of the man’s control, and they fight outside, where a storm has rolled in. Their fight is violent, and the Noh Master is about to strike a fatal blow when a strong wave knocks him over. Shang feels purified by the water, and returns to the hut where he retrieves his father’s cup before going outside and drinking from it. A wave takes the cup and his gi away, leaving him ready for his new future working the fishing boats. He finally feels like he’s received the atonement he’s been seeking. Dennis O’Neil ends the issue with a Zen story on a text page.

This feels like a fitting end to this series, as this last quarter of it (these issues make up the fourth omnibus) felt like it kept returning to earlier themes and wrapping up old plotlines, as if Moench had little more to say about Shang-Chi.

I enjoyed these books. Yes, they started to feel a bit repetitive and predictable, but Gene Day’s art made the individual issues stand out so much. His death was a great tragedy (this is an obvious statement, given his age and talent) that really impacted this book. I’m not sure if it’s the reason why Moench left, or if the series would have continued longer had he lived, but I feel like it took the wind out of the sails of this title.

I wonder what Day’s later artwork would have been like had he survived. He was playing around with page design, building on the work that Paul Gulacy did on earlier issues of this series, and creating such detailed backdrops and landscapes for Shang to move through, especially during fight scenes, that I would have loved to have seen where another ten or fifteen years could have brought him. I rank him among those artists, like Michael Golden, Marshall Rogers, Jim Steranko, and David Mazzuchelli, who just never made enough comics.

I also wanted to point out that I thought that William Johnson, especially with the young Mike Mignola inking, was a fine successor to this title. It doesn’t look like he’s down a lot of comics, but he was very talented and I could see him growing into the aesthetics of this title.

Storywise, as I said, this book started to flounder a little for ideas. Having Nayland Smith and the crew work independently of MI-6 meant that there had to be more reason for them to get involved in spycraft, and even the inclusion of Dark Angel couldn’t juice things up a whole lot. It was odd that Fah Lo Suee got to take over MI-6, and I feel like that could have been grounds for further exploration, but Moench tended to stay away from that.

Having one final confrontation with Fu Manchu did seem to be necessary to give the book, and its characters, some sort of closure. I thought it interesting that Fu’s appearance was changed, moving away from the completely unacceptable racial caricature he was in his earliest appearances. It was also interesting to see Fu so diminished by age, and in desperate need of his children’s blood to continue to survive. The thing is, after he was killed, it did take away the need for this book to continue.

It was odd that Zelenetz chose to include Shang’s mother in the story, but then only for a single issue, and even odder that she was also such a terrible person. Early on in Shang’s story, I’d gotten the impression that she was sent away to prevent softening the boy, so I hadn’t seen that coming. I also thought that the inclusion of his evil clone was curious, and had a lot of potential for future stories, but then he was done away with immediately.

Anyway, in the final analysis, I’m really glad that I took the time to read this series. Master of Kung Fu was a unique book for Marvel to publish for so many years. It made good use of licensed characters, building a new world around them, much like Marvel did with Micronauts and Rom, but unlike those books, there was almost no interaction with the great Marvel universe. Sure, Shang showed up in Rom and Power Man and Iron Fist, and Luke Cage did do a walk-by cameo in one of the later issues, but no mainline Marvel character turned up in this book. I imagine a Spider-Man guest appearance would have helped sales, and I’m curious to know if there was ever any pressure to have that happen. 

I do like the way that some of the characters from this book, like Zaran and Razorfist (not so much Midnight), turned up in other titles years later, and still get used to this day. Later appearances of Shang-Chi that I’ve read were less effective, and I basically hate what his inclusion in the MCU has done to the character in current Marvel comics. Especially now that he has powered rings or something.

This series really was unique – it took the martial arts craze of the seventies and turned it into an ongoing book that was ultimately about feeling out of place in the world and working towards self-acceptance. Along the way, it gave long runs to three of the best artists of their era, all at the start of their careers, and fought a battle, often played out in the letters column, for racial inclusion and non-stereotypical portrayal. Doug Moench especially needs to be singled out for his long-term commitment to the character and for writing so many exciting, sexy, and thoughtful stories.

I’m not done with this character, as I have the two Deadly Hands of Kung Fu omnibuses to read, but I think I need to take a break from non-traditional characters and move on to a new series, one that features a character who has been dormant for a long time, but was recently revived with a shocking retcon.

If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.

If you’d like to read any of the stories I talk about here, you can follow these links for trade paperbacks that encompass some of these issues.