One thing in MoKF I was always a little disappointed in was that none of the artists, from Gulacy to Pollard to Zeck, ever seemed to come up with a version of Fah Lo Suee that lived up to her description in the writing. Great character, but never received the iconic artistic rendition she deserved, IMO.

And of course never will, I suppose, now that Marvel has lost all rights to any of the Sax Rohmer characters.

I think the Disney/Mickey Mouse law pretty much kills any chance of getting the real MOKF back... even in reprint.

When I asked Gulacy last year he said 'No Chance.'

I actually thought about saying exactly that when discussing Pollard's art in this issue, but then I stopped and considered whether it was even possible to capture in pencil what Moench had articulated in words at the beginning of the issue. How in the world do you convey that objectively?

Missed this earlier - I'm a huge Gulacy fan, so I must ask: what else did you talk about with him?

Speaking of Fah Lo Suee: having first come across the Fu Manchu mythos thanks to MoKF, I always took the romantic link between Fah and Smith for granted... but when I later read the Sax Rohmer novels, there wasn't even a hint of romance between the two. Oh, sure, Fah Lo Suee was described as extremely beautiful and seductive, but Smith seemed pretty impervious to her charms. 

Was the bond between the two something that evolved from the movies (like Sherlock Holmes saying "elementary, my dear Watson"), was it something fandom came up with over time, or is it perhaps something Doug Moench himself introduced?

Revelations like these always come as a shock. I would like to believe that artists of that caliber would have their own mansion; it always seems very wrong that they'd have a hard time to make ends meet.

Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #3



"Fires of Rebirth"

writer: Doug Moench
pencils: Paul Gulacy
inks: Vince Colletta
letters: Tom Orzechowski
colors: Bill Mantlo
editor: Len Wein

grade: B-

It's funny to consider that, while Moench's earliest Shang-Chi scripts are still seeing publication in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, with Shang-Chi still slowly walking back to New York from the Florida Everglades, Moench's newest scripts, also seeing publication, have him jetting off to England at the same time. Just goes to show how quickly Moench's Shang-Chi story is evolving.

And yet this is still a pretty crude story, designed primarily to erase Shang-Chi's defining sin: the murder of Dr. Petrie. Now, years before anyone dared to try the same stunt with Jean Grey, it turns out that the man Shang-Chi killed was simply a clone, and Petrie is now back, alive, well, and surprisingly not traumatized after months of captivity, experiments, and torture. It's a pretty silly stunt, and it takes away the source of the little personality Shang-Chi has at this point. Though he holds on to the guilt at the end, still sorry that he intended to kill Petrie, the memory will now be a weaker, less defining one, and where does that leave Shang-Chi other than opposed to his father?

From a writing standpoint, Moench still hasn't quite hit his stride. The beginning narration falls back into that awkward philosophical wordplay Moench employs from time to time which seldom manages to come off as anything other than forced, and the final confrontation between Shang-Chi and Fu Manchu is so markedly different from the face to face they shared in MoKF #24 (just two months back). There, Shang-Chi seemed to have moved past his anger towards his father and almost felt a begrudging sympathy for him while rescuing him from imminent death. Here, he's brimming to the fill with rage. Both are reasonable ways to depict their reunion, but they don't seem congruous with one another. I'm still waiting to understand Shang-Chi and his relationship to his father, and I'm still not getting a clear sense of either.


The one shining positive in this issue, though, is Gulacy's art, which really evolves throughout this issue, even with Colletta inking (and possibly erasing). Not only is he the first artist to really nail Shang-Chi's face in all its depth and humanity:




but those amazing marriages between Moench's words (and possibly breakdowns) and Gulacy's art grow more frequent and evocative than ever. I'm a particular fan of this one, in which both motion and intensity are brilliantly conveyed while only the smallest of movements occur:






Important Details:

- Return of Dr. Petrie; revealed Shang-Chi killed a clone created by Fu Manchu to test his loyalty

- Murder charges against Shang-Chi for Petrie's death are dropped

- 1st appearance of Clive Reston


Minor Details:

- lots of little logic gaps, the most annoying of which was how Fu Manchu can personally create a car designed to trap Shang-Chi and not consider that Shang-Chi has the strength to punch through the roof.



plot synopsis in one sentence:

Fu Manchu is employing the help of an East Indian assassin cult to ransack Oriental artifact exhibits across England and the United States, presumably in search of something, Shang-Chi, Clive Reston, Sir Nayland Smith, and Blackjack Tarr team up to figure out what they're after and to pursue the possibility that Dr. Petrie might not be dead after all; after many drawn out fights, they end up uncovering a hidden base beneath Buckingham Palace where Fu Manchu has been keeping Dr. Petrie alive and explains both that he's looking for his remaining supply of Elixer of life and that Shang-Chi killed a clone instead of the real Dr. Petrie, and, as Fu Manchu flees, Smith realizes he is in possession of the elixir, and Shang-Chi persuades him to destroy it instead of using it on himself.