Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu

Crushing Comics S01E069 – Your Nostalgic Favorites + Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Vol. 1

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I start this episode by explaining my shirt and asking about your nostalgic favorites and if they’ve held up over the years. Then, I unwrap the first of the pair of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu omnibuses. Since I don’t know too much about the magazine content of the issues reprinted here, I dive in and read a few excerpts.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 69 features the Direct Market cover version of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Vol. 1. See how the back-up stories fit in to Shang-Chi’s continuity in the Guide to Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.

Crushing Comics S01E050 – Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Vol. 2 (+ how many times have you moved?)

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Today I pull one of the first books I wrapped back in Philly, which leads me to talk about the (relatively limited) number of times I’ve moved in my life – all but two of which are documented here on CK! Plus, how we (or, at least, I) grow to fit the space that I occupy.

After a much longer-than-intended introductory chat, I open an unusual omnibus that’s as much a collection of magazines as it is comic stories – including the first stories of Daughters of the Dragon, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing!

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 50 features Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Omnibus, Vol. 2. For more information on these stories, see the Guide to Shang-Chi.

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order via omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through July 2019.

Who is Shang-Chi? To figure out the answer, we need to travel back in time over 40 years to 1974.

Similar to Marvel 70s horror titles Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night that emerged in 1972, Master of Kung Fu (MoKF) both featured a major non-Marvel character and was built to serve a public craze.

shang-chi-3596575-avengers_world_3_alessio_variantIn this case, the craze was the titular Kung Fu. It was blowing up in the summer of 1973 thanks to a culmination of factors including the television show Kung Fu, a number of successful movies imported from China’s booming cinema, and one man: Bruce Lee.

Marvel wanted to license the popular Kung Fu to take advantage of the nationwide interest in martial arts (which also yielded Iron Fist), but they failed to obtain the rights. Instead, they turned to another pre-existing mythology: the story behind villain Fu Manchu, a fictional criminal mastermind who coined the mustache of the same name. He was created by author Sax Rohmer in 1912 in a serialized novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Fu Manchu was popular enough to merit an initial trilogy of serialized books in the 1910s and even more starting in the 1930s, plus a number of film adaptions ranging from 1929 to 1980. The character can be a controversial one – even in the 1930s he was seen as a racist caricature representing the “Yellow Peril” of an East-Asian threat to the wider, whiter world.

Enter Marvel Comics. They licensed the Fu Manchu universe from Rohmer’s estate, which was mostly focused on film adaptations in the 60s after Rohmer’s death and final book in 1959.

Instead of keeping it isolated in its own continuity, they created Shang-Chi as a part of the Marvel Universe and made him the son of Fu Manchu! What used to be Special Marvel Edition introduced Shang-Chi and then quickly made him the headliner of the book, swapping the title to Master of Kung Fu with issue #17.

Unlike Dracula, who has always been in the public domain in the US and who entered that status in the 1960s in Britain, Fu Manchu has remained the intellectual property of the Rohmer estate. While all Dracula stories are fair game to tell, print, and reprint, Fu Manchu requires a licensing agreement to use.

At some point after MoKF ended in 1983, Marvel let their rights to the Fu Manchu universe lapse. While they still retained Shang-Chi as a character, they could no longer name his villainous father in print. Further, Marvel could not reproduce or reprint those Fu Manchu stories in print and digital collections until reaching a new arrangement with the Rohmer estate in 2015.

[Read more…] about Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses – What’s been printed and what’s gone missing?

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Omnibus on ShelfAlright eager readers – like modern-day Marvel with their absurd .1 issues, I have one more interstitial installment of extra material about Marvel’s Most Wanted Omnibuses to share with you before I recap the final two spots of this year’s secret ballot tomorrow.

For this installment, I want to take a look at the books that have been printed and the ones that have mysteriously gone missing from the survey – and why that might be!

Not counting a few newly-revealed omnibuses for early 2017, the 83 books voted on in the first three years of the survey have yielded 20 Marvel Omnibus volumes. Whether you look at the survey as a guessing game or information that Marvel actually considers, seeing one out of every four books get printed is not such a bad ratio!

There have also been 21 books previously voted on that haven’t hit omnibus and aren’t represented this year, plus a few more than dropped off the survey and came back. If they didn’t get printed, why did we lose track of them?

Allow me to explain… [Read more…] about Marvel’s Most-Wanted Omnibuses – What’s been printed and what’s gone missing?

Master of Kung Fu gets collected (or: After 100 years, Fu Manchu is still a villain)

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This was the news last night from the Diamond Retailer Summit via Heidi MacDonald, EIC of Comics Beat:

Photo by Heidi MacDonald

Photo of Marvel’s slide from the summit by Heidi MacDonald of ComicsBeat.

This is a series you’ve probably never heard of, yet it’s both historically significant and solidly entrenched in the top 10 most-wished-for Omnibus editions from Marvel’s online collector community.

What’s the story behind the excitement and why does this seemingly obscure series merit four massive volumes? To figure out the answer, we need to travel back in time over 40 years to 1974.

Similar to Marvel 70s horror titles Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night that emerged in 1972, Master of Kung Fu both featured a major non-Marvel character and was built to serve a public craze.

In this case, the craze was the titular Kung Fu. It was blowing up in the summer of 1973 thanks to a culmination of factors including the television show Kung Fu, a number of successful movies imported from China’s booming cinema, and one man: Bruce Lee. To read more background, I suggest starting with a marvelous pair of blog posts from “A Shroud of Thoughts” – parts 1 and 2.

Marvel wanted to license the popular Kung Fu to take advantage of the nationwide interest in martial arts (which also yielded Iron Fist), but they failed to obtain the rights. Instead, they turned to another pre-existing mythology: the story behind villain Fu Manchu, a fictional criminal mastermind who coined the mustache of the same name. He was created by author Sax Rohmer in 1912 in a serialized novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Fu Manchu was popular enough to merit an initial trilogy of serialized books in the 1910s and even more starting in the 1930s, plus a number of film adaptions ranging from 1929 to 1980. The character can be a controversial one – even in the 1930s he was seen as a racist caricature representing the “Yellow Peril” of an East-Asian threat to the wider, whiter world.

Enter Marvel Comics. [Read more…] about Master of Kung Fu gets collected (or: After 100 years, Fu Manchu is still a villain)