"The Deadly Hands of Shang-Chi"

Just downloaded a gigabytes worth of Marvel Comic's "The Deadly Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung-Fu."

For all you hipsters keeping score, "Golden Girls" actor Quentin Tarantino says this was his favorite comic as a kid.

Shang-Chi was Marvel's attempt to remain relevant to pimply-faced adolescents of the 1970's during the days of martial arts mania. Stan Lee saw the writing on the wall when they started trading back issues of Spiderman for Nunchucks and Bruce Lee iron-ons. Times being what they were - in those pre-p.c. days - Marvel decided to use the politically incorrect tales of Fu Manchu as a starting point. Fu Manchu was a "yellow peril" pulp stalwart from the good old days of WWII and the originator of the facial hair bearing his name that became de rigeur for heavy metal bass players around the world. They gave Fu Manchu a son and called him Shang-Chi.

The first run of M.O.K.F. featured art by Jim Starlin. The colorists on the books tended to shade our friends from the Far East in a horrible orange cast that was somewhere between full-blown hepatitis and Ernie from Sesame Street. I recall some heated exchanges on the letters page about this. Marvel editors blamed the orange peril on the limited palette available in the old days of coarse process colors on ratty newsprint. They eventually toned things down a bit but I have very distinct memories of a Shang-Chi cover occupying a prominent place in an exhibit on racial stereotypes that took place in the Statue of Liberty. Excelsior!

Paul Gulacy took over the art on issue 18. Things really got rolling when Gulacy and writer Doug Moench started collaborating a few issues later. Maybe they were trying to steer clear of the old school racist tinge of Fu Manchu, perhaps the martial arts thing was waning - but Gulacy and Moench abruptly placed Shang-Chi in a world that was more James Bond than Bruce Lee. International espionage, gadgets galore and bikini-clad vixens were stuffed into every panel.

Nick Fury would feel right at home with Gulacy's fancy layouts and stylized graphic elements. Gulacy's style owes an obvious debt to guys like Steranko and Wally Wood. And sometimes M.O.K.F reminds me of a slick version of Spain Rodriguez's crazy, violent noir. But what Gulacy and Moench did so uniquely was to just beat you over the head with random craziness until all you could do was scream mercy from psychedelic overload. It's very much a kitchen-sink approach that - in lesser hands - would look amateurish and contrived but somehow they delivered. A great run of storytelling that outshines almost anything Marvel did in that era.

The torrent is floating around there if you are interested.