Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1979-12-01 00:10:10 |
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Master of Kung Fu #83
Issue(s): Master of Kung Fu #83
Cover Date: Dec 79
Title: "The phoenix and the snake"
Credits:
Doug Moench - Writer
Mike Zeck - Penciler
Gene Day - Inker
Review/plot:The Yellow Claw Fu Manchu (Whoops! Thanks, Dan) gears up for his next big scheme.
The story is pretty near incomprehensible to me, having not been reading the series regularly; i can't imagine what a first time reader would have made of it.
One thing i can make out is that Fah Lo Suee reunites with her father, and brings Zaran with her.
Zaran admits that he's been defeated by Shang-Chi three times, and he's also defeated by Fu Manchu's big dude here...
...but Fu Manchu allows him to stay anyway.
Quality Rating: C-
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References: N/A
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
Fu Manchu is not the Yellow Claw. As seen here, he's not even colored yellow any more (thankfully).
Parts of this story were heavily influenced by Robert Anton Wilson's Illumantus trilogy, which was a very popular series of books with the underground scene in the 1970s. Highly popular with me as well.
Since the Yellow Claw essentially is Marvel's Fu Manchu, I don't know why Marvel has not retconned Shang-Chi's father to be Yellow Claw (perhaps using an alias - if I remember correctly Fu Manchu is an honorific anyway so we don't know his real name). I know for a long time there were copyright issues with the Sax Rohmer estate affecting the character and these stories. That might be one way of getting around that.
Well, Marvel tended to try and ignore Yellow Claw because he was pretty insulting. If people think Mandarin is bad, Yellow Claw is like Mandarin squared. Other than a few generic appearances throughout the 70s and 80s, Agents of Atlas was pretty much the only book to sincerely use him and it elected to alter him enormously.
I had never really heard of the illumnatus novels before reading this site, but they have come up now in several comment sections possibly always by ChrisKafka as above. Looking it up on Wikipedia seems that the handle "fnord12'' is also an illumnatus ref right?
That is correct!
I just thought you were designed by Slartibartfast.
That’s fjords...
