CLAW CONSIDERATIONS

 On THE TOM BREVOORT EXPERIENCE, the question was raised as to why Atlas Comics had published four issues of THE YELLOW CLAW in 1956, and whether it was a response to the same-year appearance of a syndicated teleseries, THE ADVENTURES OF FU MANCHU. My response follows.

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Since Martin Goodman was far more known for jumping on trends than was Stan Lee, I would concur that YELLOW CLAW probably had its genesis from Goodman hearing news about the syndicated series ADVENTURES OF FU MANCHU. In fact, since the cover date for YELLOW CLAW #1 was October 1956, that issue probably hit stands at least two months before the first episode of ADVENTURES aired in September ’56. The comic book outlasted the series (not counting reruns), published into early 1957 some time after ADVENTURES broadcast its last new episode back in November.

Now, what might have boosted the Fu Manchu TV show? One short novelette with Fu Manchu had been published in 1952– I don’t recall where– but it didn’t see book publication in Rohmer’s lifetime, only getting collected by Daw in 1973 with three ultra-short uncollected Fu stories in WRATH OF FU MANCHU. For most readers, Fu’s last novel had been in 1947 or 1948, and the next to last full novel would show up one year after the series appeared, in 1957– UNLESS that novel got serialized in periodical form somewhere first. A lot of Fu novels were serialized before book publication, but I’ve no evidence that happened with the 1957 novel. Still, the news of a new novel with the devil-doctor might have sparked the TV show, though, as with the comic, it’s hard to coat-tail on a phenomenon if your imitation comes out FIRST.

Addendum: The Page of Fu Manchu reports that the 1957 novel had no serialization.

There might have been an uptick in Asian villains in pop media of the early fifties thanks to the Korean War, but I’m not aware of any major influential challengers to the legacy of the devil doctor– EXCEPT for Sax Rohmer’s second best known character, Sumuru. She had first appeared in a late forties radio serial, but according to one online review, Rohmer’s five novelizations of the character’s exploits did very well for paperback publisher Gold Medal in the early fifties:

Sax Rohmer’s Nude in Mink (released as Sins of Sumuru in the UK) was published in May 1950. It was Gold Medal’s seventh overall title, and their third fiction novel. Like the Fu Manchu series, it featured a series villain, Sumuru, that was molded to be a female version of her male predecessor. In the first two months, Nude in Mink went through three printings—at 200,000 copies per print run (assuming it followed Gold Medal’s usual publishing pattern), that means 600,000 copies in just 60 days. According to The Page of Fu Manchu, it would go through another printing in October 1950, followed by a fifth printing in October 1951 and then a sixth in July 1953. Not bad for a novel that was salvaged from a BBC radio serial from 1945–1946. It would also spawn several sequels: Sumuru (1951), The Fire Goddess (1952), Return of Sumuru (1954), and Sinister Madonna (1956)

http://www.pulp-serenade.com/2020/08/nude-in-mink-by-sax-rohmer-1950.html

I don’t know exactly how “Asian” Sumuru is since I’ve read only one of the novels, but her success might have sparked Rohmer to execute his last few Fu-stories, and that might have convinced TV producers that there was gold in them thar Asian mastermind hills. And of course in the mid to late fifties, syndicated TV was coming out with a lot of pulpy adaptations– Sheena, Jungle Jim, Flash Gordon– so Fu Manchu fit into that overall spirit of pulp-revival.

NEAR MYTHS: ["THE YELLOW CLAW'S RETURN"] (STRANGE TALES #159-167. 1967-68)

At a time when all the other comics-publishers believed that their audience wouldn't support funnybooks with continued stories, Silver Age Marvel succeeded in capturing juvenile imaginations with a wealth of mini-epics-- the Master Planner storyline in SPIDER-MAN, the "Galactus Trilogy," and many others. Arguably, Jim Steranko's two long continuities in the NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD feature were just two more among this august company. Yet whereas the stories of the Lee-Kirby FURY had just been traditional comic-book shoot-em-ups, Steranko brought an approach that combined traditional thrills with experimental touches.

Of the two long stories Steranko did when he took over from Lee and Kirby (and occasional fill-in personnel), the first, "the Death Spore Saga," is still fairly routine, and I won't discuss that one here. But the second long continuity, to which I've given the semi-ironic title of "The Yellow Claw's Return," shows a greater audaciousness in its mining of adventure-tropes from earlier fiction. Indeed, in one of the main hero's few meditations on his past life, Fury recollects that he was raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen, right at the time when "the talkies" were coming in, and that he idolized such transitional heroes as Tom Mix and Joe Bonomo. Patently Steranko was trying to adhere to the established history of the character, who had to be in his early twenties by the time America entered WWII. But the artist's mention of serial-heroes, even those unknown to patrons today, suggests that he wanted to stress a common heritage between these heroes of cinema and the Marvel superspy.

Steranko also had a vast knowledge of pulps and comics from the early 20th century, including the works of his artist-predecessor on FURY, Jack Kirby. Steranko and Kirby had worked together on FURY, with the younger artist provided "finishes" to Kirby roughs, and there was some degree of mutual admiration between the two. I don't know at what point Steranko came across the short-lived YELLOW CLAW title that "Atlas-Marvel" published in the mid-1950s. Yet as I've shown in this brief overview of that title, Kirby's three issues of that feature weren't exactly his best work, even if one only compares those issues to other Kirby-works of that decade. So why did Steranko choose to revive-- and I use that word advisedly-- a character whom few if any of his contemporary readers remembered?

First of all, anyone who reads Steranko's two-part HISTORY OF COMICS (1970/1972) would have noticed that the artist possessed a near-encylopedic knowledge of adventure-oriented pop culture dating back to the early 20th century. Because he was a fan-turned-pro in a more methodical manner than his predecessor Kirby, he probably remembered Kirby's YELLOW CLAW series better than Kirby did back in The Day. Not only does Steranko revive a version of the central villain, a patent Fu Manchu emulation, he also brings back the other support-characters from the series: the Claw's aide Voltzmann, his niece Suwan, and the evildoer's Asian-American opponent Jimmy Woo (with whom Suwan was in love, providing the only real trope-link to the prose works of Sax Rohmer). 

Still, there are clear departures. Steranko borrows some elements of the original costume-design for the villain (originated not by Kirby but by Joe Maneely), the character from the 1950s series looks like a reserved older man despite his reputation for uncanny long life. Steranko's Claw is lanky and powerful, clad in body-armor and a skullcap reminiscent of the Lev-Gleason CLAW, and whereas all Asians in the 1950s series had canary-yellow skin, the 1960s version is the only one so colored. Steranko's Yellow Claw has a bony face, heavy eyebrows that emphasize his epicanthic folds, and bony fingers with inch-long nails-- the latter visual trope taking us back to the whole "Asians with claws" trope I examined here. Further, unlike the fifties Atlas character, Steranko's villain has a nodding resemblance to the forties actor Richard Loo, seen above playing a mean Japanese officer in 1944's THE PURPLE HEART.

The only strong resemblance between Kirby's Yellow Claw and that of Steranko is that under Kirby, the 1950s Claw channeled a lot more wild super-science. But in the Lee-Kirby NICK FURY, both the good guys and the bad guys were constantly hurling dozens of super-science gadgets against one another, and Steranko, by taking over the custody of the feature, did the same. Did Nick Fury have a "sonic shatter cone" and a "magnetic repulsor watch?" Well, then, the Yellow Claw can have an "id-paralyzer," an "infinity sphere" with a "nucleo-phoretic drive," and an "ultimate annihilator,"-- well, OK, he does steal that one from the organization AIM-- but still! 

Now, Steranko's Claw is occasionally more recherche in his use of Asian tropes than the 1950s character was. The new version speaks in a flowery, pseudo-Oriental lingo, and when Fury briefly disguises himself to be Asian to hoax the villain, the hero thinks to himself that he got all his dialogue from "old Charlie Chan flicks." Yet one good effect of all the techno-overkill is that this Yellow Claw doesn't really have any roots in the world of any Real Asians, aside from his long nails and his dialogue. (Only once does Steranko make an egregious all-Asians-are-alike goof, by having the Chinese fiend address the hero as "Fury-san.") I theorize that to Steranko, Asian villains were simply a useful, familiar trope dispersed all through pop culture, with no particular political content.

As breakneck as Jack Kirby's pace could be in his action sequences, Steranko barely allows for any characters to take a breath in the eight installments of RETURN. The pace of the narrative is akin to that of the most raucous Republic serials, with frequent use of teleportation tech to send Fury and his opponents zooming from one locale to another. Fury has various aides-- many familiar faces introduced in RETURN for the first time, such as The Gaffer, Clay Quartermain, and Fury's gal-pal Countess Val-- and there are even some superhero crossovers, such as Captain America and two members of the Fantastic Four. But Fury's really the whole show, careening through hordes of heavily armed killers with his forty-year old hardbody and his handful of super-gadgets. 

I won't go into the many ways in which Steranko incorporated contemporary design-elements and artistic tropes into RETURN, but if one moment most captures Steranko's channeling of the swinging sixties mood, it's the conclusion to RETURN. After Fury's tumultuous battle with the Claw, it's revealed that this Claw was a robot, as were Suwan and Voltzmann (but not Jimmy Woo, who came back only to see a simulacrum of his love get killed). The entire battle between SHIELD and the Claw's forces was an enormous chess-game that the diabolical Doctor Doom played against a robot chess-master. This was the closest Marvel Comics could come to something like 1967's THE PRISONER, in which the viewer sees the whole game of genre-battles exposed as a "magic shadow-show." 

About five years later, the real Yellow Claw came out of retirement in a CAPTAIN AMERICA continuity, and Steve Englehart gave this version a lot more of that old Sax Rohmer exoticism, mere months before the same writer linked up the Marvel-rented property of Fu Manchu with the new character, Shang-Chi Master of Kung Fu. But though the real villain mouthed a few lines about getting even with whoever had played game with his image, I don't believe the "revised original Claw"-- who of course looked just like Steranko's robot-- even crossed paths with Doctor Doom. The revived character never really became a major player at Marvel Comics, and later got substantially revised so as to purge him of any fiendish Asian tropes. Naive though Steranko's mini-epic might be, it's still the high water-mark for this curious character.

NEAR MYTHS: "THE COMING OF THE YELLOW CLAW" (YELLOW CLAW #1, 1956)

 Following up on my post about "Marvel's" first Yellow Claw, I looked over the four issues devoted to the 1956 version, presumably the first Asian villain to get his own title at that particular company (previously "Timely," changed to "Atlas" in the 1950s). In the previous essay I speculated that it was probably Stan Lee who remembered the title of  the Sax Rohmer novel YELLOW CLAW and *possibly* from the Captain America story that re-used the name, which Lee edited whether he wrote it or not. This speculation is somewhat supported by an anecdote on this message board, where one poster claims that credited writer Al Feldstein did not brainstorm the 1956 Claw, but simply took the job as another assignment. It's also possible that Lee decided to center a title around the adventures of an Oriental mastermind because he'd heard that Rohmer's devil doctor was going to get his own syndicated TV show, THE ADVENTURES OF FU MANCHU, which would air in September 1956. YELLOW CLAW #1, dated October 1956, probably appeared on newsstands two or three months prior to that cover date.

Lee probably had the idea to emphasize the new character as a mysterioso figure whom hostile Chinese Communists attempted to unleash upon the democracies-- little knowing that the Claw, an immortal man and a master of strange powers, planned to dominate every government on Earth. Possibly Lee had read Rohmer's 1948 SHADOW OF FU MANCHU, in which the devil-doctor first established Fu's animus toward Communist China. Later post-1956 Rohmer novels included a few scenes in which Fu Manchu used the Communist Chinese for his own purposes-- though it would appear that the Yellow Claw got the idea first.

Since all of the Chinese characters in the story are colored yellow-- as well as being given realistic depictions by artist Joe Maneely-- there seems no particular reason for the main villain to be styled "yellow." The Claw is also drawn realistically, with no special emphasis on the longness and boniness of his fingers, as one sees in many other Asian villain-depictions. The story meanders somewhat as it sets up the intersection between the Claw, his grand-niece Suwan, and modern FBI agent Jimmy Woo, with whom Suwan falls in love.

The restrained depiction of Asian physical characteristics suggests that Lee, Feldstein and Maneely were consciously avoiding the old stereotypes, and the depiction of Jimmy Woo clinches the deal. Woo is to all intents and purposes a "regular American Joe" who just happens to be Asian, and to a small extent he represents a trope in which a modern Asian opposes the archaic evil of China, a trope which the MASTER OF KUNG FU comic mined so impressively.

Since the FU MANCHU show was not a great success, it's no surprise that YELLOW CLAW tanked by the following year. Neither Feldstein nor Maneely contributed to the last three issues; instead, Lee assigned Jack Kirby to both write and draw all of the Yellow Claw stories.  Kirby made precious little attempt to emulate either Sax Rohmer or even just generalized "Asian menace" stories. Instead, he simply used the villain as a conduit through which assorted wild and woolly sci-fi menaces manifested-- a giant Mongolian warrior (actually a robot), a naive alien called "UFO the Lightning Man," a microscopic army. These stories might be seen as precursors to Kirby's CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, which had a similar orientation, but clicked better with readers. 

Next up: the Silver Age Claw.

THE READING RHEUM: THE YELLOW CLAW (1915)

Though I've read two of the four Sax Rohmer detective novels starring Gaston Max, I'd never got round to the work in which he debuted: 1915's THE YELLOW CLAW, a serialized magazine-novel that was published as a book about four years after the first Fu Manchu stories, also serialized in a magazine, began in 1911. One reviewer asserted that this was the first attempt by Rohmer to start a second "Oriental mystery" franchise, perhaps to be focused on the novel's villain, the mysterious "Mister King." This online essay by William Patrick Maynard notes that Mister King did not manage to capture the reading-public's imagination as did Fu Manchu, for all that the "Yellow Claw" novel got a movie adaptation before any of the Devil-Doctor's stories did. Maynard also discusses the possibility that both villains MAY have been inspired by Rohmer's near-encounter with a real-life criminal figure-- though it's just as possible that this encounter only existed in Rohmer's imagination.

Long-time readers of Marvel Comics might look at the novel's title and think that it concerns an actual villain of that name, possibly one comparable to the Marvel Comics super-criminal. But YELLOW CLAW is merely a symbol of the murderous propensities of Mister King, who is barely seen in the novel-- appearing far less than does Fu Manchu in his series-- and, when King is seen, he's signified only by his yellow-hued hands, poised to kill in some fashion, as seen in this early scene.

Through the leaded panes of the window above the writing-table swept a silvern beam of moonlight. It poured, searchingly, upon the fur-clad figure swaying by the table; cutting through the darkness of the room like some huge scimitar, to end in a pallid pool about the woman's shadow on the center of the Persian carpet.

Coincident with her sobbing cry—NINE! boomed Big Ben; TEN!...

Two hands—with outstretched, crooked, clutching fingers—leapt from the darkness into the light of the moonbeam.

“God! Oh, God!” came a frenzied, rasping shriek—“MR. KING!”

Straight at the bare throat leapt the yellow hands; a gurgling cry rose—fell—and died away.

Gently, noiselessly, the lady of the civet fur sank upon the carpet by the table; as she fell, a dim black figure bent over her. The tearing of paper told of the note being snatched from her frozen grip; but never for a moment did the face or the form of her assailant encroach upon the moonbeam.

Batlike, this second and terrible visitant avoided the light.

This sounds like a ripping beginning to one of Rohmer's fevered pulp-nightmares, but unfortunately, as Maynard also notes, Rohmer's trying a little too hard to stay grounded in reality. Some uninteresting regular-Joe characters get implicated in this murder, an uninteresting Scotland Yard inspector investigates, and, many chapters later, Rohmer finally introduces a new hero, the Dupin-like Surete detective Gaston Max. To be sure, Max is not as beguiling here as he is in the next two novels (which I may review in due time), and I can't help feeling that Rohmer didn't really have his creative heart in  this endeavor. Not only does the villain remain offscreen for most chapters, none of his aides are any more interesting than the good guys, and at base King's just a mundane drug-dealer. Without the slight suggestion of an unearthly power in his hands, CLAW would not register as metaphenomenal in any way.

Though in essence CLAW mutates into a "Gaston Max" book rather than one starring "Mister King," Max barely shows up more than King, though Max does assume some Holmes-like disguises from time to time. There's never a climactic battle between the two antagonists, but Chapter Thirty-Eight does include a struggle between King's clutching hands and Max's pure desperation.

A short, staccato, muffled report split the heavy silence... and a little round hole appeared in the woodwork of the book-shelf before which, an instant earlier, M. Max had been standing—in the woodwork of that shelf, which had been upon a level with his head.

In one giant leap he hurled himself across the room—... as a second bullet pierced the yellow silk of the ottoman.

Close under the trap he crouched, staring up, fearful-eyed....

A yellow hand and arm—a hand and arm of great nervous strength and of the hue of old ivory, directed a pistol through the opening above him. As he leaped, the hand was depressed with a lightning movement, but, lunging suddenly upward, Max seized the barrel of the pistol, and with a powerful wrench, twisted it from the grasp of the yellow hand. It was his own Browning!

At the time—in that moment of intense nervous excitement—he ascribed his sensations to his swift bout with Death—with Death who almost had conquered; but later, even now, as he wrenched the weapon into his grasp, he wondered if physical fear could wholly account for the sickening revulsion which held him back from that rectangular opening in the bookcase. He thought that he recognized in this a kindred horror—as distinct from terror—to that which had come to him with the odor of roses through this very trap, upon the night of his first visit to the catacombs of Ho-Pin.

It was not as the fear which one has of a dangerous wild beast, but as the loathing which is inspired by a thing diseased, leprous, contagious....

A mighty effort of will was called for, but he managed to achieve it. He drew himself upright, breathing very rapidly, and looked through into the room—the room which he had occupied, and from which a moment ago the murderous yellow hand had protruded.

That room was empty... empty as he had left it!

“Mille tonnerres! he has escaped me!” he cried aloud, and the words did not seem of his own choosing.

WHO had escaped? Someone—man or woman; rather some THING, which, yellow handed, had sought to murder him!

Like predecessor Fu Manchu, King gets away after his operation is broken up, and according to Maynard Rohmer only invoked King's name in one later novel. But CLAW proved a very dull read even for a Rohmer fan like myself. I can't imagine that the novel itself, even though it probably appeared in various reprintings, would have resonated strongly with any of the later comics-makers who worked on the 1956  YELLOW CLAW comic book from Atlas (later Marvel) Comics. However, in a separate essay I'll explore some possible reasons why the name might have retained some resonance, less because of the book than because of the racial myth Rohmer was indirectly invoking.