JUDOMASTER "Part III: JudoMaster is Born"

When Last We Left Our Hero...

Rescuing a villager from the Japanese, Sgt Rip Jagger is shot and wounded.
As the Japanese close in on him, a number of guerrillas, armed only with poles, knock out the heavily-armed soldiers and take Jagger and the villager to their hidden base, where he learns the person he rescued was the leader's granddaughter!
To reward him, Rip was trained in martial arts by Bushuri, the field commander of the guerrillas and second in-command of the group...

The first issue of JudoMaster (#89* in 1966) was out six months after this tale appeared in the final issue of Special War Series in 1965.
The series would continue until #98 in late 1967.

We mentioned previously that Frank McLaughlin had created 2-3 page features about martial arts in Charlton's spy comic, Sarge Steel.

This issue presented another of those features...

Note how McLaughlin, like any true martial artist, emphasizes that the best path is, when feasable, to not fight!

Trivia: Bushuri may look familiar to readers who know the Japanese films of the 1950s/60s...

..which made their way to American art houses and television.

I'm very sure McLaughlin had seen some of them including, likely, Yojimbo and Seven Samurai, so he used the actor I consider the "Sean Connery of Japan", Toshiro Mifune, as the visual model for Bushuri!
Sadly, though DC has reprinted other 1960s Charlton Action Heroes, they haven't done so with JudoMaster!

*Charlton took an existing Western comic called GunMaster (which, ironically, McLaughlin was inking) and retitled it JudoMaster.

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JUDOMASTER "Part II The Dojo!"

We Have Already Seen...

Rescuing a villager from the Japanese, Sgt Rip Jagger is shot and wounded.

As the Japanese close in on him, a number of guerrillas, armed only with poles, knock out the heavily-armed soldiers and take Jagger and the villager to their hidden base, where he learns the person he rescued was the leader's granddaughter!
To reward him, Rip will be trained in martial arts by Bushuri, the field commander of the guerrillas and second in-command of the group...

To Be Concluded as JudoMaster is Born...

Friday!

BTW, you've previously-seen Frank McLaughlin's work on this blog...when he contributed the Iron Fist chapter to the "Master Plan of Fu Manchu" Marvel multi-martial arts hero team-up HERE!

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Batman: Soul of the Dragon
Animated feature with the only appearance of Rip Jagger in any DC movie/TV project.

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JUDOMASTER "Introducing Rip Jagger...JudoMaster"

Here's a Never-Reprinted Origin Story of a Silver-Age Hero...

...conceived by a comic creative who was an active martial arts teacher/practitioner!

To Be Continued When We Enter...The Dojo...

Wednesday!

Illustrator Frank McLaughlin, who was Charlton Comics' Art Director as well as occasionally penciling and inking covers and stores, had been doing short features about martial arts in the back of the spy comic Sarge Steel.

McLaughlin pitched a costumed hero who utilized Asian martial arts instead of the usual Western boxing and wrestling most non-superpowered heroes utilized.

Editor Pat Masuli, also a martial arts buff who attended the same dojo as Frank, gave the OK and assigned writer Joe Gill to work with McLaughlin, who had no scripting experience at that point.
(The Sarge Steel features were non-fiction illustrated demonstrations of martial arts moves.)
The project was, like Spider-Man's debut in Amazing Fantasy #15, published in the final issue of an ongoing anthology comic, Special War Stories #4 (1965).

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HANDS OF THE DRAGON "Origin" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

...two orphaned Chinese toddlers are rescued from WWII-era Japan by their grandfather, but are exposed to radiation by an atomic bomb during the escape.

One of two children is disfigured by the blast, and as the duo grow up and learn martial arts, becomes bitter, eventually turning to evil as the criminal "Cobra"!

Vowing to redeem his brother, the other kid becomes a tv reporter to have unfettered access to information which will lead him to his sinister sibling!

Assuming the masked identity of "Dragon", he discovers Cobra now works for the terrorist Dr Nhu.

Realizing Nhu and Cobra are about to strike, he declares...

We'll never know how things turned out since there was no next issue.

Note: the second panel on the first page refers to the Dragon as a "green figure".

Obviously, his "gi" was meant to be green, probably with yellow/gold highlights, but the colorist and editor changed that, likely in order to avoid legal conflicts with Marvel's Iron Fist's costume.

Jim Craig worked infrequently for DC and Marvel after Atlas/Seaboard folded, including runs on Master of Kung Fu and the three-issue introduction of The 3-D Man in Marvel Premiere!

He moved on to storyboarding movies (The Big Hit, Johnny Mnemonic), TV (Twilight Zone and Robocop) and animation (Ewoks, Inspector Gadget)!

1) What sort of self-respecting villain actually considers himself evil?
Answer: one who isn't self-respecting!

2) Why was a Chinese citizen (especially an elderly one) in wartime Japan?
Answer: To rescue his two grandchildren after their parents were killed due to unexplained circumstances!

Were his son and daughter-in-law spies?
Answer: We don't know.
Perhaps later issues would've clarified the reason...but there were no future issues!

If they were, why did they bring their kids along?
Answer: We don't know.
But it seems likely they were "cover" to make the couple seem more innocent!

3) There was a third atomic bomb dropped on Japan?
Answer: Apparently!

And it was aimed at a volcano?
Answer: See above!

And it didn't go off upon impact?
Answer: See above!

4) Was the name "Dr Nhu" meant to be a play on "Dr No"?
Answer: Seems likely,but since writer Ed Fedory passed away, we may never know.

5) Why are all the Asians in this story a "Donald Trump" orange?
Answer: because Marvel had started the trend by making their Asian hero, Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu that same shade due to the limitations of color separation technology at the time!
(Only 64 color combinations were available for use.)
Neither Marvel nor Seaboard wanted to use the usual bright lemon-yellow skin coloring usually-associated with Asians in comics, so this "golden-skinned" look (50% Magenta/25% Yellow) with a more intense magenta than the usual Caucasian skin tone (25% Magenta/25% Yellow) was used.
Oddly, heroic Asian characters like Kato, Chop-Chop, and Jimmy Woo in the 1940s and 1950s were colored with 25% Magenta and 100% Yellow, producing a more "suntanned" look!

There's much more martial arts action coming, so bookmark this blog...NOW!

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HANDS OF THE DRAGON "Origin" Part 1

Let's begin with a title "inspired" by the martial-arts craze of the 1970s...

...which lasted for only one, never-reprinted, issue!

Where do we begin?

1) What sort of self-respecting villain actually considers himself evil?

2) Why was a Chinese citizen (especially an elderly one) in wartime Japan?

Were his son and daughter-in-law spies?

If they were, why did they bring their kids along?

3) There was a third atomic bomb dropped on Japan?

And it was aimed at a volcano?

And it didn't go off upon impact?

4) Was the name "Dr Nhu" meant to be a play on "Dr No"?

5) Why are all the Asians in this story a "Donald Trump" orange?

The answers to at least a couple of these questions, along with the conclusion of this tale from Atlas-Seaboard's Hands of the Dragon #1 (1975) will be presented here...

TOMORROW!

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Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Omnibus

Volume One