Nick Fury Agent Of SHIELD - File Three!

Following the epic war with Hydra, the SHIELD series was left with a problem -- how to top what had been a bravura performance. We had seen the series under the guidance of Steranko become a lithe and compelling visual spectacle. What could follow? Well, it turns out he reached into the dim recesses of Marvel's own past to pull out a baddie worthy of Nick Fury's agents -- The Yellow Claw!

(Joe Maneely)

One of the most vivid examples of the "Yellow Peril", Marvel's Asian evil mastermind Yellow Claw started his ominous career in his own rather too on-the-nose self-titled 1956 comic. His debut adventures were written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Atlas-era mainstay Joe Maneely.

The earliest stories introduce Yellow Claw himself, a supremely confident and thoroughly reprehensible genius who sells is talents to the Communist Chinese, or at least they suppose he has. He is opposed by noble FBI agent Jimmy Woo and torn between these two powerful men is Suwan, Yellow Claw's niece and Woo's true love. We also meet former Nazi  and regular henchman Fritz Von Voltzmann. The formula developed by Sax Rohmer in his Fu Manchu novels is in place here with the Yellow Claw perpetrating some villainy and Suwan working both sides while Jimmy Woo seeks to find a way to end the menace.

(John Severin)

That formula gets a shot of adrenaline when with the second issue Jack Kirby fresh from his long partnership with Joe Simon, steps in to handle both the art and writing chores. Suddenly Yellow Claw is working less for the Reds than for himself and the Communist angle is little mentioned. Also, his schemes become wilder and crazier and the art by Kirby with assists from his wife Roz, reflects that change.

Yellow Claw uses mutants to alter reality, and later tries to escape Woo aboard a ship with wild disguises, and uses a gigantic robot to fool some local natives into rampaging against the civilized world. It's all very rockem' sockem' with a frenetic pace.

(Bill Everett)

If anything, the second Kirby issue is stranger.

The Claw makes use of a squadron of "microscopic" soldiers to infiltrate U.S. secrets, he works in league with an actual alien who is dubbed "U.F.O. the Lightning Man",and makes use of a noxious sleeping potion to subdue whole cities. 

(John Severin)

The fourth and final issue of the series sees Kirby inked by John Severin and while that tones down the artwork a might, it doesn't limit the stories.

Yellow Claw enlists the aid of shadow people from another dimension, mutant birds who are creepily human, and a powerful psychic who puts people to sleep by means of television.

The stories are short little exotic masterpieces full of vigor and a bristling pace. Sometimes Jimmy Woo is effective, but often he is just lucky. The series ends with Suwan and Jimmy wondering where Yellow Claw will strike next. We'd have to wait a long, long time for that next assault. 

The story begins when Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Jasper Sitwell and Laura Brown step away from the spotlight of the series for various reasons leaving Nick to find new allies. His first step is to go to the training center for SHIELD called UNIT and there he meets Sidney "The Gaff" Levine and Contessa Valentina Allegro De Fontaine.

Later he will meet the loquacious Clay Quartermain. He later battle trains with the inimitable Captain America.

This leads to the arrival of Jimmy Woo and then Nick tells the story of an event a few years earlier when New York City had famously gone dark. We learn that some mysterious armored soldiers had taken over Bedloe Island (home of the Statue of Liberty) and that Nick and Cap had fought them.

That battle ended up with the help of the Fantastic Four and an awesome battle which did indeed black out the city for a time. They never find out who was behind this scheme, but Jimmy Wood announces it was The Yellow Claw.

This leads Nick to confront the Yellow Claw directly and the mysterious Asian menace is able a few times to get Nick to fall into booby traps. He even manipulates SHIELD into gathering up the parts of a deadly death ray developed by Advanced Idea Mechanics.

Armed with this deadly device Yellow Claw and his forces take to the skies over NYC and prepare to destroy it when SHIELD is able to use the Helicarrier to attack and board the Claw's ship. Stalled but not defeated Yellow Claw withdraws to his hidden lair beneath the Hudson River.

But he is followed by Nick Fury and soon enough all of SHIELD as they wage a final and all-out war to stop the malignant forces of the Yellow Claw. The battle rages and seemingly the Claw's niece Suwan is killed but then a deadly secret is revealed that calls everything into question. I will not spoil one of the great hidden twists in Marvel lore.

 

I will not spoil one of the great hidden twists in Marvel lore. The ferocious climax was captured in this four-page scene which require two issues to enjoy in all its glory. 

Later after the battle, a weary Nick Fury dreams about what might happen if an alien descended and brought death and destruction to NYC. Fortunately, it's not the end of the world, but it is the end of Strange Tales. The series will become Doctor Strange and Nick Fury and his agents of SHIELD will get their own beautiful spanking brand-new number one issue.

More on that next time when Nick and his agents get their own comic all to themselves. 

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Master Of Kung Fu - Fight Without Pity!

Master of Kung Fu - Fight Without Pity is all about the art of Paul Gulacy. Gulacy had become the regular artist on the series, albeit with many fill-in jobs by other talents since the departure of Jim Starlin. He was a young and rough talent but one could see his Steranko-inspired style cohering with each job he turned in. With this volume he has come of age and his artwork is simply stunning. The stories created by him and Dough Moench are among the most compelling in the long run of the series. 

The new distinctive direction begins with a trio of tales in which Shang-Chi agrees to work officially for Sir Nayland Smith and his secret service. His first mission is to confront a drug trafficker named Velcro. Shang-Chi pursues him to his remote island fortress and battles his agents Razorfist and the whip-wielding Pavane. I want to note that as much as I love and appreciate his work, the Masterof Kung Fu series was hampered by some indifferent Gil Kane covers which only hint at the quality of the work beneath those covers. In general, the covers are much too similar and I'm hard pressed to attach any single memory to most of them. 

Sal Buscema steps in to give Gulacy a hand with a story about secret documents aboard a ship filled with all manner of dangerous folk. 

Gulacy is back in time for a trilogy featuring the menace of Mordillo, an eccentric villain who turns out to be someone close to the organization. Pavane is back and we encounter the peculiar Brynocki, an an artificial man with real feelings. Mordillo has a secret island (don't they all) which is whimsical and filled with threats from nursery rhymes and fables. Most importantly we meet for the first time Leiko Wu, an agent of Smith's outfit and a fetching love interest for Shang-Chi. 

Then we get an offbeat two-part tale from Moench drawn by Keith Pollard about a magical circus of sorts filled with a menagerie of mythical and mysterious creatures, all led by a man named Moon Sun. This is a strange tale which brought to my mind The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney which was made into a movie starring Tony Randall. 

In Master of Kung Fu's one and only annual he meets Iron Fist for the first time and the two martial arts heroes battle a magician named Quan-St'ar in the land of S'hara-Sharn, a land which is the dark opposite of K'un-L'un. Once again Keith Pollard does the artistic honors. Pollard's art is not especially well suited to martial arts action but his storytelling is very concise. 

Then Shang-Chi finds himself going to rescue a damsel in distress who doesn't want his help since she's fallen in love with Shen Kuei, the Cat, the "villain" of the story. Gulacy's artwork continues to get even more refined as Shang-Chi begins to look more and more like movie icon Bruce Lee. 

We encounter the "Murder Agency" in the next issue which sets up a number of plot elements which will play out as the series progresses. Gulacy's artwork is exquisite in this Moench story which introduces us to another cast member, a disgraced former agent named Larner. 

The story is interrupted by a fill-in of sorts drawn by Sal Buscema in which Shang-Chi reflects back four years earlier when he came into conflict with his "brother" Midnight. We get to see these two characters before they come to a death match in the second adventure of the series. 

Gulacy is back in fine form as the story of the Murder Agency unfolds. It turns out it has connections to the other main character in this comic book - Fu Manchu. We get a superior villain in these issues named Shockwave who combines martial arts with high voltage. He gives Shang-Chi a pretty good drubbing, his worst defeat of the series.  Of course Shang-Chi recovers. 

Shang-Chi and Clive Reston come up against the Golden Daggers, an outfit of former Si-Fan who serve Fah Lo Suee. The battle between her and her father is coming to dramatic climax and the world itself is in the balance. There has been much intrigue in the series, and hidden villains are revealed and Sir Nayland Smith himself finds himself facing his mortality. 

Then we are treated to Doug Moench's and Paul Gulacy's masterpiece. Gulacy has had wonderful inkers on the series such as Dan Adkins among others, but when Pablo Marcos steps in the artwork becomes luminescent. Shang-Chi is now in full Bruce Lee mode as he is just one of Nayland Smith's agents working to forestall Fu Manchu's latest threat which will destroy the world by destroying the Moon itself. To make these stories even tastier we get a break from the regular narration from Shang-Chi's point of view and each chapter is related from a different character such as Clive Reston, Sir Nayland Smith, Blackjack Tarr, and Leiko Wu with Fu Manchu himself narrating the final installment. 

Though he had never done a cover before, Gulacy supplies a magnificent portrait of Shang-Chi for the epilogue. Jim Craig takes over the art chores as the team that saved the world from Fu Manchu decides to go their separate ways. Moench is throwing aside the espionage angle for a time, as his partner Paul Gulacy bids a farewell to the series which made his reputation. 

Keith Pollard is back on art in a weird and wild story which see the return of Rufus T. Hackstabber. This is a story set in Morroco and offers the reader more than a few echoes of the Bogie classic. Other familiar faces appear in a story which is actually a sequel to the third issue of the Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu series. 

This volume closes out with the Ernie Chan cover for a reprint of the twentieth issue of Master if Kung Fu. We also get some choice ads, covers and original artwork. A very handsome Epic volume this is indeed. 

Though he was almost never able to do any covers for the series when he was the main artist, Paul Gulacy did return to the series from time to time to gives us another glimpse of his singular vision of Shang-Chi. These covers are not contained in the Epic volume but since this tome bids a farewell to Gulacy I thought it fair to include them. 

There's a little bit more Master of Kung Fu to come as he will team up from time to time with Iron Fist in the pages of The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. The Dojo takes a gander next week. 

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