Iron Fist - The Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu!

The early 70's was an era of black and white magazine expansion at Marvel. They'd had some success with monsters in titles like Dracula Lives and Tales of the Zombie among others. They'd had a runaway smash hit in Savage Sword of Conan. So it's perfectly logical they'd try out a magzine dedicated to the Kung Fu fad. So was born The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. In many of the stories from that series Iron Fist played an important role. This volume collects those up plus some other stuff as well. 

From The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Special Album Edition we get a yarn with teams up in a manner of speaking Shang Chi, The Sons of the Dragon and Iron Fist. Each of the separate heroes gets a story which is part of a larger scheme concocted by Fu Manchu. Chapter one features Iron Fist in a story written by Doug Moench and drawn by martial arts comic legend Frank McLaughlin. Iron Fist is the character at Marvel the most like McLaughlin's Judomaster and these pages evoke that vintage Charlton comics. The second chapter is by Christ Claremont and Herb Trimpe and features the Sons of the Tiger (Lin Su, Bob Diamond, and Abe Brown), and the finale features Shang Chi in a story by Moench and artist Mike Vosburg. John Buscema supplies a page to the front and the back of this story about drug shipments and whatnot. 

The tenth issue of DHoKF features another Iron Fist tale drawn by McLaughlin but this time inked by Rudy Nebres and sadly Nebres rather smothers McLaughlin's work. The story Claremont has Iron Fist fight an early version of the Steel Serpent, yet one more refugee from K'un-L'un. We are also treated to a reprise of Iron Fist's origin story by Moench and artist Don Perlin. This is useful since before Iron Fist's origin has been spread across the first four issues of his adventures. 

No new material inside this reprint annual, but that is a tasty Nick Cardy cover featuring Shang Chi and Iron Fist kicking butt. 

In a story by Bill Mantlo and artists Pat Broderick and Terry Austin Iron Fist actually meets the Sons of the Tiger as they battle a freakish villain named Snake-Eyes who uses his gang to try and steal a radioactive isotope from a hospital. 

Chris Claremont is back to take the writing reins and Rudy Nebres is the artist for what is the beginning of a six-chapter story which has Iron Fist battle for the safety of a young woman named Jade who is set upon by a hostile crowd. 

Over the course of six issues Iron Fist finds love and is drawn into a weird dimension where the dead of K'un-L'un reside. His mission is to save Jade's soul which has been stolen by an evil villain. To do that he must fight relentlessly against many foes including surprisingly his own mother. 

Doug Moench and artist Nebres team up Iron Fist and Shang Chi yet again as they battle against a baddie who is seeking to bring together forces to bring down Fu Manchu. It's all pretty complicated as they are forced to fight against one another in an arena. 

In a story primarily focused on The White Tiger (a hero who combined the amulets worn by the defunct Sons of the Tiger) Iron Fist joins forces with the Tiger as well as Shang Chi and new hero Jack of Hearts to battle the Corporation and its agent Stryke, in a ferocious battle on a ship. Joe Staton handles the artwork on this one with the writing handled by Bill Mantlo. 

The last several stories in this collection feature Iron Fist characters Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, known collectively as Daughters of the Dragon. I took a look at those stories here not that long ago.

 

This is dandy little read. The core of it is the six-part tale which is not as good as it ought to be. I am a Rudy Nebres fan, but his storytelling was a bit exotic in this story which sprawled across dimensions regularly. The highlights of this collection are the Frank McLaughlin art on Iron Fist, the Joe Staton story (love his art always) and the Daughts of the Knight material.

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Savage Posts Of Kung Fu!

Whew! October was a lot of fun. The run up to Halloween was fantastic but after a full month of a new lengthy daily posts I need some rest. And to top it all off amigos, I'm still recovering from Covid-19 which I contracted toward the end of the month which threw me for a bit of a loop.  Suffice it to say I need to sit back a wee bit. So, it was good that I had this planned all along. Alongside the horror wave which struck comics in the early 70's there was another fad which broke loose during that tumultuous decade - Kung Fu. And this month I want to take a look at some of those mighty martial arts comics produced during the decade such Marvel's Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist, among others. At DC there was Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter. Many of these throat-punching comics have collected in recent times making an amble down that street-fightin' lane easy. 

Marvel has recently found it possible to finally reprint Master of Kung Fu. The series was blocked for many years due to rights concerns over Shang-Chi's daddy Fu Manchu, a character Marvel no longer held the rights to. But they have come out with them and I'll be reading the two Epic collections. 

And while it does not fall into the martial arts category is a classic espionage series, I also want to revisit Jim Steranko's classic Yellow Claw stories from the pages of Strange Tales. Yellow Claw was Marvel's top "Yellow Peril" baddie before they got the rights to the most infamous "Devil Doctor" for a time. 

Then there is Iron Fist, Marvel's home-grown martial artist created in the same vein as Bill Everett's Golden Age hero Amazing Man, but this time with a decided Kung Fu flair. I'll be looking at Danny Rand's earliest escapades. 

And those adventures were not limited to the Marvel Premiere and the self-titled Iron Fist comic. Iron Fist also had many a bout in the black and white pages of The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. Shang Chi is there as well as the Sons of the Tiger and White Tiger. 

On the DC side of things is Richard Dragon Kung Fu Fighter, a character created by Denny O'Neil for novels but then adapted to comics. I've only read a handful of Dragon's adventures over the decades so much of this will be brand new to me. 

Frank Miller was a comic book comet of a talent when he produced Ronin for DC. This is a story set in feudal Japan and was well outside the mainstream of what passed for comic books of its time. I've never really given Ronin the attention it deserved but I hope to rectify that oversight. 

And this seems an apt opportunity to read yet again the wonderful Manhunter series by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson. The years have only increased my estimation of this classic. I've commented on this series many times here and might not have space to do so again. 

If I can get my Blu-Ray player up and running, (I might need a new one) I am looking forward to diving into the Criterion Bruce Lee collection which gathers up his five most famous films -- The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, The Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon from 1971-1973 plus the posthumous flick Game of Death from 1978.  Two of these I've never seen before. 

The overwhelming majority of the month though will be dedicated to reaching back into the furthest reaches of the Dojo and taking some of my earliest posts and dusting them off and revising them when necessary for fresh presentation. When I began this blog, its focus was Charlton Comics, because frankly that's where my focus at the time. Over the years the blog has moved away from that and incorporated more Marvel, DC, Gold Key, and other comics material. The blog has even shifted and looked non-comics stuff like films and novels. But for this month expect a double dose of Charlton as the Dojo will live up to its name and give you both Judomaster and Thunderbolt, the two martial arts comics that in many ways ignited the genre. These comics by Frank McLaughlin and Pete Morisi respectively are remarkable in many respects. 

So be wary but do enjoy the flips and counters you'll find this month as the Dojo lives up to its name. 

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Getting The Yang Of It!

July is another opportunity for me to represent some vintage posts about some of my all-time favorite comics -- specifically Yang and House of Yang from Charlton Comics. There was a delightful explosion of martial arts movies and magazines and comics in the early 70's, and surprisingly in the comic book arena Charlton led the way with Yang drawn by Warren Sattler and written by Charlton's all-purpose man Joe Gill.

This month I want to revisit this classic series and the era in general with close looks at two other Kung Fu comics -- Master of Kung Fu and Iron Fist from Marvel.

And while all that is going on I'd love to revisit the classic TV show Kung Fu starring David Carradine, the show which in many ways was both a result of and a spark for the wave of Kung Fu wonderfulness which sprouted during the time. 

And the folks at Twomorrows must've learned what I was up to here at the Dojo and they have published a special volume of Back Issue that looks at many of the same characters and books. Amazing! (Actually a total fluke which I learned of after I'd set up this month's offerings.)

All that and whatever else I can think of will dominate the merry month of July with a special message coming on the fourth. Look for it. 

This month the Dojo really lives up to its name. 

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