[NOTE: The summary title I chose for this three-part MOKF adventure is taken from the title of issue #34, because I felt it summed up the psychological theme of the narrative.)
When composing my reviews for serial comic books, I never attempt to read the series as I originally did when I followed it in real time (if I was able to do so). In this case, however, I had decided to attempt re-reading the whole MOKF series from beginning to end. I wasn't sure that I would post on the individual comics when I started the project, and now I know that most of the issues I've reread so far don't merit much "cyber-ink."
I noted that the first issue of the series provided a potentially great opposition between two racial myths: that of Mandarin China as represented by Fu Manchu, and that of the cinema-manufactured image of the Asian martial artist, exemplified by the devil-doctor's son Shang-Chi. Unfortunately, most of the later stories with Fu Manchu, whether by Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, or anyone else, proved unimaginative and underwhelming. Paul Gulacy began working on the title frequently during this early era, but his vivid pencils did not make an impact on the series until MOKF #29 (May 1975), when Gulacy and Moench decided to transform the series into something like a James Bond comic book as drawn by sixties luminary Jim Steranko. (The tableau above is a typical example of Gulacy emulating a Steranko visual trope.) Though Fu Manchu would continue to make periodic appearances, Fu's old antagonist Nayland Smith became both a regular support-character and a symbolic father-figure to Shang-Chi. Additionally, the rather flat character of Black Jack Tarr was given a more dynamic personality, while Moench and Gulacy introduced a younger agent, Clive Reston, who would be able to engage with the main hero on a more personal basis. "Cyclone" also introduces Leiko Wu, the first regular female support-character, and Shang-Chi's first full-fledged romantic pairing. (The youth had enjoyed a first brush with love in an earlier story, but the woman practically had "Red Shirt" written on her forehead.)
In this quest for modernization, the creators had to discard the main template for Shang-Chi's character: that of Kwai Chang Caine from the 1972-75 KUNG FU teleseries. For many issues writers had kept the hero as a sort of "earth angel" who was too good to be true. But Leiko, the former lover of Reston, functioned in part to bring the angel back to his earthly origins.
Issue #33 starts off with a literal bang, as a killer robot attempts to assassinate Reston, only to be stymied by Shang-Chi. Nayland Smith then briefs his agents about similar assassinations of MI-6 operatives. The similar killing-methods, which have the capriciousness of "a child's game," prompts Smith to attribute the murders to a never-identified master killer known only as Mordillo. Further, Mordillo's long game is to take control of "Project Ultraviolet," an English invention that makes it possible to channel the power of the sun into a selective super-weapon. (To himself, Shang-Chi is deeply repelled by using the sun, "the source of all life," for purposes of murder.) An additional complication is that one MI-6 man, Simon Bretnor (whose surname even sounds like "Britain"), has simply gone missing, and Bretnor had a checkered past in that he seduced Leiko away from Reston some months before Bretnor's disappearance. However, Moench doesn't wait long before dropping the other shoe, revealing that Bretnor is the assassin Mordillo, and that he's captured Leiko, believing that she is the key to his possessing command of the solar death weapon (which the villain renames "the Solar-Chute").
Now, though Part One of this narrative might've been seen as something out of Ian Fleming, the next two parts veer into the loony-tunes terrain of the British spy-series THE AVENGERS. Mordillo, despite being a master of spycraft, has an obsession with children's toys, and the "madman's crown" of the title is an island surrounded by mountain peaks that resemble the encircling spikes of a crown.
Reston and Shang-Chi mount a two-man mission (albeit one later joined by Tarr) to rescue Leiko and take down Mordillo, and when they first land on the island, they meet assorted constructs-- a cartoonish train, mechanical soldiers, and Mordillo's main confidante, a robotic yes-man named Brynocki. Given that Moench and Gulacy labored to center MOKF in a slightly more naturalistic cosmos than one found in most Marvel comic books, Mordillo's recapitulations of childhood images is clearly meant to suggest the depths of madness into which he's sunk-- even if, as Shang-Chi opines, "all thoughts are madness to him who is not the thinker."
Mordillo displays his credentials as a super-villain by trapping Shang and Reston and forcing them to watch as Leiko gets suffocated in a giant hourglass. However, it's at this propitious point that Black Jack Tarr makes his appearance by masquerading as one of the villain's mechanical men-- and the rebellion of one of his creations offends him more than physical peril ("You can't attack me-- not me!") He then escapes, and calls upon a resource more affiliated with the adult side of his personality: his lover Pavane, who had appeared in MOKF #29-31, and who was forced to tolerate his romance with Leiko-- much as Reston will soon be forced to tolerate a budding relationship between Leiko and Shang-Chi.
Pavane does not cross the path of Shang, though she does get a brief catfight with Leiko, while Shang gets the honor of pursuing Mordillo and Brynocki as the Solar-Chute ascends to begin its reign (rain) of solar death. Mordillo isn't able to score any physical points on the Master of Kung Fu, but he does seed some doubts about what Nayland Smith and MI-6 were going to do with the solar-chute, particularly against enemies of Chinese ethnicity. And when Mordillo claims that of spycraft that "it's all a game," this gives a new intonation to his taking refuge into a childhood-themed madness, and the idea reinforces Shang's early assertion that madness is relative to the thoughts of the individual thinker.
Shang-Chi of course destroys the solar-chute so that no one can use it again, while Mordillo's insanity precipitates his death. However, upon reuniting with his allies, Shang is embraced by Leiko, and it's obvious that she's become fascinated with him, and he with her. This is the crux of the new, non-angelic vision of the martial hero, as he himself meditates, "I should refuse her embrace-- But it is not within me to do so-- Rather, it is within me... to return her embrace, to concede that I am not perfect, that I am only a man-- capable of hurting another man." And this love affair, though often rocky, lasted the entire length of the MOKF original run-- though it was never quite as "strange" as the love between the late Mordillo and his faithful cartoon-creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment