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.