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.
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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