Shang-Chi took winding path to cinema
Shang-Chi is Marvel Comics’ latest cinema superstar, but the character, the Master of Kung-Fu, first came to comics during the kung-fu film craze of the 1970s.
Marvel originally hoped to adapt the TV series “Kung Fu.” When that fell through, the publisher created Shang Chi and positioned him as the son of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu character from the pulps. At that time Marvel had the rights to adapt the stories. Later adaptations have proven problematic both legally and culturally, but it did provide the starting point for Shang-Chi, who made his first appearance in December 1973’s “Special Marvel Edition” #15, created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin.
The success led Marvel to rename the title to “Shang-Chi: Master of Kung-Fu” with issue #17. Under that name, the book ran until 1983 and received its greatest acclaim under writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy, mixing espionage with martial-arts action.
The “Master of Kung Fu” series has been collected in four “Omnibus” editions from Marvel; highlights can be found in the Epic Collections “Fight Without Pity” and “Weapon of the Soul.”
In 2011, writer Ed Brubaker and artist Steve Epting, who were responsible for some of the more espionage-tinged takes on Captain America in the early 2000s, brought Shang-Chi into an Avengers conflict with “Secret Avengers: Eyes of the Dragon.”
More modern takes on Shang-Chi can be found in “Marvel-Verse: Shang-Chi,” which includes a story by pro wrestling superstar CM Punk.
Writer Gene Luen Yang, known for his award-winning books including “Boxers and Saints” and “Dragon Hoops,” updated Shang-Chi with a miniseries for Marvel in 2020 along with artists Dike Ruan and Philip Tan.
Yang and Ruan returned to the character in 2021 for a miniseries, with issue #4 hitting comic shops this week. Leinil Francis Yu draws the covers for this miniseries, as Shang-Chi crosses paths with the Fantastic Four.
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewLprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.