Retro Omnibus Review: Master of Kung Fu Vol. 2 by Moench, Gulacy, Craig, Zeck, and others

Contains Master of Kung Fu Annual #1, Master of Kung Fu #38-70, (March 1976 – November 1978)

Written by Doug Moench (#38-52, 54-63, 65-70, Annual #1), Scott Edelman (#64)

Co-plotted by Paul Gulacy (#38-39, 42, 48)

Penciled by Paul Gulacy (#38-40, 42-50), Sal Buscema (#41), Jim Craig (#51, 54, 56-58, 61-63, 65-66), Keith Pollard (#52, Annual #1), Mike Zeck (#55, 59-60, 64, 66-69), Pat Broderick (#70)

Inked by Dan Adkins (#38-39), Paul Gulacy (#40), Mike Esposito (#41, 50), Tom Sutton (#42), Jack Abel (#43-44, 48), Pablo Marcos (#45-49, 51), Keth Pollard (#52), John Tartaglione (#54, 56-62, 65, 69-70, Annual #1), Jim Mooney (#55), Jim Craig (#63), Tribe/Many Hands (#64, 66), Ricardo Villamonte (#65), Fred Kida (#67), Bruce Patterson (#68), Duffy Vohland (Annual #1)

Coloured by Petra Goldberg (#38, 40-41, 43, 45-46, Annual #1), George Roussos (#39, 58), Don Warfield (#42, 44, 51), Hugh Paley (#47), Janice Cohen (#48-50, 59), Irving Watanabe (#52), Phil Rachelson (#54-57, 61-64, 68), Sam Kato (#60), Françoise Mouly (#65-66), Bob Sharen (#67), Mary Ellen Beveridge (#69), D. Martin (#70)

Spoilers from forty-six to forty-eight years ago

I really enjoyed the first volume of this series, and am excited to dig further into Shang-Chi’s history.  I realize that the break between volumes was a little arbitrary – it would have made more sense to end the first volume at the point where the series shifted away from Shang-Chi’s fight against his father, Fu Manchu, but that would have left the book a little too slim.  I don’t know if there is any meaning to where this second volume lands.  I notice that it only has one annual, and no material from other series, so it looks to me like this volume will be perhaps more focused on a singular continuity (I’m not sure how the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu stories ever fit; that series is on my pile for when I’m finished with this one).

The last volume ended with Shang-Chi working closely with Sir Dennis Nayland Smith and his crew of British operatives who mostly conducted business for Scotland Yard out of New York City.  I’m not sure how that setup was supposed to work, in terms of jurisdiction, but really, it was all just an excuse to toss Shang-Chi into James Bond type stories with a kung fu twist.  It was a cool concept, brought to life by Paul Gulacy’s incredibly slick and sexy pencils.  

I’m most looking forward to continuing to watch Gulacy grow artistically in this volume, and then give over the art chores to a young Mike Zeck, who would go on to become one of the most exciting artists of my earliest comics-reading days.  

The first volume was an often-awkward read, given its lack of racial sensitivity and use of objectionable slurs.  We’ll have to see if things improved in the second act.

This book features the following characters:

Villains:

• Chandar (#38)
• Cat (Shen Kuei; #38-39, 62-63, 65-68)
• Cho Lin (Si-Fan; #41, 64)
• Kwan-Shu (Si-Fan; #41)
• Shock-Wave (Lancaster Sneed; #42-45)
• Skolnik (#42)
• Dr. Petrie (#42-45, 47)
• Ducharme (#43-44, 47, 50, 55)
• Fu Manchu (#44-50, 55, 64)
• Fah Lo Suee (#44-47)
• Bolo (Golden Daggers; #44-45)
• Kimba (Golden Daggers; #44-45)
• Tarrant (Sir Herbert Griswold; #45-47)
• Chankar (#46)
• Shaka Kharn (#48-50)
• Tiger-Claw (#52)
• War-Yore (Eric Slaughter; #54, 56-58)
• Han Sung (#55)
• Prime-Mover (#59-60)
• Dr. Doom (Victor Von Doom; #59-60)
• The Skullcrusher (#61-63, 65-67, 69)
• Pavane (#63, 65-68)
• Kogar (#63, 65-68)
• Sklar (#63, 65-68)
• Shoh Teng (#64)
• Death-dragon (#64)
• Black Demon Sect (#70)
• Anna (Black Demon Sect; #70)
• Dr. Chow (#70)
• Quan-St’ar (Annual #1)

Guest Stars

• Midnight (M’Nai; #41)
• Iron Fist (Danny Rand; Annual #1)

Supporting Characters:

• Sir Denis Nayland Smith (#38, 40, 42-45, 47-51, 54, 56-58, 61, 63, 67, Annual #1)
• Leiko Wu (#38-40, 43-51, 54, 56-63, 65-69)
• Juliette (#38-39, 62-63, 65-69)
• Clive Reston (#39-51, 54, 56-63, 65-69)
• Black Jack Tarr (#40-51, 54-58, 60-61, 63, 65-70)
• Dr. Petrie (#40, 51, 63, 67)
• James Larner (#40-45, 47-49)
• Melissa Greville (Nayland Smith’s secretary; #42-43, 45, 51, 61, 63, 65-68)
• Caldwell (#42)
• Sir Herbert Griswold (#43-44)
• Fah Lo Suee (#47-50)
• Ward Sarsfield (#47-50)
• Rufus T. Hackstabber (#52)
• Quigly J. Warmflash (#52)
• Dinah Warmflash (#52)
• Miss Carstairs (#56)

Let’s see what happened in the comics, with some commentary as I go:

• The first volume opens with an essay by Doug Moench that is pretty spoiler-filled, talking about the circumstances around many of the stories in this volume.  I read about a page then decided to skip it; I’ll circle back after I’ve read the book if I remember to.
• The first comic in this omnibus is the first Annual this series had, featuring art by Keith Pollard.  Shang-Chi is at his place in London when he is visited by Daniel Rand.  Danny explains that he has been looking for help, and ended up meeting Sir Denis Nayland Smith, who sent him to Shang-Chi.  He explains that his friend, Colleen Wing, has been abducted.  He reveals that he’s Iron Fist, which Shang-Chi already knows based on how he moves.  Shang-Chi agrees to help him, and they head out.  Elsewhere, some guy in a colourful costume comes through a portal into London, and attacks a cop.  As Danny and Shang-Chi walk, they discuss how neither of them knows London very well, and don’t know how to start looking for Colleen (this fits nicely with what was happening in Iron Fist’s book at the time).  They are suddenly attacked by a couple dozen strangely dressed swordsmen.  They fight them for about five pages, and once they’ve defeated them all, their attackers disappear.  The guy we saw before appears, and explains these men were assassins from S’ahra-Sharn.  The guy says his name is Quan-St’ar, and that he’s a citizen of K’un-Lun, the mystical city where Danny grew up.  This Quan-St’ar guy explains that S’ahra-Sharn is a twin city in the same dimension as K’un-Lun, but that it’s a darker place.  He says that city is going to attack the other, and that he needs Danny’s help to stop it.  The heroes agree and are transported through a realm of madness.  They arrive in S’ahra-Sharn, and immediately Quan-St’ar sends them to a tavern to look for someone named Shai-tahn while he goes to do other stuff.  After they leave, we see that the attackers from before work for Quan-St’ar, and that he’s sent Shang-Chi and Danny into a trap.  At the bar, they end up in a big brawl when some tough guy tries to show off and another guy tries to force himself on a woman named Cybelle.  The brawl ends when the local authorities bust in, one on horseback, and order the arrest of our heroes.  They learn that Shai-tahn is the man arresting them, and they prepare to fight.  They give up though once they see that Shai-tahn will kill Cybelle if they don’t.  After our heroes are taken away, Quan-St’ar turns up and we see that everyone is working for him.  Danny and Shang-Chi are held in a cell for five days before Quan-St’ar comes to tell them that he is going to lead an army against K’un-Lun and simply wanted Danny out of the way.  Someone tosses a rope through their cell window, and they manage to escape.  It’s Cybelle who freed them – she’s in charge of an underground resistance that includes many of the men they fought in London.  Cybelle explains that Quan-St’ar was a citizen of K’un-Lun who was part of a dragon rider exhibition.  One of the dragons went berserk, and Quan-St’ar ended up killing it in front of Yu-Ti; this led to his exile, and the establishment of the whole heart of Shaou-Lu thing.  Cybelle helps the resistance get into Quan-St’ar’s fortress and they all attack the guards.  Danny and Shang-Chi find their way to Quan-St’ar’s chambers, where they learn he has a massive globe that told him they’d escaped.  Quan-St’ar blasts at Danny, but his iron fist protects him.  Shang-Chi smashes the mystical globe, and it pours forth mystic energy of some kind.  The energy absorbs Quan-St’ar, and they disappear.  Later, Cybelle has taken control of the city, and after our heroes decline her offer of a place to stay, she has her sorcerer send them home.  Back in London, Danny decides he needs to find Colleen on his own, and the two men part as friends.
• In issue thirty-eight, Shang-Chi is in Hong Kong, and he scares off a group of alley cats about to attack a Siamese.  As he walks through the city, he remembers being sent here on a mission he at first did not agree to.  Sir Denis Nayland Smith wants him to stop a crime boss, and Shang-Chi does not want to kill.  When he learns that a main focus of the mission is to save a British counter-agent and not just to retrieve her documents, he changes his mind.  Leiko tells him the target is named Shen Kuei, known as Cat because of his skills.  Shang-Chi enters the Jade Peacock, where he is supposed to meet the British agent.  She’s a singer in the bar, and while Shang-Chi listens to her sad set, he thinks about Leiko.  The singer, Juliette, recognizes Shang-Chi but makes it clear to him that she doesn’t want to leave Hong Kong.  She makes reference to knowing more than Nayland Smith wanted her to learn.  A younger man interrupts their conversation, calls Shang-Chi ‘white one’, and starts a fight with him.  Shang-Chi easily smacks the kid down and he leaves.  Juliette explains that he leads a street gang.  She takes Shang-Chi to her dressing room, passing through a gambling den, and then tells him that he can go retrieve her documents, but she won’t say where Shen Kuei is, because he is her lover.  At the same time, some guy from the club goes to tell Cat what’s happening.  Shang-Chi leaves Juliette, but when he reaches the bar, he finds it empty.  The guy Shang-Chi fought has returned with five other guys, and they prepare to fight him.  From the balcony, Shen Kuei tosses a knife into the middle of the floor, and as he takes off his tunic, he reveals a cat tattoo on his chest.  Chandar, the gangster kid, wants to fight everyone.  Shen Kuei surprises Shang-Chi by telling him he’ll fight by his side (it’s interesting to note that he keeps calling him ‘Britisher’).  Chandar and his men attack, and the fight is on.  As Chandar’s numbers dwindle, he tries to grab the knife that Cat tossed.  Even with it, he can’t cut Cat, and then decides to run away.  Cat decides not to kill him.  He turns to Shang-Chi, and it looks like they’re about to fight when Juliette enters the room.  Cat tells her that he’s going to make her pay for betraying him, but Shang-Chi insists that Juliette told him nothing about him.  Cat repeats that he’s going to kill Juliette.

• Shang-Chi tries again to make it clear to Shen Kuei that he doesn’t want to fight or kill him, but realizes he’ll need to fight him if he is to protect Juliette.  Some gangsters from the back gambling rooms in the bar come out and pull their guns on Cat; Shang-Chi takes this as an opportunity to jump out a window with Juliette (it doesn’t make sense that they are on an upper level, but okay).  Cat tells the gangsters to stop shooting at them, and that he knows where they will be going.  As they head towards the docks, Juliette again makes it clear that she wants to stay in Hong Kong with Cat, whom she loves.  She does decide to follow Shang-Chi until Cat calms down, for safety, though.  Back in London, Leiko is practicing her tai chi when Clive Reston breaks into her apartment to confront her.  He’s upset that she dumped him for the guy who turned out to be Mordillo, and then seems to be throwing herself at Shang-Chi.  He insults her, and she slaps him, and then they end up embracing, and based on their silhouettes in the window, kissing.  Shang-Chi knows that Smith’s documents are on a boat anchored off the harbor, and he swims out to it.  He takes out the guards on the boat, and interrupts the man in the main cabin as he reads documents.  The man hands them over, saying that Smith has been after them for months.  As Shang-Chi leaves, the man tells him that he’s already broadcasted the coded contents of the documents, and that Smith was stealing them from them.  Disgusted with the gamesmanship of spycraft, Shang-Chi tears up the papers and throws them overboard, without reading them (we see that they concern Fu Manchu’s activities in Hong Kong).  He returns to Juliette just as Shen Kuei approaches.  When Juliette declares her love for him, he smacks her, and then he and Shang-Chi talk again.  He has a double-bladed staff, and uses it to cut Shang-Chi across the stomach.  Giving in to the inevitability of the fight, Shang-Chi pulls out the nunchaku he grabbed while on the boat, and one of the best fight sequences we’ve seen from Gulacy yet unfolds.  The men keep fighting until Juliette interrupts.  She holds a blade over her chest (I guess she was named Juliette for a reason) and threatens to kill herself if Shen Keui doesn’t believe her.  When he hesitates to act, she stabs herself (although it’s more in her shoulder than her heart).  Cat declares that he believes her and tosses his blade to Shang-Chi, basically conceding the fight.  As he walks away, carrying Juliette, Shang-Chi admits to himself that he probably would have lost this fight.  The next day, Shang-Chi departs for London, and we see that the cat he saved at the beginning of last issue, which has been following him around for two issues, is coming with him; he says to charge the extra airfare to Smith, with whom he is very upset.  
• The opening of issue forty is a little confusing, as two things happen at once.  Upon returning to London, Shang-Chi went straight to Nayland Smith’s office at MI-6 and told him off for lying to him and sending him to kill.  He told him that Juliette is staying with Cat, and that he destroyed the documents.  Nayland Smith insists that the documents did belong to England, and gets offended by how Shang-Chi is speaking to him; Shang-Chi effectively quits.  This scene is cut with the present scene, that has Black Jack Tarr coming to Shang-Chi’s place, to get him to go on a job.  Shang-Chi insists that he’s quit, but Tarr tells him that a number of agents have been murdered, that they suspect it’s an inside job. Tarr plays on their friendship to get Shang-Chi to come with him to Leiko’s place for a briefing.  When they get there, they find that four men are in her apartment, holding her.  Tarr’s arrival gives Leiko the chance to fight back, and Tarr starts shooting.  Shang-Chi knocks Leiko out of the way of another shot, and soon Tarr chases after the men when they run.  Leiko explains to Shang-Chi that she has to go rendezvous with Agent D, to learn who is killing them.  She knows this is the most important mission she’s had, but she has a 99% chance of not surviving it.  Shang-Chi wants to go with her, but she says he must stay.  She tells him that she told Clive Reston that they are in love, and Shang-Chi responds by saying he’s never said that.  She leaves, telling Shang-Chi to tell Tarr to “re-enlist Larner”.  When Tarr returns, he passes on the message, and as they go to leave, he calls him out for calling him Chinaman all the time, although Tarr ignores it.  They go to see this Larner guy, who is drunk.  We learn that he got drummed out of the service a year before.  He was upset because Leiko and his girlfriend Jennie were on a mission together in Belgrade, and only Leiko returned.  Later, Larner and Leiko were on a mission together that went poorly, and as they fled in a speedboat, Leiko was shot and fell into the river.  Larner didn’t go back for her, and that’s why Smith got rid of him.  Tarr tries to knock some sense into him, and then notices that Reston is already in the guy’s flat, also pretty drunk.  He’s on a self-pity jag, caused by Leiko loving Shang-Chi, who doesn’t say anything.  Bullets come through the window, followed by a grenade that explodes.  Soon, four masked men search the wreckage for bodies, but it turns out all the agents survived and hid under debris.  They start to fight, and the intruders are killed or taken prisoner.  Shang-Chi finds one more on the balcony, and in fighting him, the man falls to his death.  Shang-Chi holds on to some of his jacket, in which Tarr finds a business card for “Oriental Expeditors, Ltd.”  It’s clear this is a trap, and Larner refuses to go.  Tarr decides he’s going to check out the trap anyway, and has Shang-Chi come with him.

• It looks like Paul Gulacy fell behind on issue forty-one, so Sal Buscema stepped in and Moench gave him a bit of a fill-in issue.  We are still in Larner’s apartment, and Black Jack Tarr leaves on his own to go check out the address they got from their attackers.  Reston and Larner leave to get tea and sober up, and decide if they want to go help Tarr.  Shang-Chi remembers something sparked by something Larner said, and decides to stay in the apartment and meditate.  Four years prior, Shang-Chi was sparring with his “brother”, M’Nai, aka Midnight, under the tutelage of Cho Lin, their teacher.  M’Nai knocked Shang-Chi down, and our hero reacted to their taunting with anger, leading to him getting knocked down again.  Cho Lin used this as a lesson about anger, but they were interrupted by the arrival of Kwan-Shu, a priest who served as chef in Fu Manchu’s fortress.  Midnight slipped away, and Kwan-Shu told the others that someone has been stealing alcohol from the cellar, and that Fu Manchu wanted to question M’Nai about this.  He told Shang-Chi that he had to go get him.  Shang-Chi insisted that his brother was innocent, but also decided he had to follow his father’s commands.  We see that M’Nai has been watching all of this.  When Shang-Chi went to his room, he found only a note saying that he was innocent and was not prepared to accept an unjust punishment.  Shang-Chi noticed that one section of the corridor was dark and guessed that M’Nai was there.  He tried to talk to him, but M’Nai chose to run.  Shang-Chi chased him and tackled him, which led to a fight that neither of them wanted to have happen.  They fought for a while, moving through the fortress, ending up in a strange room filled with sinister looking devices and small animals in cages.  They kept fighting until they both fell from exhaustion.  M’Nai pointed out that they are too equal to ever defeat one another, and suggested instead that they should go stake out the cellar and see if they could catch the real thief.  Shang-Chi raised his concern that the room they were in was evil, but M’Nai believed so strongly in Fu Manchu’s goodness that he convinced him otherwise.  They hid in the cellar for a while, and finally saw someone come and help themself to a drink from a large cask.  After his second drink, they were able to recognize Kwan-Shu.  They snuck away and reported what they learned to Cho Lin, but he didn’t believe them.  He sent them to their rooms, and told them to wait until Fu Manchu summoned them, but as we return to the present, we learn that nothing ever happened on this issue again.  Now Shang-Chi believes his father was testing their loyalty, or perhaps never knew about it.  Shang-Chi leaves Larner’s apartment, thinking about how the mole in Nayland Smith’s organization could be anyone.
• Issue forty-two has a confusing structure. In alternating panels, we see Shang-Chi getting beaten up by a guy in a yellow costume.  He does not do well in this fight.  The rest of the issue brings us to this point.  It starts with Shang-Chi going to see Nayland Smith in his office and telling him that he doesn’t see himself as one of his agents, and that he is going to stick to his own morals.  He says he is prepared to go with Tarr to the Oriental Expeditors (we then see this is where he’s getting his butt kicked).  Nayland Smith starts to lecture Shang-Chi, but he’s distracted by a ticking sound, which Smith says is his desk clock (although we can see a bomb attached to his desk).  Shang-Chi twists Smith’s words and then leaves his office to go meet up with Tarr.  Annoyed by him walking away, Smith follows, and thus isn’t in his office when his desk explodes.  Shang-Chi blows Smith off again, and then some guy gives the boss a communique from Leiko that appears to be asking for help.  As Shang-Chi walks down the hall, he gets called into Reston’s office, where Reston and Larner want to talk to him.  They tell him about how they know something they don’t want to share with Smith.  Larner talks about a former agent named Lancaster Sneed, who was badly injured on a mission, and lost half his face.  He had metal plates put into his face but Smith had him declared mentally unfit for service.  Sneed ended up training as a martial artist and then working in a carnival, and built himself an exoskeleton that delivers electrical shocks.  He calls himself Shock-Wave (and now we know who Shang-Chi is getting beaten up by).  Larner thinks that Sneed is behind the attacks on agents, and shares that Sneed tried to recruit him; it’s still not clear why they don’t want Smith to know all this.  Shang-Chi carries on to Tarr’s office, and they head out to the expediters shop.  They sneak in the back and disturb a bunch of masked men loading boxes.  They take them out pretty easily.  In the flash-forwards, we see two other men with Shock-Wave; a sweaty guy named Skolnik, and an unnamed Asian man, who advocate for Shock-Wave to kill our hero.  In the flashback, Shang-Chi hears voices and climbs through an air vent, dropping down on Skolnik as he converses with the Asian man.  Skolnik calls for Shock-Wave to come help him, and he shows how he can destroy a statue with an electricity-aided karate chop.  Now the story moves to the point where Shock-Wave has Shang-Chi lying on the ground, clutching his head in pain.  We see them fight, while back at the office, Smith is wondering why he can’t find Dr. Petrie anywhere.  Tarr comes in just as Shock-Wave is going to kill Shang-Chi, and fires a shot that he ducks and takes off from.  Tarr goes after Shock-Wave, and Shang-Chi stumbles outside just as Smith and Reston pull up in a car.  They rush to him, and Shang-Chi feels he needs to lie, claiming that his electrical burns are cuts (because those look the same?).  Smith arranges for Shang-Chi to be taken to the hospital, and then says he needs him to go to Switzerland to help protect Leiko and Agent-D.  Shang-Chi collapses just as Tarr returns empty-handed.  Back at the office, a policeman comes across Dr. Petrie in Tarr’s office.  Before Petrie can explain anything, the cop is shocked by Shock-Wave, who wants to make sure that Petrie doesn’t mess up this bomb.  Petrie, who looks a little wide-eyed and maybe mind controlled, says that he believes their master will be proud of them when this bomb goes off.

• Sir Denis Nayland Smith is still trying to get a hold of Dr. Petrie, and as they finally speak on the phone, we are again shown how he planted a bomb in Black Jack Tarr’s office, and that he’s working with Shock-Wave.  He tells Smith that he’s having kidney problems and is staying with a friend.  Tarr, Reston, and Larner come to see Smith, and from their discussion, we learn that Shang-Chi, after being treated for his burns, has left for Switzerland.  Smith informs them that Leiko and Agent-D are on the run in Switzerland, hoping to make it to a safe house; we see that men from Oriental Expediters are after them, and that Leiko is fighting back.  She sees proof that an organization called Golden Dagger is involved.  Smith and Larner clearly still have problems, and when the younger man is rude, Tarr knocks him across the face.  Smith stops them from fighting, and reveals that he knows that Shock-Wave is involved.  We learn that Shock-Wave is Smith’s nephew, that Larner resents Smith for not being there for him when his girlfriend died, and that Smith wanted Larner on the case because all of the agents who have been killed have been bombed.  As they talk, we see that someone throws a grenade into Shang-Chi’s apartment, but his cat survives.  Smith wants Larner to look over the bomb fragments they have, and wants Tarr and Reston to head to Switzerland to back up Shang-Chi.  At the same time, Shang-Chi arrives at the safe house, which is the estate of Sir Herbert Griswold, a colourful man who is more interested in practicing his archery than greeting Shang-Chi.  In England, Tarr goes to his office to get his gun just as the bomb Petrie planted goes off.  Shang-Chi and Griswold are eating together, and discussing how Leiko hasn’t arrived yet.  One of the Oriental Expediters is outside, and snipes Griswold through the window.  While his bodyguards take cover, and more of Shock-Wave’s men open fire, Shang-Chi slips away.  Shock-Wave grabs Leiko and Agent-D, who are watching things, and hears Shang-Chi creeping up behind him.  He blasts his electricity, but misses him.  Shang-Chi leads him into a hedge maze, but Shock-Wave finds some deer and assumes that’s what he heard. Shang-Chi drops on him from above, and is careful to strike him in such a way that he avoids his electrified parts (the art suggests he lands a few punches to his privates).  Shang-Chi continues to kick at Shock-Wave, even though some of the kicks cause him pain.  He leads him through the maze to a pool.  The Oriental Expediters see this and take off.  Griswold, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, catches up to Shang-Chi.  Leiko approaches, and they embrace.  She reveals that Agent-D is actually Ducharme, whom we saw in the Giant-Size stories (maybe she’s also in Deadly Hands) as Fu Manchu’s consort/confidante/aide.  She reveals that she’s always been a double agent, but that Fu Manchu recently learned of her betrayal when she received information from Nayland Smith concerning the death of Black Jack Tarr (ummm?).
• Issue forty-four’s cover promises a fight between Shang-Chi and his father, which doesn’t happen, but there’s still a lot in this issue.  As Griswold’s men prepare to send Shock-Wave to London, Ducharme tells Shang-Chi her story.  Forty years before (she’s been taking Fu Manchu’s immortality serum), she was in love with a Si-Fan fighter named Pan Chen.  He was called away, to kill Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie, but the mission failed and he was the only survivor.  Knowing that Fu Manchu would be angry with him, he tried to escape China with Ducharme, but they got caught.  Fu Manchu had Pan Chen killed by poisoned altered spiders, and Ducharme fled to Smith, hoping for help.  He decided to make her a double agent, and sent her to Fu Manchu with information about himself that got him to trust her.  She then spent forty years passing on information, but was recently discovered, which is why the Golden Daggers are after her.  Back in London, Reston learns from Larner that the bombs that have been killing MI-6 agents all came from Lausanne.  Griswold passes on to everyone that they are to go to Lausanne, while Ducharme stays with him.  They learn that Reston is to join them before they leave.  We see that Petrie is passing all of this same information to someone over a radio.  Nayland Smith comes to take him with him to visit Tarr in the hospital.  Reston meets up with Leiko and Shang-Chi in Zurich, and gives Leiko a motorcycle to drive to Lausanne.  While he’s in a car with Shang-Chi, he makes it clear that he sees him as a rival for Leiko.  As they drive, they pass a slow truck.  It releases another car out its back, Knight Rider style, and that has a gunman in it who starts shooting at them.  Clive is able to run them off the mountain road.  At the same time, hidden gunmen start to shoot at Leiko.  She takes out the first two, but she gets taken prisoner.  Clive and Shang-Chi arrive at the house in Lausanne they’re looking for.  Shang-Chi goes in the back, finding it to be a typical home, but some Oriental Expeditors hold Clive at gunpoint.  The two men fight back.  Shock-Wave’s arrived in London, and Smith and Petrie go to see him.  He seems a little delirious, and asks Petrie if they managed to kill Tarr with their bomb.  Smith realizes his old friend has betrayed him.  Petrie shoots him and puts the gun in Shock-Wave’s hand before calling for help.  Shang-Chi and Clive have taken out their enemies, and ask where Leiko is.  A hidden door opens, and Fah Lo Suee emerges with a pair of Golden Dagger fighters.

• Fah Lo Suee tells her two assassins, Bolo and Kimba, to kill Shang-Chi and Reston.  The fight starts, with Shang-Chi’s desire to keep an eye on his friend causing him some problems keeping up.  In London, Petrie calls for help for Smith, who gets wheeled off by orderlies; Petrie tells Shock-Wave that their master will be pleased with him.  Reston keeps up annoying conversation while fighting in Lausanne.  Larner goes to see Tarr in the hospital, and tells him that they should work at being friends.  He also lets him know that he’s determined that all of the bombs he’s studied were built by a guy named Tarrant, who lives in Lausanne.  As Shang-Chi fights, he worries about Leiko.  We see that some of the Oriental Expediters have her tied up in a truck and are taking her to Lausanne.  Someplace else, a figure we don’t fully see, but know is Fu Manchu, sends divers to retrieve a giant oyster.  Reston and Shang-Chi have taken out the two assassins, but Fah Lo Suee holds her gun on them.  She’s joined by Tarrant, who wears a mask around his face, but who sounds familiar to Shang-Chi.  Fah Lo Suee tells her brother that he should join her, especially since Fu Manchu is behind the deaths of the MI-6 agents.  In London, Petrie convinces a nurse to take a break and leave him alone with Nayland Smith, who is unconscious.  Larner learns about Smith being shot.  Tarrant is in a rush for Fah Lo Suee to leave with him, but she wants to wait for Leiko to be delivered.  The truck Leiko is in arrives, but she surprises her captors and escapes.  Petrie is about to kill Smith when Larner comes into the room and stops him.  Fah Lo Suee decides to leave.  Reston says they will join her forces, but Shang-Chi foils his ploy by refusing.  His sister decides they’ll leave in her boat, and leaves a couple Oriental Expediters to kill Shang-Chi and Reston.  Leiko enters and tells the villains she’ll kill them.  She shoots the guy near Shang-Chi first, then the guy who is going to kill Reston (the choice bothers him).  They rush to Fah Lo Suee’s boat, having to fight through more Oriental Expediters, in a really cool-looking page.  Reston gets on the boat and pulls away Tarrant’s face covering, revealing he’s really Griswold.  He gets knocked out, and the boat leaves with him on it; Shang-Chi and Leiko Wu are left behind.  They hear a shot coming from the boat.
• Issue forty-six is told, mostly, by Reston as he’s interrogated and accused of switching sides and joining Fah Lo Suee.  He denies this, and recaps the last issue before explaining that after he got knocked out by one of the Expediters, he came to but faked staying unconscious.  Tarrant/Griswold advocated for his quick death, but Fah Lo Suee wanted him to stay alive.  She called for Chankar, a big shirtless sumo type, to tie him up, but Reston punched him and jumped over the side of the boat.  Griswold shot at him but missed.  Hearing the shot, Shang-Chi and Leiko grabbed Griswold’s car and started to drive around Lake Geneva, hoping to head off Fah Lo Suee.  Reston swam to shore and saw that Fah Lo Suee’s group were driving up a mountain.  He luckily flagged down Shang-Chi and Leiko, but as they drove, he acted petulantly.  Reston had learned that Fah Lo Suee was trying to get to the Arctic to stop some plan of Fu Manchu’s.  Reston joked about killing Fah Lo Suee with a grenade, but Shang-Chi didn’t like that, reminding him that she is his sister.  He also told Reston off for being so self-pitying.  Leiko shared with them that Fu Manchu is going after something very powerful in the Pacific.  At this point, we check in with Fu Manchu, whose people have opened the giant oyster to reveal a massive pearl.  He’s angry to hear that one of his servants referred to Shang-Chi, and his part in stopping Shock-Wave, who Fu Manchu had embedded into Oriental Expediters to keep an eye on Fah Lo Suee.  The Si-Fan blow up the giant pearl, revealing the skull of Fu Manchu’s ancestor, who developed the elixir vitae but was killed by ‘Western deceit’.  Leiko noticed that Fah Lo Suee’s entourage was getting close to the airstrip she was heading to.  Leiko and Shang-Chi hoped they could cross a small suspension bridge to beat her, while Reston took the car around behind.  He climbed to a ledge to watch his quarry, but didn’t notice that Chankar snuck up behind him and knocked him out.  Fah Lo Suee exposed him to the mimosa, Fu Manchu’s mind-control gas.  She sent the Oriental Expediters to stop Leiko and Shang-Chi, but to not kill Leiko.  Those two made it across the bridge, to discover there was only a helicopter on the airstrip.  As they ran to it, Chankar blocked them.  Shang-Chi’s punches did not hurt the larger man.  Reston explains to his interrogators how the mimosa kept him from helping his friends, and they question why he now has a spider tattoo on his chest (the spider is apparently Fah Lo Suee’s symbol).  He was put in a room full of spiders.  Shang-Chi managed to defeat Shankar, and he and Leiko ran towards the terminal, trying to get the Expediters to follow them.  Clive was visited by Fah Lo Suee, who had him kiss her (she says something about kissing Nayland Smith years before).  Fah Lo Suee believed that Shang-Chi and Leiko had escaped, and as she boarded the helicopter she said she’s leaving Reston behind.  He took that badly, behaving like he’s been rejected.  One of the Expediters getting on the chopper told him to be quiet (it was Leiko, disguised).  Reston explains to his interrogators that Shang-Chi and Leiko are likely on their way to the Arctic.  He says that Griswold’s men found him but didn’t believe that their boss was a traitor.  We learn that Tarr is behind his interrogation, along with a couple inquisitors.  We learn that Smith is in a coma.  Tarr says that he’s going to send Reston to the Arctic.

• As Fah Lo Suee’s plane flies to the Arctic, Shang-Chi and Leiko (who narrates issue forty-seven) have to keep their masks on (it’s odd that the rest of the Oriental Expediters are white to me).  They get told to relieve the pilots, which gives them a chance to radio MI-6.  They speak to Nayland Smith, who has just emerged from his coma, and he’s happy to hear that they back up Reston’s story.  Smith tells them about Petrie, who we see is being hypnotically deprogrammed, and after signing off, tells Reston and Larner to head to the coordinates Leiko provided.  He sends Tarr to the communications division, and on the way he runs into Ducharme, who expresses how happy she is to be free of Fu Manchu.  On the plane, someone orders Shang-Chi and Leiko to change into their warm weather gear, but they know doing so would reveal their identities.  When Fah Lo Suee orders Leiko to change, she has no choice but to reveal herself and attack.  Our heroes fight their way off the plane (it’s landed) and run off.  Someone throws a grenade at them, but Leiko throws it back, killing some of them.  At Fu Manchu’s base (transitions are not handled well in this series), he talks to a pet bird, revealing his plan, which is to revive the reassembled skeleton of his ancestor, Shaka Kharn, and make him his new son.  Larner and Reston fly over Fu Manchu’s base and get shot down, radioing their final position as they fall.  Shang-Chi and Leiko are following Fah Lo Suee’s party from a distance as they climb and descend the Arctic mountains.  They camp overnight in a cave, where they have to cuddle to stay warm, and at the least, they make out.  The next day, Fah Lo Suee’s party comes across Reston’s crash, and her men drag the two spies out of the still-burning ship.  Shang-Chi and Leiko see them and know they need to help, but that’s when Fu Manchu sends some artillery fire, followed by his Death Angels, Si-Fan fighters wearing jetpacks.  Reston and Larner join in the three-way fight, and when Greville complains to Fah Lo Suee, she shoots him.  Shang-Chi fights some men, rescuing Reston, and then they all take off, having noticed that Fah Lo Suee also got away.  The Death Angels round up the surviving Expediters and offer them their place back in the Si-Fan; they all agree.  Leiko catches up to Fah Lo Suee and offer her a place with them.  Back in London, a guy named Sarsfield gives Tarr a wireless microphone to wear.  Sarsfield talks about how if Tarr doesn’t survive this mission, at least his words will be recorded forever.  Fah Lo Suee tells Larner that Fu Manchu’s ultimate plan is to knock the moon out of orbit as a way of taking over the world.  As they wait for Tarr to find them, Leiko worries that she’s misread Shang-Chi’s inner strength and perhaps is also wrong to love him.  Ducharme radios Fu Manchu, revealing that she’s remained loyal to him.
• Black Jack Tarr narrates issue forty-eight, using the plot device of his wireless mic to transmit what is happening at the North Pole to Nayland Smith, who is back in England.  Tarr’s parachute jump into the area is complicated by heavy winds, but he sees two figures in the snow and wonders if they are Shang-Chi, Leiko, Reston, or Larner.  We are given an overview of the massive and futuristic city Fu Manchu has built inside the ice mountain.  He addresses his Si-Fan, talking about how the entire Earth will soon be like “Old China”.  Tarr catches up to Larner and Fah Lo Suee, and they learn that Chi, Leiko, and Reston have entered the mountain.  We see those three have discovered a boat along a river inside the mountain.  Larner gets Fah Lo Suee to explain what is happening, and she reveals that her father has long planned to move the moon out of orbit by detonating nuclear bombs on its surface.  The resulting effects on the Earth will cause mass flooding and death, but he figures most of China will be safe and he will rule over it.  Tarr confirms that Larner has his ‘tools of the trade’, which I assume refers to explosives, and then he sets out to catch up to the others.  Shang-Chi and his party are discovered by the Si-Fan’s monitors, while Tarr finds the river and realizes he’ll have to swim.  Fu Manchu explains to his crowd that he’s resurrected his ancestor, making him his son, and introduces the immortal Shaka Kharn to them.  Fu Manchu learns that Shang-Chi is coming, and he orders his men to find them and kill everyone except Shang-Chi, whom he wants Shaka Kharn to kill.  Tarr catches up with Leiko and the others, and they enter the underground city just as the doors close behind them.  Dozens of Si-Fan, who are all now wearing green military uniforms and seem mostly to be white, come swarming towards them.  Our heroes split up, and while Tarr prepares to scale down a tall wall, Shang-Chi breaks through a small opening and heads out on his own.  Tarr continues to narrate, as he can see Shang-Chi from below.  He watches as Shang-Chi cuts through a few guards, and grabs some large sticks.  A squad of Si-Fan come across him, and in a brutal sequence, Shang-Chi takes them all down one by one, making Bruce Lee style noises as he does it.  He beats on the last guy, earning Tarr’s respect again, before coming face to face with his new ‘brother’ and ancestor, Shaka Kharn, who is wearing armor and is holding a sword.

• Sir Denis Nayland Smith narrates the fifth chapter of this epic, and it’s made clear from the start that someone is going to die.  Reston and Leiko evade the Si-Fan and enter a cylindrical room, but trip an alarm as they do so, alerting Fu Manchu to their presence.  Tarr comes across Fu, and they stare one another down, while Nayland Smith, listening to the wireless mic Tarr is wearing, starts to freak out.  Reston and Leiko discover a rocket and figure this has something to do with the plan to move the moon.  Fu mesmerizes Tarr and drops him into a pit of giant scorpions.  Shang-Chi faces off against Shaka Kharn, and they begin to fight.  Reston hides in the rocket and sends Leiko away; they both just miss being discovered by Fu.  He orders his men to check the room.  Shaka Kharn draws first blood.  Larner continues to set up explosives around the base of the mountain (it’s amazing they didn’t blow up when his flying vessel crashed and burned for an entire night) while talking to Fah Lo Suee about how he blames Leiko for his girlfriend’s death.  Shaka Kharn knocks Shang-Chi off the causeway they were fighting on, and he falls through an ice floor into the scorpion den where Tarr is hiding.  He gets Shang-Chi to run to him, and blows up a scorpion with a grenade.  They break through a wall and head back upstairs to continue the fight.  Fu is happy to learn that Shang-Chi is dead, and moves up the launch of his rocket.  Tarr and Shang-Chi find Leiko, who lets them know where Clive is.  Shang-Chi insists on going to save him, but no one believes that’s his true goal.  When Shang-Chi finds Reston, they decide to stay in the rocket when it launches.  Fah Lo Suee sees Tarr and Leiko leaving the mountain, but they are chased by Si-Fan on skis.  Fu Manchu and Shaka Kharn board the rocket.  Larner doesn’t seem to want to help Leiko, and refuses to blow his explosives with Reston and Chi still in the base.  They see the rocket launch, and Tarr yells for Larner to blow the place.  He pauses, thinking about his Jennie and how angry he still is with Leiko.  Finally, he decides to save her, but he sinks the plunger on his detonator too late – one of the Si-fan has cut his wire.  As he goes to fix it, he’s shot in the back.  His last act is to reconnect the cable, causing the mountain to explode; Nayland Smith, hearing this back in London, thinks his sacrifice is one of the most noble he’s ever seen (even though Larner wasn’t being noble at all).
• Issue fifty is narrated by Fu Manchu.  He feels a lot as his big doomsday voice is ready to use.  His rocket docks with a massive station orbiting the far side of the moon.  After he and his entourage leave the rocket, Shang-Chi and Reston sneak out, and take out some of his guards.  Nayland Smith learns from Sarsfield that Ducharme has snuck away, and Smith reveals that he never actually trusted her.  We see that Ducharme is on the station with Fu, and learn that it’s time for Shaka Kharn needs to immerse himself in the elixir that keeps him immortal soon.  Reston and Chi find the controls to Fu’s doomsday device, and Clive figures he can sabotage it despite his poor knowledge of computers.  Shang-Chi is lost in thought, wondering about their friends.  We see that Tarr, Leiko, and Fah Lo Suee stand over Larner’s body, talking about what a good man he was (which no evidence supports).  When Fu Manchu enters a room, Shang-Chi reveals himself to his father.  They talk, and Fu lays out his case that mankind’s over-consumption puts the whole world at risk, which is why he wants to kill most of mankind, preserving China, which he will rule.  As he talks, he trips a switch so Shaka Kharn can hear the same conversation.  Fu claims that the CIA and MI-6 have poisons and gasses that will only kill Asians.  Shaka Kharn decides to go fight Shang-Chi instead of receiving his treatment.  Shang-Chi lifts his sword to kill his father, but hesitates.  Clive turns up with a gun and is about to shoot him, but Shaka Kharn comes up behind him and stabs him.  Shang-Chi starts to fight his ‘brother’ while Fu decides it’s time to launch his weapon.  Chi knocks off Shaka Kharn’s helmet, revealing that he’s basically a corpse that is decaying as they fight.  He says that he’s guaranteed to die, but wants to take Chi with him.  Instead, Chi decapitates him and rushes after his father.  Again, Fu talks a lot, and admits this plan to destroy the moon is a dream he can’t turn his back on.  Clive tosses Shang-Chi a gun and he fires it, but Fu still flips some switches.  Because Clive sabotaged the keyboard, it doesn’t work, but plexiglass screens drop all over the place, separating Fu from his son.  The front of the control room is a shuttle that launches, taking Fu Manchu away.  Clive and Shang-Chi watch him leave, and Chi worries that his father is right about mankind.

• Issue fifty-one marks the debut of Jim Craig on this book, as Gulacy left to pursue painting.  The issue opens with Shang-Chi and Clive watching Fu Manchu’s shuttle depart, then it jumps to the present, where all of the MI-6 crew attend Larner’s funeral, and we learn that his first name was James.  Nayland Smith asks Shang-Chi to join them all at his office in an hour, and Chi gives a vague answer.  As he walks around in the rain, Chi remembers what happened on Fu’s station.  He and Reston speculated on whether Fu would die from the wound Chi gave him.  As they moved to leave the station, they were attacked by more of the Si-Fan.  They fought them and defeated them, and moved to the shuttle they used to get to the station.  Reston guessed how to fly it, and they left; the ship followed a pre-set path to land off the coast of Asia, and they radioed in for help, learning that England had nuclear weapons prepared to destroy the area if Fu went through with his plans.  At Smith’s office, Shang-Chi thinks about how he’s not eaten or slept for six days.  Miss Greville brings him his cat, and they tell him that his apartment was destroyed.  Petrie joins them, and it’s clear that he’s not fully recovered from being brainwashed.  Smith gives a speech about how he’s thankful they were able to save the world, but Chi is not impressed that they were prepared to destroy Asia.  As Smith talks, we see some Oriental Expediters climbing the building.  Smith talks about how he considered quitting now that Fu Manchu is dead, but has decided to continue to fight evil.  Shang-Chi says he’s sick of working for Smith and his superiors, and calls him out for continuing a crusade against evil just to give his life meaning.  Smith is about to lecture him when the Expediters come through the window and start shooting.  Miss Greville is hit, but they all take down the attackers.  After the fight, Smith says that Shang-Chi sees him as no better than these Expediters.  Chi calls Smith both his enemy and his friend, and walks away.  Leiko decides to go with him, but tells Smith she’d decided to quit while they were in the Arctic.  Reston says he wants a leave of absence, and Smith puts him down.  He turns to Tarr, thankful that he’s going to stay with him, and Tarr tells him he’s out for a while too.  Smith doesn’t know what will happen next as we see the rest walking off.
• Issue fifty-two was probably an inventory; it acknowledges that Shang-Chi no longer works for Smith, but then shares a memory of a mission to Morocco to track down leads about Fu Manchu possibly working there.  Shang-Chi ran into Rufus T. Hackstabber, the very annoying cabbie who turned up in the first omnibus.  Rufus was being attacked by three men in the classic Si-Fan mode, so Shang-Chi helped him out and then went with him to meet his cousin, Quigley J. Warmflash, who was running a nightclub.  When they arrived, they stopped a pair of gunmen from threatening Quigley.  Quigley’s daughter, Dinah, a belly-dancer, joined them, and we learn that someone has stolen something from Quigley and taken it to a local carpet spot.  Shang-Chi went to investigate and came across Tiger-Claw, a former Si-Fan dude who now had his own group of Si-Fan working for him.  Rufus drove his cab into the place, and amidst the chaos, we learned that was an elephant statue that was stolen.  Shang-Chi defeated everyone while Quigley tried to get his elephant back.  Shang-Chi fought Tiger-Claw, defeated him, and realized that Quigley and Tiger-Claw thought the elephant contained Fu Manchu’s elixir vitae, but it didn’t.  The Hackstabber/Warmflash family is a strange one, and Shang-Chi left them.
• Issue fifty-three contained a reprint of issue twenty; they must have fallen way behind schedule to burn off two months like that.

• Issue fifty-four returns to the normal continuity.  Leiko wakes up Shang-Chi at noon; he’s sleeping on her couch, and when she heads out for groceries, she suggests he listen to her records.  Black Jack Tarr is staying at the Savoy, and he’s bored, so he calls Phil Reston to come over and have some drinks with him.  Reston agrees, but as he prepares to leave, an explosive arrow comes through his front door.  He sees some guy dressed as Robin Hood attack him, only he’s got an electrified sword as well as explosive arrows.  Reston struggles to fight him, and when he finally gets his gun, Robin Hood flees from him.  Reston jumps into his sportscar and gives chase across London, until he loses him in a crowd in Hyde Park.  Leiko discovers that Shang-Chi relates to Fleetwood Mac, and they decide to go visit Miss Greville in the hospital.  Reston tells Tarr what happened to him, and they discuss whether or not the attempted killer knows that they’re no longer in the spy business.  They decide to go check on Leiko and Shang-Chi.  As Leiko and Shang-Chi arrive at the hospital, they see Nayland Smith leaving, but he refuses to speak to them.  Right after he drives off, they are attacked by someone dressed as Attila the Hun, only he has a dagger that releases gas, as does his mace.  Shang-Chi fights him, with help from Leiko, but she gets a breath of his gas and passes out.  Somewhere, a few people gather in a safehouse to discuss their attack on our heroes.  They are using someone named Eric Slaughter, who goes by War-Yore, to try to kill them for reasons that are no more clear than the identities of the men who ordered this (although it seems that they are either part of the government or MI-6).  War-Yore was a quiet history buff who was used in an experimental program that made him stronger, and now he chooses the attributes of a warrior from history to complete his missions.  Shang-Chi almost defeats Attila/War-Yore, but he fires a missile from his shield that causes Shang-Chi to protect a bystander, with both of them falling into the Thames.  By the time he returns to the scene of the battle, both War-Yore and Leiko are gone.  He goes to Leiko’s home, hoping she’s gone there, and finds Tarr and Reston waiting; they compare notes and are confused by who is coming after them.
• Issue fifty-five has a story that ignores the things that happened in issue fifty-four, and while it’s Mike Zeck’s first issue of Shang-Chi, it feels like another inventory issue.  Shang-Chi has been staying with Black Jack Tarr at the Savoy, and when Tarr leaves for a breakfast date, he decides to soak in the bathtub and read A Clockwork Orange.  As he’s about to get in the tub, he hears something, and when two men with knives come in the room, he drops from the ceiling and starts to fight them.  He ends up dumping them both in the tub, and learns they were sent to kill him by Han Sung.  Shang-Chi is surprised by this, as Han Sung was his friend in his father’s fortress, but these men seem to think that Shang-Chi is after him, and working for Fu Manchu still.  Shang-Chi remembers when he was fifteen or so, and Han Sung, who was an adult but seemed kind of child-like, was training him.  He took him to see a secret, and they watched Fu Manchu prepare and drink his elixir vitae.  He told Shang-Chi that one day he would use the elixir for himself.  Shang-Chi continues to talk to Han Sung’s men, and learns that he’s in London looking for his daughter.  He is supposed to meet the men at a certain bar at nine, so Shang-Chi heads there instead.  As he sits waiting for Han Sung to show up, he remembers another time he saw his father drink his elixir, and how Fu Manchu said something to Ducharme about how age is still creeping up on him.  Shang-Chi questions the bartender, and a barfly lets slip that Han Sung’s daughter works down the street at an import place.  Two other barflies attack him, but he knocks them down and goes to leave.  He sees another man approaching the bar and tries instead to slip out the back.  Instead, he comes across an aged and infirm Han Sung in the back room.  They talk, and we learn that Fu Manchu used him for some experiments, as he was planning even back then to resurrect Shaka Kharn.  His experiments left Han Sung old, and bitter.  He’s stolen some of the serum, and is not prepared to hear Shang-Chi’s warnings that it’s dangerous to him.  His thugs surround Shang-Chi, and as Han Sung leaves, he tells them to take him down.  Shang-Chi fights them, but can’t catch up to his old friend.  He heads to the shop where his daughter works, and tries to convince her of the danger, but Han Sung joins them with his two sons, who point their guns at Shang-Chi.  The elixir is in the shop.  Shang-Chi tries to determine if the elixir was meant for Fu Manchu or for his concubines, claiming that there’s a difference.  Han Sung runs out of the shop while Shang-Chi fights the sons, and the daughter goes after the older man.  By the time Shang-Chi catches up to him, he’s standing on the side of a bridge.  He takes a drink of the elixir as Shang-Chi remembers Fu Manchu telling Ducharme that his serum is stronger than all the others, to combat his tolerance.  It’s too much for Han Sung, and he falls to his death.

• Returning to the War-Yore story, Reston, Shang-Chi, and Tarr compare notes, trying to figure out if they are dealing with a single adversary or a group.  We see that War-Yore has taken on the identity of Saint George, and has Leiko in a cage in a Medieval dungeon.  He starts to piece together his own personality, and is about to free Leiko, when he switches into the persona of a ninja.  Nayland Smith wishes his former employees would talk to him (even though he blanked them at the hospital), and we learn that he’s been trying to phone Tarr at the Savoy.  Tarr and his friends are in his hotel room, and War-Yore, in his ninja guise, sneaks into the building.  He throws an explosive shuriken at their door, and hides in the resulting smoke to attack them from above.  Shang-Chi fights him, and he throws a gun-seeking shuriken at Tarr.  The explosion knocks Tarr out, and he then kicks Reston, taking him down.  Shang-Chi fights him, realizing that his ninja tricks are from the technology he’s using.  Shang-Chi takes him down, and after the others recover, they tie him up and try to figure out who he is.  They don’t recognize him or his technology, and while they’re distracted, War-Yore escapes.  Tarr is worried that the only person who could find him at the Savoy is Nayland Smith.  There are a bunch of guys in suits hanging around War-Yore’s base.  He returns home and changes into the Red Baron; after he leaves, one of his men decides to search the basement.  Tarr, Reston, and Shang-Chi decide to break into MI-6 to find information about War-Yore, and stake out the building.  The guy from before finds Leiko in the basement, and when she asks him to help her get free, he acknowledges that he needs to report that she’s there to someone.  Tarr notices a triplane coming towards his car, which shoots the car’s engine off with a laser.  The guy from War-Yore’s calls his boss who reports to someone else that Leiko wasn’t killed like she’s supposed to have been.  War-Yore comes towards our heroes for another strafing run.  Issue fifty-six has a long letter from JM DeMatteis in the letters column, which predates his writing career.
• As the “Red Baron’s” plane comes back around, Shang-Chi jumps on it from a light standard, and manages to damage the plane.  It crashes, and while Shang-Chi is fine, War-Yore has disappeared.  Shang-Chi, Reston, and Tarr continue to MI-6 Whitechapel headquarters, where they scale it and cut their way through a skylight.  They aren’t familiar with the upper levels of the building, and are surprised to find a massive Bond-villain like war room.  A guard finds them, and someone shoots him from behind before starting to shoot at our heroes.  They defeat them, and learn they are MI-6 agents.  They head to the records room, while sending Tarr to get a getaway car.  Leiko is visited by War-Yore, who is confused again.  He lets her out of her cage and she attacks him and runs.  His men come, and he sends them after her, while he goes to change into Saint George.  Reston discovers War-Yore’s identity, and confirms that he’s an MI-6 agent.  Reston can’t help but be angry with Shang-Chi whenever they talk about Leiko.  Leiko keeps moving through War-Yore’s large castle, but gets herself trapped in a tower room, with his men coming up the stairs behind her.  Tarr drives Chi and Reston to Surrey, where they know War-Yore’s base is.  As they sneak towards the castle, they see Leiko in the tower window, and as she jumps to avoid her captors, Reston draws attention to himself.  Leiko safely makes it to a rampart below the tower, but is confronted by someone.  War-Yore’s men shoot at Chi and Reston while War-Yore, dressed as Saint George, heads into the battle.  Shang-Chi fights him for a few pages, until they are told to stop.  Tarr notices a helicopter landing in front of the castle.  The guy that has been looking for Leiko has caught her – he’s had enough of following a madman like War-Yore, and says he’s called in his superiors.  The chopper lands, and Sir Denis Nayland Smith gets out, asking what’s going on of his underlings.

• Smith is led into War-Yore’s courtyard, while Tarr watches from afar, and Reston watches from above.  Smith has no idea what’s going on and is shocked to see Leiko and Shang-Chi present.  One of War-Yore’s men, an older guy, says that he thought they were doing Smith’s bidding, but when Smith orders everyone to stand down, a bunch of gunmen refuse and turn their guns on him, claiming their orders come from above him.  Tarr busts in and shoots one of these guys, causing Reston to start shooting too.  Things get chaotic, and War-Yore moves to rescue Leiko.  He grabs her and runs off, and Shang-Chi tries to follow, with bullets flying all around him.  Reston covers Chi and tells Tarr to take Smith to his car to call for help.  Smith is still confused, but Tarr, who keeps complaining about his back, hopes that any reinforcements that come would be on their side.  Reston shoots the guy who is in charge in the back, while Shang-Chi starts searching the rooms in War-Yore’s castle, finding lots of weapons from different eras.  Smith tries to reassure Tarr that he would never order his death, or the deaths of their friends, and he starts to question the whole structure of MI-6.  Shang-Chi hides in an iron maiden (he’s karate chopped the spikes) while War-Yore carries Leiko into the room.  War-Yore is dissociating badly, and starts to put on bits of all of the identities he dresses as.  Leiko starts to talk to him, calming him down and offering to help him figure out who he really is.  Shang-chi tosses a spike at him, which distracts him and undoes the work that Leiko was doing.  Helicopters arrive with reinforcements.  Shang-Chi attacks War-Yore, even though Leiko tells him to stop.  He refers to Leiko as ‘my woman’ and starts fighting the confused man who keeps switching styles and approaches.  He gets Shang-Chi on the ground and prepares to execute him with a giant axe.  With Tarr and the reinforcements on the scene, Reston, who was watching his prisoners, rushes after Leiko.  Shang-Chi avoids the axe and their fight is back on.  War-Yore is tossed into a wall and picks up a crossbow.  Reston busts in and shoots him immediately, although he has time for a bit of a soliloquy as he dies.  Soon, things are calm, and Smith tries to make it clear to his former friends and employees that he had nothing to do with the attacks on them.  Reston says something about how it doesn’t matter because of how rotten things are in MI-6, and Smith falls to his knees.  Tarr walks him away.  Leiko starts to tell off Shang-Chi and Reston for how rash they were in attacking War-Yore when she could have helped him, and says she isn’t Shang-Chi’s woman.  She makes it very clear to Reston she’s not his either, and storms off, leaving Shang-Chi confused.
• Issue fifty-nine is another strange one, as Mike Zeck returns.  Shang-Chi finds himself in Africa, only the continent is covered in ice, and animals are dying because of the sudden cold.  He approaches a woman who mentions that the heat has left the equator, and points to some metallic pyramids in the distance.  Shang-Chi goes to look at them and finds an entrance that takes him inside, where some men use a device to resurrect Razor-Fist, who then starts to kill him.  Suddenly Shang-Chi is in London, where he’s just been hit by a cab after walking into traffic while with Leiko and Reston.  He remembers Reston touching his shoulder, and believes he was drugged.  Razor-Fist pushes through the crowd and attacks him, and while Shang-Chi thinks he’s still dreaming, he can feel his kicks.  When Shang-Chi defeats him, we see an outside shot of a castle, wherein someone says, “Your move.”  Leiko takes Shang-Chi home to rest, but he finds himself in the middle of ice-covered London with Nayland Smith and Tarr.  The world has tilted off its axis, so they go to the North Pole to find a pyramid like the ones we saw before being uncovered by the melting ice.  Inside this one, they find another being coming out of a device like the one that brought Razor-Fist forth.  The figure calls himself Amar-Tu, and he’s kind of a hippie love god type, so much so that Shang-Chi embraces Smith, despite having berated him for pages.  Then they all burn to death.  Shang-Chi wakes up at Leikos, and is immediately attacked by Pavane, the woman he fought on both the Velcro and Mordillo cases.  He starts to fight her, shaking off his reluctance to hit a woman, and kicks her head clean off.  She’s a robot.  Leiko comes back just as one of Mordillo’s other robots enters and starts shooting at them from his eyes.  Shang-Chi defeats it, and they try to talk through what’s happening.  Shang-Chi is sure that Reston drugged him, and wonders why.  The robot takes off its mask, and reveals that it is Reston, who was also drugged and mind controlled.  He knows who drugged him, and we see that the strange chess game we’ve seen hinted at up until now is between Prime-Mover and Doctor Doom; they have a chessboard featuring our heroes on Prime-Mover’s side (this thing looks like Kirby designed it on LSD), and some of Shang-Chi’s former villains on Doom’s. 

• Shang-Chi is in a plane being flown to Latveria by Reston, but when he falls asleep he has another strange dream where he walks with his father through a part of China where all the snow is melting, now that the Earth has tipped.  Some dinosaurs hatch from frozen eggs, and then Fu Manchu and a dragon turn on him.  He wakes as they land the plane Shang-Chi doesn’t remember acquiring outside of Dr. Doom’s castle.  Shang-Chi and Reston get attacked by a robot of Shaka Kharn, and Reston is slashed across the belly.  Shang-Chi discovers he’s a robot, and wonders when he last saw the real Reston.  He enters Doom’s castle after defeating a knight on horseback who turns out to be Shockwave, who turns out to be a robot.  More robots attack, and as Shang-Chi fights them, he has glimpses of his visions.  He finds Shadow-Stalker at the top of some stairs, and quickly defeats him.  Doom and his robot opponent reveal themselves, and Doom gloats, for he’s just gotten Shang-Chi to kill Shadow-Stalker, who was not a robot.  Doom explains that since Fu Manchu is gone, he had to play his games with Shang-Chi, and because Doom made him kill, that means Doom is the victor here.  Duplicates of the robots Shang-Chi has fought already come out of the shadows, including a robot of Shadow-Stalker, and the angry Shang-Chi defeats them all, which he sees as proof that he never fought the real Shadow-Stalker in the last match.  Doom starts blasting at him, and Shang-Chi tries to use martial arts to fight a man in solid armor.  He kicks him into a wall, and Doom explodes, revealing another robot.  The Prime Mover robot starts to short out, and Shang-Chi realizes that Reston, deranged by drugs or the electrical shock, was inside the Prime Mover.  He knocks Shang-Chi out of a window, and they start falling; the tower of Doom’s castle is flying, and it’s over London.   They fall into the Thames, and Shang-Chi has to use Leiko’s name to distract, and then punch out, Reston.  Later, they are both in a hospital, and learn from Leiko and Tarr that Doom purchased an estate in Sussex that he turned into his fake Castle Doom, and that they figure the tower flew to Latveria.  A nurse enters, and she looks like the woman from Shang-Chi’s visions.  She gives him a box that has a version of Doom’s chessboard in it, and the Doom figure starts laughing.  Elsewhere, Doom and Prime Mover talk about their game, and how Doom really won.  I don’t understand most of this story.
• Jim Craig returned with issue sixty-one, and it’s kind of obvious from some continuity glitches that the Dr. Doom story was another fill-in.  Shang-Chi is still staying with Tarr at the Savoy; Tarr is heading out for the night, but Shang-Chi is going to stay in and brood over Leiko, whom he claims he hasn’t seen since the end of the War-Yore affair, despite the last two issues saying otherwise.  We see that someone with a lot of metal attached to his clothes is following Tarr.  Nayland Smith is visiting Miss Greville in the hospital, and we learn that she is being released that day. He’s brought her roses, which he knows she loves, and a pile of mail to sort for him, which I’m sure she doesn’t.  Leiko is at home (she has Shang-Chi’s cat) listening to Fleetwood Mac and thinking about him.  Tarr notices a Frank Frazetta print in the window of an art gallery and goes in to buy it.  Some old guy on the street gets smacked in the face with a metal ball; the guy who used it watches Tarr leaves and decides to head back to the Savoy.  Reston is at home looking at the orchids he grows, thinking about Leiko.  Shang-Chi also listens to Fleetwood Mac and decides to go for a walk.  Tarr meets up with Nayland Smith outside the hospital, and they see that Reston has come to pick up Greville.  Reston kind of apologizes for being rude to Nayland Smith, and Smith admits that he’s trying to figure out what to do after learning that there’s something rotten in MI-6.  Shang-Chi hears a noise down an alleyway, and investigates.  Reston walks in on Miss Greville while she’s getting dressed, and compliments her.  He gives her an orchid, she tells him to call her Melissa, and he takes her home with him to have dinner.  Shang-Chi is attacked by the guy with the ball and chain.  He calls himself Skullcrusher, and he’s there to kill Shang-Chi before he can leave London.  They start to fight, and our hero finds him a difficult foe to face.  Leiko breaks the stained glass she’s making, and decides to go out.  Shang-Chi and Skullcrusher keep fighting.  Greville sorts through the mail at Reston’s and finds a letter from Hong Kong to Shang-Chi.  Reston decides they should open it.  Shang-Chi tries to find out why Skullcrusher has to kill him, but he won’t say.  Leiko goes to Reston’s, and is upset to find Greville there; he’s a little cruel as he puts Melissa in his car.  Shang-Chi and Skullcrusher keep fighting, but when the hired killer hears a car pull up, he takes off.  Shang-Chi is surprised to see Reston’s car at the end of the alley.  He gives him the letter from Hong Kong – it’s from Juliette, and it is pretty cryptic, but also clear that she’s not happy with her choices.

• Shang-Chi has returned to Hong Kong, and heads straight for The Peacock, the lounge (and secret gambling den) where Juliette sang when we last saw her.  As he takes a seat, a truck pulls up to The Peacock’s loading dock, and a robed figure oversees as things are loaded and unloaded from the truck.  Shang-Chi discovers that it is not Juliette singing there anymore, but a singer named Mei Ling.  The robed figure gives one crate, with a large X on the side, to the owner of the bar, saying it’s added compensation for him (even though it looks like the crate came out of the dock, not the truck.  As Shang-Chi asks the singer about Juliette (she doesn’t know her), he draws the attention of a bouncer who wants to rough him up.  At the same time, the club’s owner opens his crate, which explodes.  Shang-Chi gets away from the bouncer and runs through the gambling den to the loading dock, where he sees three dead bodies.  He tries to catch up to the truck that drives away, but fails.  Instead, he holds on to the back of a passing car that’s going in the same direction.  In London, Leiko goes to see Reston, who tells her that he’s on his way out with Melissa.  Leiko tries to apologize to Clive for how she’s treated him, but he’s kind of mean about it all.  He tells her that he and Melissa are leaving for Hong Kong, where Shang-Chi already is.  Shang-Chi manages to catch up to the truck at the wharves, and watches as men unload it onto a motorized sampan.  He gets noticed, and the robed figure gets the men on the boat and they leave.  Shang-Chi runs down the dock and manages to jump onto the side of the boat.  The men, who are dressed like Western pirates and extras from kung fu movies try to get rid of him.  The robed figure doesn’t let them use guns, and Shang-Chi tries to fight them all on the moving boat.  He knocks some of the men out, and knocks others overboard (a few drown) as the boat starts circling out of control.  Shang-Chi takes out everyone but the robed figure, who tries to hit him with a club.  He hits them, and then learns that it’s Juliette.  Elsewhere, Skullcrusher goes to the Cat, who wants to frame Shang-Chi for the murder of the club owner (who he calls his brother, despite them not being of the same race).
• Juliette explains to Shang-Chi that Shen Kuei has started working with Communist China, so she’s disguised herself to hijack one of his shipments.  She didn’t know the x-marked crate would explode.  She also tells him that Shen Kuei has a new lover; they head to a house where she wants to store the crates.  Shen Kuei is angry that his shipment was stolen, his brother killed, and that Skullcrusher was taking orders from people he refers to as the ‘others’.  He didn’t want Shang-Chi killed, but now knows it has to happen, even if his honour won’t allow him to be the one to do it.  He wants Skullcrusher to do it with someone else’s help.  Clive and Melissa arrive at the airport, and we learn that she left a note for Nayland Smith to explain where she’s gone.  Back in London, it appears that Petrie is keeping this information from Nayland Smith, who is talking about the Communist Chinese and some of the smuggling they’re doing.  There’s a smuggler named Kogar who is an issue, so he sent Black Jack Tarr to infiltrate his operation.  We see Black Jack, who is using the alias Black Jack Blue (he’s such a sneaky spy) to get into Kogar’s information.  His two contacts blindfold him after he gets on their boat, then knock him out and sail off with him.  Leiko says goodbye to Shang-Chi’s cat, as she wants to leave London.  Shen Kuei is upset when his new lover mentions Juliette’s name, and then tells her he wants her to kill someone.  Juliette’s men (the ones still alive at least) wake up and she drops them off, telling them to get others from their camp and then join her at her house.  She and Shang-Chi carry on towards this house on their sampan.  Black Jack comes to as his captors drive their boat through a waterfall and into a giant high tech cave city.  Kogar and his associate Sklar watch them enter.  Black Jack attacks the men who hurt him, knocking them out as their boat lands at a dock.  Kogar, who has a prosthetic arm and is otherwise strange looking, tells him he’s hired while Sklar giggles.  Juliette and Shang-Chi arrive at this riverside mansion, and she tells him to unload the crates into a storehouse.  He finds the door open, and Skullcrusher waiting.  Clive and Melissa arrive at the Jade Peacock but find it boarded up.  When they investigate the wreckage of the loading dock, they are approached by Hong Kong police, who arrest them.  Shang-Chi starts to fight Skullcrusher, and manages to take him out. He’s distracted when Juliette falls from the rafters above, and he sees his old foe Pavane, with her panther, standing there.  Skullcrusher mentions Cat, and Shang-Chi figures out that Pavane must be his new woman.

• Annoyingly, issue sixty-four was a filler issue written by Scott Edelman and drawn by Mike Zeck (the inking is credited to ‘Tribe’ which makes me think it was a lot of people rescuing a deadline).  Shang-Chi is walking through New York thinking about his dead father when he runs into a man he hasn’t seen in years.  Shoh Teng is someone Shang-Chi thought was dead, and when he runs from him, Shang-Chi pursues.  Shoh Teng rushes into the subway, jumps the turnstile, and gets on a train as it closes.  Shang-Chi chases him, and manages to grab hold of the back of the train.  He can see his old friend through the window, and as the train moves through the tunnel, he remembers when they were both being trained thirteen years earlier.  Shang-Chi was the better fighter, and he tried to school his friend.  Their teacher, Cho Lin, had his lessons interrupted by Fu Manchu, who was angry that his son showed kindness to his opponent.  He tells his son to go meditate on the fact that he is his only friend, and then he turned his attention to the others.  Later, Shoh Teng interrupted Shang-Chi’s meditation, and led him to a trap door.  Shang-Chi found himself in front of two white men and an Asian man.  He knocked out the whites but was easily defeated by the other man, who called himself Death-Dragon.  We see that Shoh Teng acted at Fu Manchu’s behest.  Death-Dragon strung Shang-Chi up by manacles, but Fu Manchu burst into the room and fought Death-Dragon, easily defeating and then killing him (as he was about to call Fu Manchu ‘master’).  Fu Manchu freed his son and reminded him that he was betrayed by his friend; today, Shang-Chi can see that this is another example of how manipulative his father was.  The train reaches a station and Shang-Chi makes it clear that he followed Shoh Teng.  His former friend attacks him, and as they fight, they talk.  Shoh Teng acts as if he believes Shang-Chi is going to kill him, so Shang-Chi decides to leave him.  When he turns his back and walks away, Shoh Teng throws a dagger at him.  Shang-Chi catches it, and Shoh Teng jumps onto the train tracks, frying himself on the third rail as he yells out “Long live Fu Manchu.”  Shang-Chi realizes that he was still Si-Fan, and was looking to avenge his master by killing him.  He feels even more lonely than usual.
• We’re back to the regularly scheduled program with issue sixty-five, as Shang-Chi finds himself attacked by Skullcrusher and Pavane.  He holds his own, and continues to earn Pavane’s respect for his fighting skills.  He knocks Pavane down, and as she loses consciousness, she orders Mara, her panther, to leave.  This distracts Shang-Chi, but Skullcrusher is also more interested in retreating, and he leaves.  Shang-Chi lifts the still-unconscious Juliette and the now unconscious Pavane and takes them towards the house.  Reston and Greville are loaded into a police car, and protest their innocence to the cops, who seem to know a lot about them.  When Reston sees the cruiser head past the police station, he gets Greville to jump out with him and they run.  Leiko has arrived in Hong Kong and has gone straight to MI-6’s local office to look at the files on Shen Kuei and Juliette.  Juliette wakes up after Shang-Chi has finished tying up Pavanne, and says she’s worried that Kogar will be looking for her.  There are layers of double-crosses half-explained (she worked for Kogar while betraying Shen Kuei, but after the explosion realizes she was herself betrayed.  She knows he’ll come for the crates, and passes out while explaining she doesn’t know what’s in them.  Shang-Chi goes to the storehouse to inspect the crates, and tries to figure out what so many groups are fighting over.  Kogar, in his secret base, realizes that something is wrong.  Just then, one of the men that were with Juliette on the boat swims into the secret grotto and fills Kogar in on things.  One of the other guys from the boat makes it to their camp to get his allies to go to the house (I honestly don’t know who these people are).  Shang-Chi starts to pry open a crate when he hears a noise from the house.  He finds that Pavane’s escaped, and Juliette is on the floor, perhaps dead.  As Skullcrusher runs from the house, he comes across Shen Kuei, who beats on him for a bit for being a coward, and then has him come with him.  Pavane attacks Shang-Chi, and they fight, ending up in the jumble.  Pavane calls for her cat.  Kogar heads out, taking Black Jack Tarr/Blue with him.  Shang-Chi starts to fight the panther, and knocks her out.  Pavane attacks with more anger, and their fight ends up in the house.  Kogar has his men land a ways from the house so they can sneak up.  Shang-Chi knocks out Juliette and holds Juliette, who is awake now.  She realizes they’ve been at the house too long and wants to leave.  We see that Skullcrusher and Cat are only a mile away.  Kogar bursts into the house, and Black Jack yells out “Chinaman”, blowing his cover, as Shang-Chi figures out that Nayland Smith must also want whatever’s in the crates.

• Kogar wants to know how Black Jack “Blue” and Shang-Chi know each other, and is surprised to find Pavane in Juliette’s house.  He starts putting things together, and figures out that Juliette has betrayed everyone to get these crates.  He directly asks Black Jack about Shang-Chi, and he tells him they were mercenaries together, but he says he doesn’t care when Kogar wants to kill him.  Shang-Chi manages to dodge his prosthetic knife, but after hitting Shang-Chi with his good hand, Kogar swaps the knife for what looks like a corkscrew.  It fires energy beams, but our hero is able to dodge them and give Kogar a good fight.  Juliette’s other friends approach the house, and jump in through a window.  Juliette and Shang-Chi use this opportunity to slip away, which Black Jack notices and approves of.  The boat still has all but one of the crates in it, so Juliette has them board it.  Kogar brings up his vessels to pursue.  No one notices that Cat and Skullcrusher watch them leave (Juliette’s friends are dead by now, not that anyone seems to care about them).  Cat finds Pavane and vows revenge (but I’m sure she’s not dead).  Kogar starts to suspect Black Jack, and Juliette worries that the others will catch up to them soon, even though her boat is faster than their futuristic looking one.  Reston and Greville continue to evade the fake cops and head for the MI-6 office in Hong Kong.  Cat opens the one crate at Juliettes and brings it to the recovering Pavane, who is surprised to learn that it’s just holding bricks of hashish.  Juliette has Shang-Chi toss one crate overboard so she can set up a decoy at the place where the river forks.  Kogar falls for the bait, but sends one boat down the other branch just in case.  Juliette’s branch of the river leads to a lagoon, where she and Shang-Chi decide to rest for a while.  They embrace, and it’s clear she wants to kiss him, but he holds back, thinking of Leiko.  Leiko gets all the information she can about Cat, Juliette, and Kogar from the MI-6 office, and reveals that she’s there independently.  The agent she’s talking to suggests that she can perhaps infiltrate Kogar’s operation (they are understaffed), and the next thing you know, she’s swimming through the waterfall into his lagoon.  At the same time, Reston and Greville are surprised to learn from the agent that Leiko is in Hong Kong.  Morning comes and Shang-Chi wakes up Juliette, who has slept for a while.  He opens a crate and discovers the hashish.  Back at the house, Cat explains that each brick contains a single microdot that holds the codes needed for some ‘plans’.  I’m lost, because the crates were at the Jade Peacock, so I’m not sure why he let them go to the person he thought was Kogar’s agent in the first place.  Anyway, Kogar’s men in the single boat catch up to Juliette and Shang-Chi, blocking their way.
• Shang-Chi starts to fight the five of Kogar’s men who have followed them, jumping onto their boat until he finds a grenade.  At that point, he jumps back to Juliette’s boat and blows up their pursuers.  They decide to head back to Juliette’s house, thinking no one will be there.  Reston and Greville talk to the Hong Kong MI-6 man about following Leiko.  Leiko evades detection and enters the cavern that holds Kogar’s massive base.  She figures the best way she can get in undetected is to take the monorail.  Shen Kuei and Pavane join Skullcrusher, who has found them a boat, and they leave Juliette’s house just before she returns.  Cat is planning on using his contacts in Communist China to find Kogar’s base.  Juliette has Shang-Chi hide the boat (with the hashish still on it) while she goes to look for food.  Kogar returns to his base with his single crate, but won’t let Black Jack go with him to inspect it.  Black Jack starts sneaking around, as does Leiko, who thinks she spots him.  Back in England, Petrie and Nayland Smith talk about what’s happening in Hong Kong.  Black Jack watches as Kogar’s man retrieves a microdot from a brick of hashish.  Reston and Greville arrive outside Kogar’s cave (they move pretty quickly), find Leiko’s abandoned boat that Kogar’s men clearly missed, and instead of going through the waterfall, decide to climb up to a cave entrance.  When Reston sees guards, he puts the silencer on his gun.  Black Jack watches through a window as Kogar confirms that the microdots, when assembled, will contain the plans for a neutron bomb.  Reston attacks one of the guards and yells for Melissa to shoot the other (he yells so much, he probably didn’t need a silencer), and they sneak in.  Shang-Chi and Juliette have eaten (time is kind of funny in this issue – it looks like it’s night where they are, but it was clearly day where Reston is) and Juliette tells Shang-Chi that she’s maybe in love with him.  They walk on a beach and make out.  Leiko is sure that she can see Black Jack, but hears someone approaching.  It’s Clive and Melissa, but trained spies that they are, they yell each other’s names and the guards notice.  Shang-Chi decides to go on his own to Kogar’s base, and leaves Juliette.  Kogar’s men start shooting at our spy heroes, as they run.  Shang-Chi jogs towards Kogar’s base and is attacked by three of his men outside.  Leiko shoots a generator, plunging the base into darkness.  Shang-Chi feels like he’s losing his fight to inferior men.  Black Jack is still with Kogar when the lights come back on, and the men from outside bring Shang-Chi as their prisoner.  He says he’s tired of Juliette and that he wants to join Kogar’s organization.

• Reston, Greville, and Leiko watch as Kogar accepts Shang-Chi’s offer to work for him, and has him sent to his quarters.  Shen Kuei has Pavane wait for him in his boat as he prepares to enter Kogar’s base (there is no sign of Skullcrusher).  Kogar tells Black Jack that he has locked Shang-Chi up, and that he wants him to kill him as a test of his loyalty.  Just then, Cat appears and challenges Kogar to trial by combat.  Kogar sends for Shang-Chi to come and fight on his behalf, and the two men at first both refuse to fight, Shen Kuei for honour, and Shang-Chi because he doesn’t see the purpose.  Kogar reminds him that Shang-Chi killed his brother, so he accepts a large staff with mace-heads at each end, forcing Shang-Chi to accept the same to defend himself.  They start to fight, and Shang-Chi knows that Cat is one of the few people who can beat him.  Their fight is intense (and beautifully choreographed by Mike Zeck).  Black Jack watches, as do Shang-Chi’s other friends, still in hiding, as things get more and more perilous for our hero.  Kogar slips up and yells about the x-marked crate, which Cat realizes he couldn’t have known about.  He’s about to stop fighting when Juliette enters the picture with her boat full of hashish.  She offers the crates for Shang-Chi’s life, which Leiko immediately assumes means they are in love.  Kogar orders his men to take her boat, and Reston doesn’t miss this chance to drive a wedge between Leiko and Shang-Chi, while they open fire from above to help Juliette.  Black Jack decides it’s time to blow his cover, and he decks Kogar and then smashes a bottle against Sklar’s face.  Shang-Chi grabs Juliette and joins Tarr; Reston calls them up the side of the grotto to their escape route.  As they climb, Tarr explains that the crates have the plans for a neutron bomb, which will kill everyone in a city without damaging the infrastructure.  As the friends make their escape, Shang-Chi decides he can’t leave those plans behind, and returns to Kogar’s city.  The others provide cover as he moves for the boat.  Shen Kuei turns up again and they agree to blow up the plans with grenades they’ve found.  They start blowing up all of Kogar’s buildings too, and as the whole cavern starts to come down, they shake hands.  Shen Kuei takes off, returning to Pavane, while Sang-Chi pilots two boats out through the waterfall.  Outside, the others join him and he explains that he’s going to take Juliette back to her home.  We see Leiko crying about this as Tarr promises to wait until morning for him to return.
• It’s a few weeks after the fight in Kogar’s base, and Shang-Chi is approaching Po Lin Monastery.  We see through a flashback that Juliette told him that Skullcrusher would be waiting there for him.  There are a number of priests outside, and they explain that they are waiting for someone to return the monastery to them, since they were evicted by its new master.  Shang-Chi knows he has to enter and pass three tests; Juliette told him this after Skullcrusher visited her, but Shang-Chi did not want to take his tests.  As he enters the monastery, he faces his first ‘test’, a warrior with a staff.  He defeats him.  In the flashback, at some point, Skullcrusher hit Juliette with his ball and chain weapon, even though she was sure he’d never hurt her.  Shang-Chi moves through the monastery, where two men dressed like priests fire darts at him through pan flutes.  He fights and defeats them. Shang-Chi was angry that Skullcrusher hurt Juliette.  He enters the main room of the temple and finds three more warriors, using coal-filled braziers as weapons.  He fights them and defeats them, and then remembers Juliette telling him that she loves him.  Skullcrusher appears, and wants to start their fight.  Shang-Chi tells him that because he hurt Juliette, he’s there to kill him.  They start fighting, and Shang-Chi struggles to avoid his long ball and chains.  Skullcrusher is surprised that Shang-Chi came, saying he no longer has a reason to fight him.  In the flashback, Juliette told Shang-Chi that she was leaving him to go back to someone, but didn’t answer when he asked if it was Shen Kuei.  Skullcrusher declares that Juliette never loved Shang-Chi, and this goads him into fighting more.  He kicks him in the chin, knocking him down, and then starts punching him in the face over and over, until Juliette yells for him to stop.  At this point, Shang-Chi realizes that Juliette was with Skullcrusher; she explains that the reason he hit her was because he saw them kissing and was angry.  Shang-Chi walks out of the temple, giving it back to the priests.

• For the last issue in this omnibus, Pat Broderick came onboard for a story that could have been another inventory issue.  Shang-Chi and Black Jack Tarr have gone to the US, and are standing outside of Jack’s ‘murder mansion’, which is where we (and Shang-Chi) first met him.  We learn that a few days before, Nayland Smith assigned Tarr the job of accompanying a Chinese scientist named Chow who is defecting to England.  He asked Shang-Chi to come with him for company, and in case they are attacked by something called the Black Demon Sect, a group of ‘red’ Chinese terrorists.  They’ve come a week early, though, because Tarr received a note from Anna, his old lover, asking to meet.  He hasn’t seen her in thirty years, and he explains to Shang-Chi that they were both agents of the British Foreign Service in Hong Kong, but after he gave her a locket, she disappeared on him.  Since it’s started raining, Shang-Chi suggests they head inside the ‘murder mansion’, and as soon as they enter, the building seals itself.  Tarr figures that the booby traps have been set, and wants to get to the control room.  As they look at an exploding trap door, they are attacked by three of the Black Demons.  As Tarr breaks one’s back, Bane style, Shang-Chi tosses one through the trap door, where an explosion goes off.  They figure they are being monitored by the cameras they see, so Tarr suggests they head to a monitor room (I guess there are no microphones in the cameras).  He has Shang-Chi break open a wall so he can cut the power to parts of the house.  They barely avoid a trap that Tarr never left, and are attacked by his robots in a place where he doesn’t normally leave them.  They break them, and avoid a guillotine to enter the library, where someone has set up a giant nude painting of Anna.  Black Demons (they are just guys in masks and bikini bottoms) break through the painting and attack.  Our heroes fight them.  Elsewhere, a CIA agent named Brant enters a hotel room to check on Dr. Chow, the defector, and it becomes clear that he’s not actually defecting, and that Brant is in on whatever he’s doing.  Tarr and Shang-Chi finish off the Black Demons, but then Shang-Chi throws a dart into the darkness behind the painting and brings down another.  Tarr is worried about Anna.  They get to a monitor room and turn on a camera in the control room where they see one of the masked demons waiting to speak to them.  They show Tarr that Anna is their prisoner, but we see that she’s actually leading them.  Tarr rushes down a hall, and a bunch of Black Demons hiding in the ceiling tiles open fire on him.  Tarr manages to collapse the ceiling with a handy switch.  They start taking them all down, and Shang-Chi notices something.  When one of the Black Demons starts to run, Shang-Chi tries to stop his friend from shooting at them, but he ends up hitting Anna in the shoulder.  She explains that Tarr never had enough time for her, so she took an offer from the other side.  Later, we learn that the CIA came to arrest Anna and the others, and they told him that the defector wasn’t legit (what a weird, unnecessary part of this plot).  Tarr tosses the locket he gave Anna into the water, and they decide to go home.

These were great comics, with a lot of flaws, which is pretty much what you can say about all comics in this era.  During the roughly two and a half years of comics in this omnibus, Doug Moench focused on telling some longer, more involved stories, while also positioning the title as a hybrid of Bruce Lee’s kung fu films and James Bond style espionage movies.  By having Shang-Chi become so close to Nayland Smith and his organization, our hero was given a new family of characters to support and feud with.

Among the big storylines were the first conflict with Cat/Shen Kuei, the war between Fu Manchu and Shang-Chi’s sister, Fah Lo Suee, the kind of ridiculous War-Yore storyline, and then the return of Cat in the last big storyline.

Throughout this time, we saw Shang-Chi grow as a character.  He became more committed to his peaceful ideals, while juggling working with an organization that carries out assassinations and other shady business.  Shang-Chi got better at expressing his thoughts and needs, although he was not as good with affairs of the heart.  His relationship with Leiko Wu was pretty rocky, and when they grew apart, it felt a little forced.  But, it did not feel as forced as his whirlwind romance with Juliette, the British spy in Hong Kong.  Their new love did not make any sense to me, as it wasn’t built on anything more than the fact that he kept saving her life.  

One thing that bothered me about Shang-Chi’s relationships was the clear difference in age between him and his paramores.  Both Leiko and Juliette had to be at least five (but likely more) years older than Shang-Chi, who would be maybe 20 or 21 at this time.  It feels a little icky, especially given how sheltered Shang-Chi’s upbringing was.

Other than that, I liked the way Moench also built the characters of Phil Reston, James Larner, Leiko Wu, Black Jack Tarr, and even Melissa Greville.  Having not read the Saxe Rohmer books, I don’t know how much of this was already canon or not, but I liked that the supporting characters started to feel more important.  I was especially interested in Fah Lo Suee, and her attempt to take control of the Si-Fan, and hope she shows up again.

I found that as I read more of this book, I liked Sir Denis Nayland Smith less and less.  I never really understood what his rank in MI-6 really was, as he seemed to be in charge of things, but also often not very knowledgeable of what was going on.  It was never clear who he reported to.  I also found it suspicious how he kept Petrie around after he was revealed to have been brainwashed by Fu Manchu, and towards the end of this volume, he was still acting kind of shady.

Moench and his artists created a strange world for Shang-Chi and his compatriots to inhabit.  It was a world of complicated plots (I’m still not clear on why Shen Kuei didn’t just keep the crates  he wanted since they were at the club he owned from the beginning of that story) that always led to big fight scenes in high tech secret bases in the Arctic, massive space stations, or a futuristic city (monorails!) built by pirates inside a mountain.  These places didn’t make a lot of sense, but they were cool.

What became quickly apparent early on is that Moench was writing to the strengths of artist Paul Gulacy.  Gulacy’s issues are the best in this book, as his stylized, sexy art made the pages flow so nicely.  Gulacy brought a level of visual sophistication to this book, reminding me often of Jim Steranko, while still having its own visual language and tone.  Gulacy’s Shang-Chi is slight and taut, with a face that often shows his emotions clearly.  It’s wild that he only drew twelve issues in this book, but they defined the book.  After he left, he sometimes contributed incredible covers that helped cement his legacy.

Jim Craig’s issues, of which there were ten, were also excellent.  His style was more detailed, especially with John Tartaglione inking, and that worked well too.  He’s not an artist you hear people speak of much these days, but he did fine work on this title, continuing some of what Gulacy did, but making it his own.

The other big artist in this book is Mike Zeck, who drew eight issues (and is the only artist credited on the cover of the third volume).  Zeck went on to become one of the first artists whose work I could easily recognize (I’ve written about him before in my columns on Captain America and Secret Wars), and it’s cool to look at some of his earliest work here.  When I think of Zeck’s characters, I think of big barrel-chested men like Cap or the Punisher, so he’s kind of a strange choice to draw Shang-Chi.  He definitely makes him appear bigger than the previous artists during some scenes, but he also makes him look a lot younger.  Zeck never worked with a consistent inker during this run, so that impacted things.

Both Gulacy and Zeck excelled at drawing exciting fight scenes that showed a good understanding of martial arts. Craig also did well at this, but the other two really stood out.

One thing I noticed across these three primary artists, and some of the fill-in artists that rounded out the book, was that transitions from one scene to another were often abrupt and jarring.  I don’t know if that was common across the line in the 70s, but it often threw me to find that we’d suddenly be looking at another character in a completely different place.  I think a simple ‘Meanwhile’ text box would have fixed these problems.  

It’s impossible to talk about this book without taking a few moments to look at how the book dealt with issues of race.  One early complaint in the letters pages was the unnatural colours used to portray Asian characters.  As this book continued, new characters of Asian descent were not treated that differently from the book’s White characters, in terms of colour.  Fah Lo Suee and Leiko were a shade darker than the others, but Skullcrusher, Cat, and Shang-Chi’s childhood friend were the same colour as Reston or Tarr (I’m still not sure what Kogar’s background was supposed to be).  The orange hue used to portray Shang-Chi didn’t change, nor did the sickening yellow of Fu Manchu’s skin, but that was explained as needing to remain on-model.  I was surprised when the Chinese defector, Dr. Chow, who turned up in issue seventy, was the same colour as Fu Manchu.  That issue’s colourist is not fully identified (D. Martin?) so it could have been an error, but I took it to mean he was Fu Manchu returned from space and in disguise.

I felt like this volume was pretty respectful of cultural differences, and might have been breaking new ground by having Shang-Chi kiss Juliette.  One thing that reads very awkwardly in the 2020s is the way that Tarr always calls Shang-Chi ‘Chinaman’, but I noticed that other racial slurs disappeared as I kept reading. Curiously, Shen Kuei and some others started to refer to Shang-Chi as ‘Britisher’, which made little sense, given he was raised in his father’s “Old China” bases, and then spent much of his time in New York before landing in London.  I’m not even sure he’d call it home.  I assumed that this was done to poke fun at Tarr’s speech a little, and to let readers in on the joke that Tarr’s character is old fashioned (kind of like how young people will tolerate the casual racism of an older relative).  

I continue to be very happy that I chose to pick up these omnibi and to finally start reading the adventures of this character.  I ended up having to take an extended break from reading this due to being insanely busy this autumn, but getting back into it over the holidays made me regret that decision.  These are very cool comics that I think contributed a lot to the visual elements of comics in general at the time.

Before I bought the omnibi, I started collecting back issues of Master of Kung Fu.  I’m going to read the third omnibus next, but my collection of single issues starts towards the end of it; I might do some page-to-page comparisons to see how the collected edition impacts my reading enjoyment.

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