This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog presents some of the 1970s crossover stories between Marvel’s Iron Fist and Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu.
THE DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU SPECIAL Vol 1 #1 (June 1974)
Title: The Master Plan of Fu Manchu
Villain: Fu Manchu
NOTE: This was back when Marvel Comics had licensed the rights to do comic book stories about Sax Rohmer’s iconic villain Fu Manchu and his pursuer Sir Denis Nayland-Smith. Marvel combined their Fu Manchu stories with the 1970s Kung Fu craze by having Shang-Chi the Master of Kung Fu be the son of Fu Manchu. He turned against his evil father.
Years later, when Marvel no longer had the rights to use the Fu Manchu character they retconned things so that Shang-Chi’s father was really Iron Man’s archenemy the Mandarin.
Synopsis: Storywise, this tale features three separate sections as Iron Fist, the Sons of the Tiger and Shang-Chi the Master of Kung Fu go up against Fu Manchu in three separate stages of his “master plan.”
Iron Fist is the hero of the opening chapter. He is walking the late-night streets of New York City when a cry for help prompts him to investigate an alleyway he was passing. He discovers a dying Chinese representative from the U.N. He escaped when Fu Manchu had his men abduct him and five other such Chinese representatives. The man dies from the wounds he suffered in his escape after telling Danny to save the others. Continue reading
THE FALLEN RACE (1892) – Written by Austyn Granville. If you’ve ever thought to yourself “How come nobody ever combined science fiction, H. Rider Haggard-style Lost Race tales AND kangaroo-human hybrids” then THIS is the story for you.
CAPTAIN BRITAIN Vol 1 #37 (June 22nd, 1977) 
The event is crashed by a new supervillain called the Highwayman, who rides a high-tech motorcycle which uses laser cannons and other weaponry. The villain also wears a monocle that shoots energy blasts and wields a battle chain. 
THE GERM GROWERS (1892) – Robert Potter wrote this work of “ancient” or vintage science fiction dealing with biological warfare and alien abductions. 
MICRONAUTS Vol 1 #29 (May 1981) 
Acroyear’s wife, Cilicia, condemns her husband for using the Worldmind against Karza, thus causing so much damage to Spartak that it is now uninhabitable. Even now, the survivors must be leaving the planet to find another home elsewhere in the Microverse/ Quantum Realm. Cilicia quits the Micronauts in disgust.
A MODERN DAEDALUS (1887) – By Tom Greer. No, the title’s not referring to James Joyce’s character Stephen Dedalus (sic) but this tale IS about Ireland. The main character is a young man named Jack O’Halloran, a recent college graduate who returns to his native Ireland. 
2. THE BOURNE IDENTITY (1980) 
LONGSHOT Vol 1 #1 (September 1985) 
At length, Longshot escapes through a random portal and ends up on Earth. We readers learn he has lost his memory and has two hearts and only three fingers and a thumb on each hand. His first superpower (aside from his incredible agility) is revealed to be incredible “luck” and that luck prevented his pursuers’ blaster fire from actually hitting him and instead hitting everything around him. 
A VOYAGE INTO TARTARY (1689) – The real author of this work is unknown. It is a fictional encounter with a lost race, advanced technology and more. It’s possible that the writer wanted anonymity due to his then-blasphemous attitudes toward religion. 
Superheroes have been huge in pop culture in recent decades. Will Eisner’s iconic superhero the Spirit – who debuted in June of 1940 – rose from the grave of his secret identity, Private Investigator Denny Colt, after his apparent death when he got saturated in some chemicals of the supervillain Doctor Cobra. 
GREATER THAN HUMAN STRENGTH – Taking this hero’s origin story at face value with no ret-conning necessary, when Denny Colt came to in his coffin he dug his way to the surface. It would require much more than the strength of a normal human to burst through the coffin lid AND force his way upward through six feet of soil. For all I know The Big Bang Theory guys may have once done a calculation on how much actual strength it would take to accomplish this feat. 
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