MASTER OF KUNG FU 34

TRAPPED IN A THEATER CHAIR WHILE YOUR LOVE DROWNS

Its a wild world. You can travel to the US city of your choice with your cowboy hat and your stirrups and have a gun fight in a back alley. You can sign up with Blackwater Inc and go murder woman and children in Iraq and get good health benefits as well. Grab a job at the Pentagon or a private firm piloting robotic drone bombers in Afghanistan, 10 points for a grandma! 20 for a pregnant lady! You might even hit a Terrorist! Air conditioned office, ergonomic chairs, free coffee! Hell, sign up to print those huge signs that folks with lots of extra time and solid legs hold outside of family planning clinics, photos of bloody, melted, gnarled, oozing aborted fetuses. Drive home after a long hard day of life-saving life-affirming work to eat a good rare steak, dripping red juice. Beat your kid. Feed the dog. Swing by the church to check out the choir boys. You can sleep under a bridge with homeless families near a halted condo development, or you can peep under a different bridge to see a sanctioned village of sex offenders, each with a scarlett letter stamped on their forehead. You can pray in a circle of your friends around your sick daughter as she dies of treatable diabetes, a display of failed Magic/Kung Fu. You can listen to radio hate-seller Rush Limbaugh spew violence that we can only hope will turn inward on his vacant icy soul, causing a massive, prolonged, agonizing heart attack. His already bloated body writhing in an unseen torture, as his inner demons "blow off some steam". He can broadcast the grunts, the groans. I will turn on my receiver, I will amplify his final address, the hospital gets caught up in paperwork but he will live on in some fashion.

But, in the US centric world mentioned above, can you actually fly to a mysterious island and look down amongst the foliage to see a giant boot shaped house, a disney-esque castle on a small mountain and a geodesic dome surrounded by giant toothy peaks? Populated by Robots? Not unless its 1975 and you are Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu and your lady has been taken to The Island Of Mordillo!

Doug Moench writes and Paul Gulacy draws this radical martial arts drama. This next image introduces Brynocki, one of the best characters ever. You can see the interplay between Mordillo in the orange tunic and Brynocki, who really seems to be in charge of the operation. Shang Chi's soon to be love interest, Leiko Wu, whose normally black hair is red just in this issue, has been lassoed. The hair color change I assume is due to the angle of the sun and the island's particular pollen...


Humpty-Dumpty attack


Issue 35


BRYNOCKI!


tragedy in the end for our villains

You can listen to WORLD-CONQUERING hate-seller MORDILLO spew violence that we can only hope will turn inward on his vacant icy soul, causing a massive, prolonged, agonizing heart EXPLOSION. His already HANDSOME body writhing in an unseen torture, as his inner demons "blow off some steam". BRYNOCKI can broadcast the grunts, the groans. SHANG CHI will turn on HIS receiver, HE will amplify his final address, the hospital gets caught up in paperwork but he will DIE on in some fashion.

A few years later, in issue 73, Shang Chi returns to Mordillos Island, now even weirder!!!! This one written by Moench and drawn by Mike Zeck.

That's Brynocki in the armor!!!!

Mike Zeck did a long string of really cool G.I.Joe covers in the 80s. Hey wait, is that Shang Chi in Snowjobs arms?!!!?

Master of Kung Fu is in a state of permanent reprinting limbo as it uses many characters created by and originally licensed from author Sax Rohmer, such as Dr. Fu Manchu and Sir Denis Nayland Smith. Now, if Kloosterhouse and Johanknecht can invent Wite-out I'm sure Marvel can get around the slight problem of naming rights, it would be nothing so dramatic as a "Reboot" and could always be explained away in a sort of "Crisis of Infinite Copyrights" maxi-series. With a large Wite void enveloping all Rohmer based information. Lets take a swing at a solution......

First we get the setting from MOKF 48, Fu Manchu's City in the Top of the World

Then we apply the technique.....

As you can see, i adjusted not only the name, but the physical attributes of Fu Manchu, covering all copyright bases.....now get the reprints rolling!

Here is an interesting connection, another island, this one drawn by the argentinian artist, Guillermo Mordillo

Mordillo also has a penchant for drawing toothy mountains....

A quote from Shang Chi himself on the subject, "Thus, for one man to enter the realm of another man's mind is to invite madness to play host to a guest of madness. All thoughts, then, become madness in the mixture...even to the thinkers themselves"

Now when you get started on surreal islands of deep mystery you can jump into The Prisoner, Lost or probably a pile of awesome output, so in fine modern form I will not think too deeply on that subject and deviate to try and picture just what is happening in that Giant Boot on Mordillos Island, I'll bet its something like this......

These guys have a fantastic song called "DESTROY AMERICA!"