“Deadly Lesson: Like Father, Like Son...?”

MASTER OF KUNG FU — Issue no. 64, February 1978

Book: Master of Kung Fu

Issue No.: 64

Published: February 7, 1978

Title: “Deadly Lesson: Like Father, Like Son...?”

Cover Price: 35¢

There’s a note in the credits of this Master of Kung Fu book that describes the story as “... a special all-new thriller!” It goes on to state “our regular storyline continues next issue.” I wouldn’t have known it as a new-to-comics reader in 1978, but that little note is a disclaimer that this is a fill-in issue. In modern times, with the comic book industry being very different than it was in the 1970s, if publication of a comic book is delayed for some reason, such as the creative team missing a deadline, that book just comes out late. Back in the ’70s, however, comic book publishers (well, Marvel and DC, at least) stuck to a very strict release schedule. I’m assuming this is because they were distributing books to mass market retailers, as opposed to the specialty shops that comics are sold through today.

Because of the strict schedule, if it was time to publish, say, Super Hero Action Team issue number 17, but the planned version of Super Hero Action Team issue number 17 wasn’t ready, the publisher would have to send out something else — a fill-in issue — in its place.

There were a few standard ways of creating a fill-in issue. The publisher might just reprint an older issue of the book with a new cover, or create an issue with a new cover and a few new interior pages that served as a framing device for a reprint story. The other option was to use an inventory story — a single-issue story that featured characters from the book in question that had been written and drawn, and then filed away until such a time it was needed.

I am pretty sure Master of Kung Fu no. 64 is an example of the latter. So it’s probably not the best introduction to this series (it’s apparently one of the few Master of Kung Fu stories from the original run not written by Doug Moench). That said, it’s pretty cool. Having been only seen the main character Shang-Chi in action in his recent Marvel movie, all I knew about his comic book origins was that he hit the scene in the 1970s, when Bruce Lee and martial arts movies were all the rage. Reading this story I quickly found out, thanks to the handy page-one series overview that was standard in most of Marvel’s books at the time, that Shang-Chi’s father is Fu Manchu, a super-villain who has been around in literature since the early 1900s and was, apparently, licensed by Marvel for a while. There’s another note in the credits that the book features “supporting characters created by Sax Rohmer” — Sax Rohmer wrote the first Fu Manchu stories.

The plot of this fill-in issue is in the spirit of classic martial arts movies — a chase scene leads to a long flashback that leads to a fight scene. The chasing and fighting happens when Shang-Chi encounters an old frenemy of his named Shoh Teng, and in the flashback we learn some details about hero Shang-Chi’s strained (to say the least) relationship with his evil father.

If you’re curious about the tradition of fill-in stories in comics, you can read more about it in this CBR article, and also this other CBR article.

Next time — We return to the funtastic world of Hanna-Barbera with Yogi Bear!