When the Kung Fu craze swept the western world in the early 1970s it was inevitable it would also affect comics. One such publication was Marvel UK's The Avengers weekly which had been tootling along with reprints of The Avengers and Doctor Strange for 27 weeks and then out of the blue came the character seen above. Suddenly even the comic's masthead changed to The Avengers starring Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu and The Avengers strip itself was cut in half to accommodate ten pages of this newcomer's adventures. This was issue No.28, dated March 30th 1974.
I remember thinking that the extended title sounded awkward, and that Shang-Chi seemed an uncomfortable fit as he wasn't strictly a superhero, but over the weeks I grew to really like the series. Master of Kung Fu had only debuted in America a few months earlier, in Special Marvel Edition No.15 (which soon changed its title to Master of Kung Fu) but that comic wasn't distributed in the UK. (Not every Marvel comic was imported into Britain due to some limitation on distribution, although it did start coming through with later issues.)
The script was by Steve Englehart, one of the new wave of Marvel writers, with art by Jim Starlin who had already impressed fans with his early Marvel UK covers and his regular stint on Captain Marvel. The story concerned Shang-Chi being duped by his evil father (no less than the notorious Fu Manchu from Sax Rohmer's books) into killing an innocent man. Upon discovering the deceit and filled with guilt and remorse, Shang-Chi sets out on a path to oppose and destroy his father. Along the way, the strip becomes a spy thriller, with Shang joining British intelligence in their battles with Fu Manchu and his minions.
The original creators soon left the series and Doug Moench became the regular writer, with Paul Gulacy becoming the regular artist, and later Gene Day having a long run. It became one of Marvel's landmark series, with its creative teams raising the bar for more mature comics. Unfortunately the strip has never been reprinted due to legal snags with the copyright owners of Fu Manchu and its related characters that Sax Rohmer had created. Until now that is. Marvel recently announced that starting next summer they will publish four Master of Kung Fu Omnibus editions; huge hardback collections reprinting the entire series. Seems like any legal wrangles have finally been sorted out. The books won't be cheap though. The Marvel Omnis usually retail for around $100 each so start saving now!
Going back to the issue of Marvel UK's Avengers, this edition also featured reprints of The Avengers (natually) and Doctor Strange. As you can see, this was during the period when they thought adding heavy areas of zipatone / Letratone would compensate for the lack of full colour. Sometimes it proved effective but sometimes it obscured the art too much and was too distracting, as evidenced by the Doctor Strange splash page here.
The Avengers starring Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu remained the gobfull of a masthead for quite a while, and the Avengers part of the logo was even reduced in size after a few weeks. It was evident that Marvel UK felt Master of Kung Fu was the selling point, and I'm sure it was. However, with the comic being weekly, the Shang-Chi strips soon caught up with the American monthly. The solution was to create a few brand new 8 pagers that appeared in the UK edition first, which were then reprinted shortly after in America in Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu No.1. Presumably it wasn't financially viable to do that for long so the Shang-Chi strip was rested to enable more US strips to be generated. It was replaced in the UK weekly by Iron Fist, another Marvel kung fu hero, and yes, the comic's masthead became The Avengers starring Iron Fist for a while then too, alternating with it being The Avengers starring Dr.Strange, and simply The Avengers again. Marvel UK could be a bit messy like that back then, but that was all part of the fun.
Two comics merging into one was a commonplace arrangement in the 1970s UK comic scene. Usually it was two similar titles, such as Lion and Thunder, or comics that complimented each other well such as Buster and Jet. One of the more unusual pairings was The Avengers and The Savage Sword of Conan which joined forces 37 years ago this week.
The Savage Sword of Conan had been launched by Marvel UK as one of their 36 page weeklies in early 1975. It failed to find an audience and after just 18 weeks needed to be merged into another title. One would have thought that Marvel UK's Planet of the Apes would have been a more likely home, but that comic was selling well and didn't need it. Presumably The Avengers comic was in need of a boost, so the stage was set and The Avengers and The Savage Sword of Conan became a reality. The cover even featured Conan the Barbarian running alongside The Avengers, in all-new artwork. (Not sure of the artist. Keith Pollard? Rick Hoberg? Pablo Marcos inks?) Conan wasn't actually part of the team in the stories though of course.
Admittedly The Avengers comic had previously shared its pages (and temporary cover billing) with Master of Kung Fu, but at least Shang Chi shared the same universe as The Avengers. Conan just seemed an odd fit.
This was of course in the days when Marvel UK comics had black and white interior pages. At least by this time they'd abandoned the heavy use of Letratone so the artwork could be seen clearly and sharply. This definitely benefited artists such as Gene Colan.
However, Barry Smith's work didn't fare as well. At least not in this issue, as much of Smith's fine line detail has been lost.
It's particularly evident in this page, where the battle scene is barely legible, but (UPDATE) as Phil Rushton explains in the comments below this post: "It's not entirely surprising that the B&W reproduction of the Conan
story looks a bit unfinished. As I remember it the majority of the
artwork for that particular issue got lost in the post, forcing Marvel
to use a copy of Barry's uninked pages instead!"
Barry Smith's other work, reprinted from a Doctor Strange story in that same issue, fares better.
As you probably know, back then Marvel UK chopped up the strips into two or three part weekly serials so they could fit three or four different strips into one comic. This necessitated creating new splash pages for the start of some episodes. These pages, rarely credited, often featured some nice work and have never been reprinted anywhere since, as far as I know.
A Bullpen page in the comics that week explained how the merger was due to reader demand. An unlikely story, but even more shocking was the unnecessary apostrophe in the headline.
The back page featured an ad for the latest Marvel Treasury Edition imported from the USA. 100 pages of Barry Smith's Conan in full colour. One of the few Treasury Editions I've kept. And all for only 50p.
A few years ago Panini UK launched Marvel Heroes as a comic magazine for children featuring brand new Marvel comic strip by British creators. Last year, after 35 issues, Marvel's owners Disney decreed that the UK could no longer generate its own material and should use content that they supplied instead. They also changed the magazine title to Marvel Super Heroes.
This week, the title changes again just in time for a certain movie premiere. Now it's Marvel Super Heroes featuring The Avengers, - although it's obvious by the cover that kids will just refer to it as The Avengers comic.
Although Panini UK already publish Avengers Assemble (running reprints of recent Marvel material) for older readers, this new Avengers comic is aimed at the younger end of the market. It contains an 11 page comic strip from Marvel's "adventures" line and various puzzles, fact files, posters and suchlike. Plus a cover-mounted toy in the form of a Grabber Claw. 36 pages for £2.50.
Yesterday also saw the publication of ThunderCats No.2, also from Panini UK. However this title does feature all-new British comic strip. A 13 page story by Ferg Handley, illustrated by Cosmo White with Kat Nicholson on colours. And they did the cover too. Very nice work. This has the potential to become this generation's Sonic the Comic hopefully.
ThunderCats also features activity pages, fact files and posters, plus a two-page photo strip using ThunderCats action figures which actually works better than you might imagine. Bagged with a toy it's 36 pages for £2.99.
The shelves of UK newsagents are certainly packed these days. Admittedly many of the titles don't feature comic strip, or feature reprint from overseas, but with titles such as ThunderCats, Beano, Toxic, Dandy, 2000AD, BeanoMAX, Commando, and more it's obvious that the mainstream UK comics industry is not as dead as some critics claim.