Random Happenstance

We're coming up on the twelfth anniversary of this blog, and in all that time we've looked at two issues of Master of Kung Fu? At this rate...no, unlike Warlord, I don't even see the possibility of getting through all those! I don't have anywhere near a full run of MOKF, but I do keeping grabbing them out of the quarter-bin; partially because when else am I going to see those? From 1976, Master of Kung Fu #42, "The Clock of Shattered Time" Written by Doug Moench, pencils by Paul Gulacy, inks by Tom Sutton.

After that cool opening, the first few pages jump around, as scenes of Shang arguing with M.I.6 chief Sir Denis Smith are interposed with a fight between Shang and Shock-wave. Smith is getting fed up with Shang picking and choosing the missions he accepts, but Shang's moral code prevents complete involvement in his "games of deceit and death." Shang walks away from the argument, and Smith follows, which saves him from a bomb planted in his office! A really loud and obvious bomb, but still. Smith is unshaken, however, brushing that off when presented with a coded message from an operative...

Elsewhere in the building, as Shang was on his way to meet Black Jack Tarr, spies Reston and Larner try to give him a warning about Shock-Wave, but they can't tell Smith, for reasons they won't tell Shang. Shang has little patience, or perhaps interest, in their spycraft wordgames, but maybe should've paid some attention to Shock-Wave's backstory: a former M.I.6 operative, injured on a mission, who had himself rebuilt with metal plates and an electric exoskeleton, only to be told he couldn't come back to work.

Finally meeting with Tarr, Shang joins him on an investigation of a warehouse that could be a front, which leads to a fight with Shock-Wave. Shang can't touch him without getting shocked, so he gets shocked repeatedly, and is only saved by Tarr taking a potshot at Shock-Wave, who splits. Shang passes out later, in front of Smith; and Tarr worries that he had always seemed invulnerable before, but not now. Back at their own headquarters, Shock-Wave was also responsible for the earlier bombing, and there's a traitor in M.I.6 as well. Still, even without having the next one yet, I don't think there were a lot of recurring villains in this series besides Fu Manchu, so I'd be surprised if Shock-Wave lasted the next issue through!