Random Happenstance

Although that new Wonder Woman movie is going to be on streaming around Christmas, I don't think Marvel/Disney has scheduled anything for home release. Have they? I could've sworn there was a Black Widow date, but may have imagined that. Anyway, getting ready for Shang-Chi's movie I picked up some cheap but hopefully key issues, starting with this one: from 1981, Master of Kung Fu #100, "Red of Fang and Claw, All Love Lost" Written by Doug Moench, art by Gene Day and Mike Zeck, inking assists by John Beatty and Bob McLeod.

If he hadn't already, Sir Denis Nayland Smith was coming up on a grim anniversary, fifty years of fighting the evil machinations of Fu Manchu: This issue opens with a flashback to 1932, told through his journals. In Cairo, he and his crew risk a trap, for him to meet his love, Fah Lo Suee--the daughter of Fu Manchu. She may have been willing to betray her father, for the "elixer vitae," the immortality serum keeping Fu going. Fu was in Egypt for one of the serum's ingredients, and to recruit new assassins: in a long-buried tomb, he claims it was built for him, but he would never need it. Smith can't bring himself to believe Fu was that old, but...He catches a lot of Fu's induction spiel, which promises immortality after a nice mindwipe and "elimination of the psycho-sexual factor," but doesn't grasp what all he's getting at. Captured after a shoot-out, Smith is on the verge of becoming a brainwashed assassin, when Fah Lo slaps the needle out of Fu's hand; then Smith's crew saves their boss, guns blazing. Fu escapes with his daughter, leaving Smith wondering if she would be punished, or would she stay young while he grew older and older...?

Thirty years later, a young Shang-Chi is visited by his sister, seemingly ageless and beautiful, and her lover. Eavesdropping, Shang hears his father tell Fah Lo it was time for the punishment of her betrayal from three decades back, involving a replacement of something he lost. Some months later, she visits Shang to say goodbye, asking him not to light a candle, and he notices the raspiness of her voice now. Listening unseen again, he hears Fu berate Fah Lo again, for wrecking one of his experiments and loosing it upon the world; something he implies has happened before. Fu also cuts off her serum, as she is much older when Shang sees her next, until she begs to get it back.

In the present, a serial killer again stalks the streets of Whitechapel, and Leiko offers herself as the bait to catch this new Ripper. Recounting his 1932 adventure to Shang, Smith and his crew have figured that Fu knew the original Jack the Ripper, and was using his psychosis in conditioning his assassins: removing that "psycho-sexual factor" would've given him killers that could attack men as well as women. Leiko trails the Ripper and manages to stop him from claiming a victim, but is injured, leading Shang to take up the search. Instead, Shang finds Fu Manchu's Si-Fan assassins, who want the Ripper themselves: Fu was supposedly dead at the time, which may have occurred multiple times over the series. Fighting through them, Shang faces the Ripper in his lair, and realizes he recognizes him: Fah Lo's lover, unaged, if insane. Fah Lo arrives, wanting to save him from Fu Manchu's horrible brainwashing, but can't get through to him and is forced to shoot him. She leaves tearfully, telling Shang to tell Smith she's sorry they couldn't be together, and she really hopes Shang had killed their dad. (Not quite yet! Soon!)