Old kung fu comic books

[ghostexorcist]

I was at a local antiques mall the other day and found some neat 70s-era Chopsocky comic books called Deadly Hands of Kung Fu. The art is pretty amazing for the time period. I couldn't help but laugh at the old Count Dante "Deadliest Man Alive" adverts. I'd love to get more of these in the future.

[Kymus]

Ha, that's great!

It's a smart marketing strategy to include interviews, tho. But Count Dante....

[Jimbo]

I think I have the entire series of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, bought back in the '70s. They're in storage, and those cover images bring back memories. I remember one issue had an Angela Mao interview. I still think it was a good magazine.

[mickey]

Greetings,

It was because of the lack of coloring that I was not too enthused about that comic. Nevertheless, I found some of the story lines to be quite good. I saw it as the martial equivalent of a really good smut novel.


mickey

[@PLUGO]

I'm not recognizing the logo CHARLTON comics maybe?
The cover art has me thinking these may actually be magazine sized B/W comics which were allowed to be a bit more "mature" . . .in ah, the vein of Vampirella

a quick search reveals CURTIS MAGAZINES a division of Marvel comics. I thought some of those characters looks like Marvel characters. White Tiger is now a Latina girl.

I might still have a box of magazine sized comics, but then again that box may not have survived the move to the west coast, being of a different size as the standard comic boxes filled with hand-me-downs from the 60's and 70's.

[GLW]

This comic was the origin for Shang Chi, White Tiger, and possibly Iron Fist (can't recall that one). Somehow, Marvel either bought them out, it was a division of Marvel, or something like that.

When the larger magazine disappeared, a few months later, Marvel continued the stories and characters in their comics.

Shang Chi was bad in the outfit and such...but it DID have an interesting back story. There was already a Fu Manchu series of movies and possibly even radio shows that went back a ways. The Shang Chi stories started with the premise that Shang Chi was the favored son of Fu Manchu and had been trained from almost birth to be a living weapon. But, Shang Chi (the name was supposed to mean the rising of the spirit) began to question the motives behind the work his father was asking him to do. He then determined that world domination and murder were not what he had trained for - He was also into the finding peace part.

He then partnered with the MI-5 or was it 6 British intelligence - continuing the movies and characters that were against Fu Manchu - in thwarting his father's plans.

The work that went into extending from the Fu Manchu world was what was interesting. They definitely did their homework on the backstory.

[Jimbo]

Those large, black and white comic mags were Marvel magazines. During the '70s, they also produced a line of other B&W magazines, with others featuring Conan, Man-Thing, Hulk; Cracked, a Marvel rip-off of Mad Magazine; and horror ones like Vampire Tales, etc. I think the color comics of Iron Fist and Master of Kung Fu came first...I bought the issues which premiered their characters when they first came out. The Shang-Chi stories in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu were mostly about him wandering from place to place in the manner of Kwai Chang Caine, as opposed to the color comic with its continuing theme with Fu Manchu, etc. I guess it's pretty obvious I was a big Marvel Comics fan back in the '70s.

[Lucas]

The White Tiger (i sense a race related joke from bawang in there somewhere)

[GLW]

Actually, the Shang Chi stuff started in the big B&W format and was a mix. He was wandering about sort of like a 1970's Kung Fu TV show, but they did a full backstory in black and white...the origin, before it went to color. It told how he was trained and who his father was and then how he had left training because he wanted to follow his path and disagreed with his father.

But you are 100% right about how important that was. It was sort of like 1 issue in the B&W format and then "Now back to our Kwai Chang version". Then, when it went color, I think since they had to compete with the likes of Spiderman and FF, they had to come up with the uber-villain and the overarching story...so they went and pulled out the back stuff and decided on the Fu Manchu update.

The whole series from B&W to color was unique in its locales and plots. They were all over the place...sort of unusual for a Marvel comic to have a character in England....but it was.

I remember seeing the White Tiger and the group in the B&W but that was only maybe an issue for each one. Then, they redid those stories in color when the switch happened. Iron Fist...not sure...that has been around 40 years ago.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I have all the Shang Chi comics, including the graphic novel series of a few years back.
In regards to Iron Fist, I liked what they did with the "Immortal Iron Fist" series far more than what happened in the comics.

[Jimbo]

I remember when the Sons of the Tiger broke up, they threw their medallions away, and all three medallions were found by a guy who put them on and became White Tiger, kind of a combination of all their powers(?). It's been awhile, 35 years or so, since I last looked at one of these mags.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I remember when the Sons of the Tiger broke up, they threw their medallions away, and all three medallions were found by a guy who put them on and became White Tiger, kind of a combination of all their powers(?). It's been awhile, 35 years or so, since I last looked at one of these mags.

A puerto rican named Ayala, Hector I think, yes?
Who was almost shot to death by some paramilitary guys that Spider-man went after and stopped.
He ( Ayala) then gave up the amulets and they were returned to the Sons of the Tiger.

[Jimbo]

That's it.

They had some interesting storylines in comics back in the '70s. IMO, the '60s and '70s was the real Golden Age of Marvel Comics.

[GeneChing]

This is awesome.

The Grand Compendium Of Martial Arts Instruction Ads From 1970s Comic Books, Volume One
by Chris Sims January 28, 2016 5:00 PM



As we all know from reading comic books and watching movies, the 1970s were a time when lethal ninjas and club-wielding goons lurked around every corner, kicking sand into the faces of honest, hard-working comics readers at every opportunity. The people cried out for something, anything, that could save them from these ruffians, and as they always have, comic books stepped up to help in the most efficient and effective way possible: Advertising!
Comics had always provided their readers with the most exciting purchasing opportunities — nuclear submarines, X-Ray glasses, even the occasional piece of real Kryptonite — but between 1971 and 1974, they were full of opportunities to train yourself in the lethal arts of self-defense. That’s why we here at ComicsAlliance are compiling a comprehensive list of the greatest promises for deadly hands and death touches in this, our Grand Compendium Of Comic Book Martial Arts Instructional Advertisements From The ’70s.

COUNT DANTE: THE DEADLIEST MAN ALIVE



Best Line: Count Dante is the undefeated Supreme Grand Master of the Fighting Arts.

If we’re going to catalogue every ad for martial arts instruction, we might as well start with the single greatest advertisement in the history of comics: Count Dante and the Black Dragon Fighting Society. Dante — born John Keehan, long before he changed his name to Count Juan Raphael Dante and claimed to be descended from Spanish royalty — is a legendary figure among comics readers. The ads were amazing, promising to teach his students the lethal secrets of the “Dance of Death” and, of course, the “Dim Mak Death Touch.” Believe it or not, this is one of his more restrained ads, although the claim of an undefeated record in death matches remains consistent across all of them.

In reality, Dante was a well-known martial arts instructor… who was once arrested for trying to blow up a rival dojo with dynamite, and again for starting a brawl between martial artists that ended when someone was killed with a katana. I’m not sure if either of those techniques were ever discussed in his free pamphlet.

Amazingly enough, despite his prominence in Bronze Age comics, I have never seen anyone cosplaying as Count Dante. Hint hint.

WIPE-OUT 2 OR MORE ATTACKERS AT ONCE



Best Line: Joe’s fantastic System is MUCH MORE than Karate, Judo or Ju-Jitsu alone — it reveals every effective method of Terror-Fighting known to man!

As you might expect from the sheer number of ads, competition was pretty fierce in the mail-order karate market. It wasn’t long before ads started to tout themselves as being better than rival styles, and nobody did that more than Joe Weider. Best known as the bodybuidler who helped train Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the founder of the Mr. Olympia competition (and as the husband of legendary pin-up girl Betty Brosmer), Weider launched a series of ads that got increasingly wild as the years went on. This was actually the most restrained, and keep in mind that it still promises “creeps” and “goons” with broken bottles and thugs being paralyzed with a single jab.

Weider eventually got so over the top, in fact, that he was taken to court over his promise that his 30-day course could turn anyone into a fighting machine, and was found guilty of “conducting a scheme or device to obtain money through the mail by falsely representing its course.”

REVOLUTIONARY NEW AUDIOVISUAL HOME STUDY COURSE IN DYNAMIC KUNG-FU AND KARATE



Best Line: WE PROGRAM YOUR MIND TO MASTER ALMOST ANY SELF DEFENSE SITUATION

Okay, so this is where things get amazing. While most courses promised a book of exercises and diagrams that you could use to hone your body into a lethal fighting machine, DeMaru Inc went one step further by providing an LP that you were meant to play over and over as you practiced. The idea, it seems, was to straight up brainwash yourself, Manchurian Candidate style, into a state that would allow you to automatically snap into deadly precision at the first sign of trouble.

From a selling standpoint, the advantages of this are pretty clear. It’s virtually impossible to tell whether or not subliminal martial arts training is effective without someone actually trying to stab you, a condition that makes seeking a refund a pretty daunting task. On the other hand, I can’t really judge. I don’t own the record, as badly as I’d like to.

One more thing worth noting: This ad promises that it will give you the confidence to go into dangerous situations without being afraid, but along with “back alley” and “tough neighborhood at night,” they also list “ball game.” Was going to a ball game really that dangerous in the ’70s?

(Yes. Yes it was.)

THE MASTER’S COMPLETE COURSE OF KUNG-FU



Best Line: We think that Kung-Fu is so effective that 30 days of our system will give you more self-defense power than if you used any other system daily for a solid year!

This ad’s pretty standard — it’s only really notable for being one of the lower-budget ads, only taking up half of a single page and thereby leaving room for Tootsie Pops or whatever — but I do like the promise that you will learn secrets that, until now, have only been handed down from father to son. Who would’ve thought that offering comics readers in the ’70s knowledge passed down from a father figure would be a solid marketing plan?

I’LL MAKE YOU A MASTER OF KARATE



Best Line: You can apply a simple pressure of your thumb and finger against any one of a dozen vital nerve centers of your opponent and watch his gun or knife fall from his limp hand while he himself sinks to the ground completely helpless and faint.

Another half-page ad, this one promises the secrets of SUPER KARATE, as passed down by Wallace W. Reumann — who, from what I can tell, is something of a controversial figure in the Martial Arts community. A soldier who joined the army at 16, Reumann was trained by “Hammering Hank” Slomanski, a karate champion and ordained minister who is probably best known for training one of his other students, Elvis Presley. Reumann, on the other hand, apparently sold the rights to his book, Simple Karate, for $200 to a couple of shady advertisers who changed it to Super Karate and hyped up the scare tactics, mentions of assault by gun-toting thugs, and “Oriental secrets.”

That aside, one does wonder about the quality of the 99-cent training dummy — although keep in mind, that’s $5.61 in today’s money.

KARATE



Best Line: Your hands will have the power of an axe and you can use your elbows, knees, and feet as death-dealing clubs!

My heart will always belong to Count Dante, but folks, I love this ad so much. The random capital letters to emphasize the DEADLY KNOW-HOW!! that you’ll gain, the emphasis on providing a colorful brochure, and, perhaps most of all, the drawing of Cool ’70s Guy with his Karate Turtleneck and his Buxom Karate Lady-Friend. He looks like the hero of a text adventure.

Also, while “death-dealing clubs” are certainly the best line by far, the emphatic EVERYONE ADMIRES AND RESPECTS A KARATE MASTER! is a real close second.

[sanjuro_ronin]

I wonder what that "life size" dummy looked like from that ad?
LOL !