Master of Kung-Fu #1 and 2, by Haden Blackman (writer),
Dalibor Talijac (penciler), Goran Sudzuka (inker), Miroslav Mrva (colorist),
Travis Lanham (letterer) – Must be hard to concentrate on kicks with that giant
leering face behind you.
It’s K’un Lun, but in this version, the city is ruled by
whichever Master wins the 13 Chambers tournament. For 100 years, it’s been
Zheng Zu, Master of the Ten Rings. His son, Shang-Chi, is a drunk who ran away
years ago because of a task he carried out on his father’s orders. So his
father wants him dead, for defiance, and Rand-Kai, current Master of the Iron
Fist, wants him dead because the act he committed was to kill Rand’s master.
Presumably Rand doesn’t know it was on Zheng’s orders. Yet. Shang had been out
of the city for some time (or was so complete in his descent into dereliction
no one noticed him in the city), but he has to defend himself from some of
Zheng’s students, which brings him to the notice of a group of kids who were
cast out of their schools for various transgressions, and now live underground
as outcasts. They want Shang to teach them as he was taught. Shang points out if
he did so, they’d probably all die, and goes off to drink by himself. His
attitude pisses off Callisto, so she informs on him to his father, which brings
Rand, plus two of Zheng’s servants down on the lot of them. Shang survives, but
one of the kids doesn’t, which is the kick in the pants he needs to agree to be
their Master, which will enable him to enter the tournament and defeat his
father
It’s good, I enjoy it. I like the take on the characters,
how what would be their mutant abilities in the conventional Marvel U., are
turned into something that fits the setting. Though I’m not clear on who the
other student of Zheng’s was Shang beat up in the first issue. Razorfist,
obviously, and Typhus was Typhoid Mary. The other one appeared to wield shadow
stuff, so Black Mamba, from the Serpent Society? I like these opening scenes
talking about how the Tournament came about, because so far, they sort of
agree, and they maybe don’t. The Red Sai’s version of things seems to have
opened a different avenue Shang’s didn’t, which makes me wonder what the real
story is, if there even is one.
I haven’t read anything Talijac has drawn since, I think
that issue of Deadpool Team-Up with Hercules and Arcade, but I do enjoy his
work. He has those clean lines I prefer, and he’s good at drawing action. When
Shang fights, you can tell from his position in one panel, how he got to the
next one. The movements make sense, and seem possible. It’s not a lot of
ludicrous contortions, which makes sense with a character who doesn’t have inhuman
stretching powers or anything, and doesn’t really want to be fighting anyway.
He’s not going to expend any more effort than he needs, which isn’t very much,
apparently. I like that Kitty is apparently so used to being intangible she
does even walk around things or people on instinct anymore. She walks through a
piece of rubble after their narrow escape, and she puts her arm through Shang’s
chest to point when Cy tries to rescue Rahne. It’s a nice touch, implying how
long she’s been this way, and how resigned she is to it.
I especially like the scene where Kitty explains how they
all wound up as they are, to convince Shang to really train them, and so we get
these panels of her moving among them, always smiling, upbeat about it. Right
as she explains her own mistake, we get this large panel of Shang denying he
can help them, refusing to make eye contact, clutching a bottle in those hands
with the bloody wraps around them. Then he starts in on what the training they
desire would really be like, and again we get the close-ups on each student,
but Shang’s not in the panels at first. Just his harsh words, and their scared
and disappointed faces, until he suddenly pops up right in Callisto’s face,
talking a bunch of shit, and then follows that up by casually moving his hand
through Kitty, just to demonstrate how helpless she is. Then he strides off
with them set against a white backdrop, but his face is obscured by shadows.
It’s just a nice encapsulation of how he’s tried to reject everything since he
started running, and since he can’t hide in an alley from these kids, he tries
driving them off.
This is the sort of thing I can go for with Secret Wars. It
has its own story to tell, and it doesn’t give a toss what Hickman’s up to, and
doesn’t expect the reader to, either. It’s just a fun What If/Elseworlds thing,
essentially.
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