Marvel Comics in the 1970s The World inside Your Head by Eliot Borenstein

Author:Eliot Borenstein
Format: epub

In/Action

Gulacy left the book upon completion of his multipart Fu Manchu story; Zeck stayed on one more year after drawing its sequel. His penultimate contribution to Master of Kung Fu was two-thirds of the extra-long one-hundredth-anniversary issue, in which longtime inker Gene Day made his debut as the series’ new penciller (Zeck would pencil issue 101 before leaving for good). In terms of plot, that year saw Shang-Chi in something of a holding pattern, engaging in minor adventures such as Asian American gang wars and fanatical cults with secret geopolitical agendas. Shang-Chi has not quite become complacent; issue 97 (“Lost Art”) is an inner-monologue-heavy story in which he worries that he has lost his “art” of living. Yet that same story shows a lighter, playful side of the character that was usually eclipsed by his endless brooding. He and Leiko actually banter, and it somehow works.

This lightness would not last. Once he was partnered with Gene Day, Moench’s scripts once again grew heavier and more introspective. Their collaboration would prove short-lived, a term that, sadly, could be applied to Day himself: the artist died of a heart attack in September 1982, at the age of thirty-one. His last issue of MOKF, 120 (“Dweller by the Dark Stream”), appeared posthumously with a 1983 cover date. As it happened, it was Moench’s penultimate contribution as well: 121 was a fill-in, with 122 (pencils by William Johnson) featuring Moench’s final script. It was not particularly conclusive; Moench left the book abruptly after creative differences with editor in chief Jim Shooter made the job untenable. Alan Zelentz wrote the last three issues, in which Shang-Chi, suddenly struck by guilt over killing his father, abandons his life in London to live as a fisherman in a Chinese village named Yang Yin.

Setting aside the corporate drama, the timing of Moench’s departure was close to perfect. By issue 118 he had wrapped up virtually all the plot threads and character arcs that he had been developing for nearly a decade. Had he left then, it would have looked like it was all part of his plan. But that would have been highly unusual. Though his last issue was cover-dated 1983, Moench’s trajectory was pure 1970s. Corporate comics had yet to reach the point where a series would be canceled once the creators most closely identified with it had said all they wanted to say.

By the same token, the Moench-Day collaboration, though technically post-1970s, must be considered at least briefly in any assessment of Moench’s run on MOKF. Day brought a completely new aesthetic to the title, abandoning the kinetic dynamism of Gulacy and Zeck in favor of a much more crowded, static, but exquisitely detailed comics page that demanded slow appreciation. From the very first page he penciled, the splash page of issue 100 (“Red of Fang and Claw, All Love Lost”), Day’s art stood out for its mastery of mood and symbolism rather than action. The page features the story’s title at the top, etched within the ornate stone border that frames the page’s single image.

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