Shang-Chi #5 - Marvel Comics

SHANG-CHI No. 5, March 2021

Considering that this twenty-page periodical inexplicably begins with Sister Hammer suddenly invading London with an army of blood-drinking Jiangshi, Gene Luen Yang’s storyline for Issue Five of “Shang-Chi” must surely have made most of its readers sit bolt upright in both surprise and anticipation for a serious Kung-Fu fest. Regrettably however, the promise of an action-packed confrontation on the streets of the English capital between ancient Chinese vampires and the rapidly dwindling military never actually materialises, courtesy of the American author deciding instead to base this book’s focal point around a simple battle of wills rather than something replicating the frantically-fast action of Marc Forster’s 2013 American post-apocalyptic zombie action horror film World War Z.

Indeed, no sooner does a badly outnumbered Leiko Wu realise that her desperately needed reinforcements are actually the handful of armed MI-5 survivors already protecting her flanks, than “flashback artist” Philip Tan steps in with his prodigious pencilling to whisk the audience off to an infinitely less exciting spiritual world where Shang-Chi can ultimately show his little sister both the abject loneliness of the late evil sorcerer Zheng Zu, and the resultant futility of her all-conquering mission’s misguided motivation; “He will always be our father. But look at him, Shi-Hua! Not with a child’s eyes, but with your eyes now! See him as he actually was! A damaged old man, twisted by fear. And hate.”

Sadly, such a lack-lustre conclusion really does strike as a major anti-climax considering the potential of this publication’s pulse-pounding opening, and arguably even gets progressively worse following the utterly unconvincing revelation that the magical Jiangshi are somehow being controlled by implanted micro-chips rather than through the mystical means of them wanting to right an “unavenged grievance”. In addition, this five-part mini-series’ dissatisfying finale doesn’t even allow its two central characters to properly square-off against one another. Sure, an angry Sister Hammer eventually decides to swing her formidable hand-weapon at her brother when she realises he is “trying to empty my life of purpose”. Yet even this one-off assault is easily avoided by the Master of Kung Fu, who promptly then disarms his opponent without throwing a single punch in retaliation and impotently watches her flee into the River Thames.

The regular cover art of "SHANG-CHI" #5 by Marcus To & Sebastian Cheng