Shang-Chi: Master Of The Ten Rings #1 - Marvel Comics

SHANG-CHI : MASTER OF THE TEN RINGS No. 1, March 2023

As series ending one-shot’s go, this “shocking conclusion” to “Gene Luen Yang’s Shang-Chi saga” probably didn’t deliver the ground-breaking finale it’s American author was hoping for when he first penned the notion of the Master of Kung Fu meeting a much more optimistic version of “his evil parent” in Nineteenth Century China. Indeed, for those comic book collectors long enough in the tooth to recall Ron Marz and Kevin Dooley’s 1998 "Emerald Knights" storyline for “Green Lantern”, the concept of a titular character travelling back in time to meet a much more amiable incarnation of their greatest nemesis certainly isn’t a new one; “He’s younger… less angry… But he’s still unmistakably him. Father.”

Admittedly, there is something definitely intriguing about this flashback to the Opium Wars and Zheng Zu’s battle against both drug-smuggling foreigners and the disagreeable Constable Yuan. But just how the future “Fu Manchu” fails to remember fighting alongside a warrior wielding the heavenly weapons of the Jade Emperor is never mentioned, even after the stranger who cuts his “hair in exotic ways” saves the sorcerer’s life by single-handedly overcoming an entire platoon of the local policeman’s soldiers when they’re about to slice off the leader of the Golden Dawn’s head.

Disappointingly however, these oddities are just some of this publication’s frustrations, with the reader being repeatedly asked to accept quite a few contrivances in order to enjoy the ‘wibbly, wobbly’ devilries plaguing Commander Hand throughout his thirty-page long adventure. For example, what legal wranglings did Shang-Chi’s ‘on-off-on’ girlfriend Delilah Wang negotiate to arrange for Deadly Sabre to be suddenly released from the Vault? Why would someone as fanatically straight-laced as Yuan allow a hated British infantrymen to fire a musket ball directly between his eyes in the hope of luring Zheng Zu into a trap, and how did a single drop of Falo’s blood striking his long-dead ancestor’s skull cause a time portal to appear which would specifically “pull a younger version of our Master from the timeline of his life”..?

Fortunately, this comic does succeed when it comes to Michael Yg’s layouts, which do a prodigious job of depicting the ebbs and flows of Yang’s ‘timey wimey’ narrative. In fact, the “extraordinary artist” manages to add so much additional menace to the likes of Yuan’s well-armed forces and the traitorous modern-day Zheng Zu Loyalists, that it is a great pity the illustrator wasn’t given the opportunity to sketch how Sister Dagger defeated the turncoats of the Deadly Hand instead of the confrontation disappointingly occurring ‘off-screen’.

 The regular cover art of "SHANG-CHI: MASTER OF THE TEN RINGS" #1 by Jim Cheung