Monday, January 22, 2024

YANG "Slave" Conclusion

China!
1890!
Benevolent mandarin Chung Yuan is murdered by assassins sent by the evil warlord Chao Ku.
The mandarin tells his son, Chung Hui, to "...be Yang to all men...the source of rightousness" with his dying breath.
Chung Hiu defeats the assassins and tracks down Chao Ku.
He is about to kill the warlord when a girl distracts him and renders him unconscious with a drug-tipped ring.
The girl is Yin Li, daughter of Chao Ku.
But, unlike her father, she is not evil, and doesn't want Chung Hui dead.
The unconscious man is loaded on a slave ship destined for America where he'll be put to work on a railroad.
When the opportunity arises, the man known to the slavers as Yang breaks free and dives overboard...
This origin story from Charlton's Yang #1 (1973) was written by Joe Gill and illustrated by Warren Sattler, who handled the series' entire 13-issue run.
Yang was popular enough to produce a spin-off series called House of Yang about other Chung family members which was published the months the bi-monthly Yang didn't come out.
So, for a year, there was a Yang-related title every month!

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Sunday, January 14, 2024

YANG "Slave" Part 1

In 1972, the hottest Western on American TV was an "Eastern" called Kung Fu...
...which inspired this very well-done series from Charlton Comics.
But Yang is not your average man!
Be here next week for the conclusion of this startling story and some long-hidden background about the series!
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Friday, November 24, 2023

Thanksgiving Turkey SKATEMAN Conclusion

"Criminals are a superstious, cowardly lot...
....so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts!"
Well, that didn't quite work out...
To avenge the death of his girlfriend by a biker gang, VietNam vet Billy Moon becomes a roller-skating vigilante...
And that's how the story ends, not even a epilogue setting up future issues!
We hope you enjoyed our Thanksgiving Turkey, and that you'll keep reading this blog as we start posting on a regular basis...

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Thanksgiving Turkey SKATEMAN Part 1

The phrase "martial arts" encompasses a great many forms and techniques of combat...
...even, believe it or not, this hybrid form in a 40 year-old never-reprinted one-shot comic!
To Be Concluded
TOMORROW!
Written and illustrated by Neal Adams (with some inking by his Continuity Associates studio), this was intended as a tie-in to a feature film...which was never made.
When the notoriously-slow Adams couldn't meet the deadline for the contracted second issue of Ms. Mystic at Pacific Comics, he offered this project as a stopgap.
Trivia:
The comic sold 70,000 copies, more than almost anything on the stands today!
Kitchen Sink's 1991 World's Worst Comics Awards parody comic named Skateman the "Worst Comic Book of the Past 25 Years"!
Ms. Mystic #2 finally came out a year later, right before Pacific Comics folded!.

Thursday, November 2, 2023

KUNG FU "End of the Game"

...Kwai Chang Caine, fleeing from the Chinese authorities, stays the night at an abandoned temple local residents believe is haunted!
It's not!
Caine and Wei (the guy pretending to be the ghost haunting the temple), are now heading for the coast...

Writer Steve Moore and artist Paul Neary, created this never-reprinted story from Brown-Watson's Kung Fu Annual (1976), adapting the flashback sub-plot from an episode of the Kung Fu TV series.
Since I last saw these episodes in the early 1980s, I don't remember which one it was, and the supposedly-infallable Internet Movie DataBase wasn't much help.
If anyone does know, i'd appreciate them dropping me a comment with the episode title!

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