I picked up a bunch of comics at the Asbury Park Comicon today, including a handful of the Charlton kung-fu series Yang. When I was looking on the GCD to see how long the series ran, I discovered something interesting. The original 1973 series ran 13 issues, from '73 to '76. Charlton revived it a decade later in 1985, for three issues -- 15 through 17.
So did they -- or anyone -- ever publish Yang #14?
Not that I can tell. But I'd be happy to learn otherwise.
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I remember reading some Yang comics in the 1970's, but never approached a complete run. Perhaps issue #14 was an ashcan or something.
Could be. The GCD also lists a different outfit, Modern Comics, as reprinting three non-consecutive Charlton issues between the two runs. There's no 14 there, either.
There's a movie in this somewhere. The 17 Yangs act to protect Edo-era Japan, but one of their number is missing. What has happened to Yang 14? The other Yangs set off on a quest to find him, but many meet with terrible fates, as if some awful force is preventing them from succeeding. And when they find Yang 14, will they live to regret it?
Oh, Cap, that's fantastic! I'd be all over that.
I just read Yang 5, one of the books I picked up at Asbury Park Comicon, and it was a fun read. Yang, a Chinese martial artist, is in 1800s California, so this is a real Kung Fu inspired concept. In this one, he's lured into canyon to fight a sasquatch by the daughter of his sworn enemy, who he loves. (She's named Li-Yin, naturally.)
The art, by Warren Sattler, is terrific -- there's a lot of Ditko influence there, but more than anything it reminds me of Steve Dillon, decades before Preacher was published. Clear, energetic stuff.
I got into Charlton comics in the late 60s and when it came out I bought a lot of Yang. It was a good series.
I'd never heard of it before picking up a random, beat-up issue for a quarter at a con. Now it's one of the series I'm actively seeking out. So far I've got 5 of the 16 (or 17) issues, including all three of the later volume.
More on the mysteries:
1) It turns out the 1985 series (15-17) are reprints of Yang 1-3. So that's three less books I need to find, at least. The cover art is recolored on the reprints, and in two out of three cases, flipped from right to left. (Oh, and incidentally, I really enjoyed them -- although Li Yin's flip-flopping on whether she's on Yang's side or her father's is so rapid-fire it's hilarious. Also, she's often drawn with a single tear on her face as she talks about Yang -- so similar every time it's almost like it's a tattoo.)
2) There's also a 6-issue 1975 series called House of Yang, also written by Joe Gill, with art by Sanho Kim. I'm not sure if there's necessarily any relation between the two titles, but Gill's involvement makes it more likely.
I think I have all the Yangs somewhere, but I'd forgotten all about it. So Li-Yan was sort of like Suwanee in Yellow Claw? (She was the daughter of Yellow Claw, but was in love with FBI Agent Jimmy Woo, her father's arch-foe.) I assume the Yellow Claw/Suwanee/Jimmy Woo triangle was lifted from Fu Manchu, like everything else in Yellow Claw. Has anybody read enough Fu Manchu to know?
In the first book, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (in the US, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu), Fu-Manchu has a beautiful Egyptian slave, Kâramanèh, who falls in love with Dr Petrie, Nayland Smith's first "Watson", and helps them out. The characters were married several books into the series. Daughter of Fu Manchu introduced his daughter Fah lo Suee, who is evil. I've not read the book/s with those later developments.
In the opening books of the series, and not the later ones, Fu Manchu's name was hyphenated. In the first book Nayland Smith is obviously modelled on Sherlock Holmes. The similarity is there in their names: I don't know at what point "Denis" was added.
The first book, as others have noted, is really a series of linked stories. Fu-Manchu is represented as backed by powerful men in China, and the book has many flatly racist statements and explicitly invokes Yellow Peril fears. The other ones I've read, from much later in the series, lacked these kinds of statements. I wanted the books - I've read three of them - to be really sensational thrillers, but they didn't really deliver. The Avon comic The Mask of Dr. Fu Manchu, drawn by Wally Wood, follows the novel The Mask of Fu Manchu fairly closely.
Li-Yin certainly seems cut from the same cloth as Suwanee, though I haven't read the Yellow Claw (or Fu-Manchu) books to say for sure. Her father is a crimelord, but not necessarily the overwhelming criminal force that Fu-Manchu is.
But man, she's fickle. In issue 3 (or 17), she captures Yang, shoots him with underloaded bullets (allowing him to feign death and overpower her father and other captors), helps him escape, and then leads him basically into another trap. And like that, she's back on her father's side.
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