Paper Movies
Gulacy's run on Master of Kung Fu is widely considered a high point, and for good reason: by the time he and Moench attained a good working rhythm, the book was visually stunning. The fact that this coincided with shifting the comic’s direction towards spy drama also didn’t hurt.
Gulacy started working on Master of Kung Fu in 1974, only a few months after his initial gig at Marvel. Taking over for Starlin, he drew issues 18-19 for Englehart, as well as Moench’s first Shang-Chi script (the second half of issue 20). He would stay with the book until issue 50 (March 1977), although eleven of the issues between 20 and 50 were drawn by others. He also drew the first three issues of the quarterly Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu. Though some of the non-Gulacy books advanced the series overall arc, for the most part they were stand-alone or fill-in issues. A reader who paid attention only to the Gulacy issues would come away with a very clear sense of the series development from Moench’s arrival through Gulacy’s departure.
One of the joys of reading these issues is watching Gulacy’s talent develop in real time. Already quite distinctive and experimental in his earliest contributions (such as Giant Size Master of Kung Fu 3, which includes an entire page devoted to a fight in a labyrinth drawn like a maze puzzle), his penciling and layouts are significantly more polished and sophisticated starting with issue 29 (whose splash page announces “A blusteringly volatile new direction for Mighty Marvel’s dynamic Master of Kung Fu!”)[1] From the beginning, Gulacy wore his influences on his sleeve, most of all the influence of Jim Steranko (1938-). Steranko’s groundbreaking work on Nick Fury and the Agents of S.H.i.E.L.D., initially in Strange Tales (1966-1968) and then in the eponymous series (1968) exploited the cinematic potential beyond anything that had come before it. Master of Kung Fu's turn to espionage plots brought Gulacy in closer sync with Steranko both visually and thematically, By the time he drew his final, 6-part arc, the comic had a more cinematic look than anything else that was currently on the stands.
Cinematic layouts were only one of many aesthetic choices available to artists at the time, but they had the advantage of being both eye-catching and progressive. As some in the comics community were striving for recognition of the form’s legitimacy as an art form, a common rejoinder to the casual dismissal of comics as trash or cheap children’s entertainment was to compare the medium to film. After all, if cinema can combine words and pictures and still be considered art, why can’t the combination of words and pictures on the printed page be taken just as seriously? Aren’t comics essentially movies on paper? [2] This argument eventually fell out of fashion, supplanted by an approach most famously exemplified in Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen: yes, comics can use cinematic techniques, but why not take advantage of the things comics can do that cinema cannot?
My point is neither to champion nor condemn cinematic layouts, but to emphasize the stakes involved. Cinematic comics periodically slow down the action, making generous use of “movement-to-movement” panel transitions (which, in the case of Master of Kung Fu, prove to be an excellent means of conveying martial arts action). They also tend to avoid those conventions of comics that have no analog in film, such as the thought balloon. And at their most consistent, they are accompanied by scripts that refrain from bogging the action down with excess verbiage.
As a result, Gulacy’s run on Master of Kung Fu is significantly less wordy than the issues that would follow, with thought balloons used sparingly, and only when Shang-Chi is not around (both Tarr and Reston express their thoughts in the occasional balloon). Gulacy and Moench were quite conscious of this cinematic turn. The credits for issue 31, for instance, describe the book as “Produced and Directed by Moench and Gulacy.” This does not mean there is no interiority to the Moench/Gulacy collaboration, but rather that it is much less pronounced than in the post-Gulacy years.
For example, Issue 29, the beginning of the “blisteringly volatile new direction," has a great deal of dialogue in the first several pages, which are devoted to Smith’s convincing Shang-Chi to join his team on a mission that has nothing to do with his father; it is to put an end to the heroin trade masterminded by Carlton Velcro. Shang-Chi is reluctant: “But is there not a path in the middle, where I may work for justice…without becoming dirty?” Smith replies, “Not when you face filth like Velcro,” a line that suggests Moench’s odd choice for his villain’s name might have an allegorical connection to Shang-Chi’s choices. Velcro, after all, is practically a magnet for dirt.
Shang-Chi’s choice to throw in his lot with Smith determines not just the course of the entire series; it establishes Shang-Chi’s fundamental dilemma. How can he maintain moral purity, let alone help his spirit “rise and advance,” if he must constantly compromise his principles? Thus while most of his captions in issue 29 are simply descriptive, by the last few pages, Shang-Chi finds himself second-guessing his team’s actions. Tarr stops (and presumably kills) three enemy combatants with a concussion bomb. In his captions, Shang-Chi thinks: “I do not like this form of fighting, even though I have been repeatedly assured it is necessary…” Tarr tries to rouse him from his reverie, but Shang-Chi continues: “Is death…ever necessary?” A few pages later, Shang-Chi is confronted by two musclemen on a causeway overlooking hungry panthers (as one does) He knocks one of the men off the causeway as he strikes another: “The scream from below are shrill. / The snarls of jungle cats…satisfied. / And the brittle sound of violence…/…necessary?” After he knocks the second man to the ground, to be gnawed on by one of the cats, he thinks “There is nothing to be done here! / I must hurry to Reston…/ It is necessary.” Shang-Chi’s narrative voice here maintains its usually flat understatement, but the conflict between his exquisitely rendered violence and his conscience is always just beneath the surface.
The Velcro story extends over three issues, with most of the narration in issue 30 and 31 devoted to Shang-Chi’s description of and reaction to the violence in which he is engaging. Along the way his team discovers that Velcro is more than just a heroin dealer; he has acquired nuclear weapons as part of a plan for world conquest. The story ends with Shang-Chi at his most decisively violent: piloting a motor-launch into Velcro’s fortress to cut off access the drugs and bombs. The last page shows us that Shang-Chi has, of course, survived this desperate gambit, leaping from the launch into the ocean. It is a page whose visual allegory operates in harmony with the hero’s narration: from the moment Shang-Chi’s head breaks through the surface, the four panels depicting him show a man slowly rising, first to catch a helicopter’s ladder, then to climb it, and finally to fly away. This is an obvious instantiation of the meaning of Shang-Chi’s own name (“the rising and advancing of a spirit”), and yet Moench refrains from rendering the connection explicit. instead, Shang-Chi’s monologue is about the active course he has set himself on since agreeing to help Smith, a course that not only changes the series, but also puts its protagonist on a path of unending internal and external conflict:
“It is over now…the first result of my decision to leave passiveness for a path of direct action.’ [Shang-Chi grabs the ladder]
“And now that it is over, there is time to reflect…and to wonder if the result was worth the decision…” [Close up on Shang-Chi’s face as he grabs one of the rungs]
“I remember a drug clinic in New York and the faces there…etched in the torment of heroin. [part of a panel from issue 29 showing two addicts]
“Yes…to the spirit of those who might now avoid such torment…it has been worth it… [Shang-Chi’s arms hands on two different rungs]
“I remember, too, pictures of a great city in Japan, and the cloud which rose above it.” [Mushroom cloud]
“And yes.. to the flesh of those who might have been seared under similar clouds…it has also been worth it…” [helicopter flying away]
“…though the decision, and its path, still leaves much… to be desired.”
Shang-Chi’s language describes a path forward rather than up, with the exception of his description of the mushroom cloud, which reads like a demonic parody fo the promise of his own name. Upon re-reading this issue (that is, with the knowledge of the problems Shang-Chi will face over the next several years), the contrast between the vertical imagery and the narrations elaboration of horizontal progress is consistent with the hero’s ongoing dilemma. He is definitely advancing, but he might not be rising.
Subsequent issues of Master of Kung Fu will continue to play with the problem of forward and vertical motion (such as the story called “The Journey as Goal,” in which Shang-Chi’s decision to walk a great distance in keeping with his attitude towards ends and means, only exposes him to repeated attacks that could have been avoided). But whether mentioned explicitly or not, Master of Kung Fu is a continual journey, with Shang-Chi’s thoughts serving as our guide.
Notes
[1 ]It probably did not hurt that Gulacy was doing his own inks on this issue from number 30 on, Gulacy’s main inker was Dan Adkins, who complemented Gulacy’s pencils well.
[2] Long discursive footnote TBA