From Solo to Chorus
Shang-Chi’s tensions with Smith come to a head right before the extended storyline that serves as a swan song for Gulacy: the “final” fight against Fu Manchu.[1] Consisting of six parts (45-50) a prelude (44), and an epilogue (51, drawn by Jim Craig), this sequence, each section of whose issues is labelled by part number and title (such as “Part VI (Sir Denis Nalyand Smith: The Affair of the Agent Who Died!” (49)), curiously lacks a name of its own. We know we are reading Part III or Part IV, but part of what? It is a strange omission, especially considering the penchant for evocative titles throughout Moench’s work. Even if this is mere editorial oversight, it is nevertheless fitting. While this is a well-crafted story with complex plots and subplots, its signal departure from the almost thirty issues preceding it is in narration and focus. Though the prelude and first issue are, as usual, told by Shang-Chi, issues 46-50 are narrated by the rest of the main cast, in rotation. The prelude includes a four-page monologue by Fu Manchu’s long-term assistant Ducharme (who has convinced the heroes that she is working for them, although she is not), foreshadowing the story’s main narrative shock: its concluding chapter is narrated by none other than Fu Manchu himself.
This game of narrative musical chairs (in order: Shang-Chi, Reston, Leiko, Black Jack, Smith, Fu Manchu) does not actually undermine the series’ emphasis on Shang-Chi’s consciousness, though it does work well with the lead character’s ongoing crisis of conscience and identity. With the exception of the final chapter, we are never given the impression that Shang-Chi’s view of the world is notably incomplete or flawed. Rather, the rotating narrators allow Moench and Gulacy to develop a complicated plot that cannot always involve Shang-Chi himself, but without resorting to thought balloons. Despite the attention the various narrators inevitably draw to themselves by the mere fact of their presence, the shifting focus is ultimately in the service of an increasingly cinematic vision, albeit in a format that, from a twenty-first century perspective, resembles a prestige drama on premium cable or a streaming service.
On a purely technical level, this rotation of narrators involves a number of clever devices to distinguish these chapters from the usual format. Of all the new narrators, only Leiko engages in an inner monologue like Shang-Chi’s, with no external motivation for its existence (and only Leiko gets her own caption box style, with indented corners). Black Jack is transmitting a report to Smith over one-way radio, while Reston is subject to ruthless interrogation by unseen tormenters, who turn out to be MI-6 agents making sure that he has not gone over to the other side. As for Smith and Fu Manchu, these two longstanding adversaries share a mode of storytelling: Issue 49’s captions come “From the Journal of Nayland Smith” (a format to which Moench will return for part of issue 100), while issue 50 is “Excerpts from the Notebook of Dr. Fu Manchu.”
Thus while there are six narrators, their storytelling falls into three types, with the characters sorted into pairs. The lovers (Shang-Chi and Leiko) are telling their stories to themselves; the younger male professional spies (Black Jack and Reston) are making reports, while the father figures (Fu Manchu and Smith) are recording their thoughts for posterity. These chapters also take the opportunity to show us Shang-Chi thorough the eyes of those who know him, highlighting his internal struggle from an external perspective, while also making him something he cannot be when he is constantly talking to the reader: mysterious. Leilko, for example, finds that Shang-Chi “has grown increasingly worried […] perhaps I have been wrong about his inner strength”:
“If so, have I also been wrong about that which is founded on his strength…wrong about my love for him?
“No. Please…no.” (Issue 47)
These stories also emphasize a point that the reader might not have consciously noticed: all the other characters have their own way of referring to the comic’s protagonist. Leiko calls him “Shang,” while Reston calls him “Chi.” Smith alternates between “Shang-Chi” and “Lad,” while Fu Manchu prefers “Shang-Chi” and “my son.” Black Jack’s appellation for his friend is the highly problematic “Chinaman;” a few issues earlier, Shang-Chi finally objects to the word, but Black Jack blithely continues to use it. Only when he is observing Shang-Chi from afar and reporting in to Smith does he give in to the sense of awe provoked by watching Shang-Chi fight, and also to his own emotional attachment:
"As for the white rabbit who can’t hear me…If I don’t see ya again, well—it’s been good knowin’ you, Chinama—
“Shang-Chi.”
It is fitting that the last two issues are narrated by Smith and Fu Manchu, respectively. These two men have long dominated the comic’s plot, not to mention Shang-Chi’s thoughts, but usually at a remove. Smith is present in Shang-Chi’s life, but never on his adventures, while Fu Manchu is the classic villain who usually works behind the scenes. Yet each of them makes a convincing claim for sympathy. Despite Shang-Chi’s repeated condemnations of Smith’s situational morality, Smith’s narration shows his awareness of the imbalance in his relationship with his operatives:
“While Fu Manchu strides like a bold demon through the thick of this latest match, I must remain a fallen angel on the sidelines—
“…commanding my youthful agents much as a former grandmaster, now maudlin and senile, feebly manipulates his ivory chessmen.”
By contrast, Fu Manchu, who tells his story during a “lonely moment, a time of reflection, standing there in a garden among the stars,” shows no concern for the men who die in his name. Yet the melancholy tone taken by a man describing his recent defeat at the hands of his own son humanizes him to an extent never before attempted.
The rotating narration introduces greater ambiguity into the series. The reader is now in a position to understand all the characters better, but this understanding is entirely extradiegetic: the characters themselves have learned little about each other. Thus when the ideological fault lines between Shang-Chi and Smith crack open in issue 51, we are back to Shang-Chi’s first-person perspective, but now have the wherewithal to read the comic as polyphonic rather than monologic. Shang-Chi rightly calls out Smith for his obsession with defeating Fu Manchu, but his allegations that Smith is unconcerned with the fates of the people who work for him are clearly disproven by Smith’s own words in issue 49. Having returned to Shang-Chi’s narrative framework, we are now better equipped to see its limitations.
Note
[1] There would be two more final battles during the original run of Master of Kung Fu, and yet another in Moench and Gulacy’s reunion miniseries, Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu (2002-2003).