Shang-Chi

Zheng Shang-Chi, also known as the Master of Kung Fu, is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin, the character first appeared in Special Marvel Edition #15 (cover dated December 1973). In the Marvel Universe, Shang-Chi is the son of an immortal criminal mastermind who raised and trained him from childhood to be an assassin; upon discovering his father's true nature, Shang-Chi renounced him and entered into an ongoing, informal alliance with M-I6. He has been described as the greatest martial artist in the Marvel Universe. Englehart and later creators surrounded Shang-Chi with a recurring supporting cast, including the intelligence officer Sir Denis Nayland Smith, the agents Black Jack Tarr and Clive Reston, and his romantic partner Leiko Wu, as well as his father's ambiguous daughter, Fah Lo Suee, and the morally ambiguous rival martial artist Shen Kuei. Marvel had originally hoped to license the television series Kung Fu, but the rights were unavailable, and the character was instead spun off from novelist Sax Rohmer's licensed pulp villain Fu Manchu as his previously unknown son. With its third issue, the title was renamed Master of Kung Fu, and by the end of 1974 writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy had taken over the strip, shifting it from stand-alone martial-arts stories toward a globe-trotting espionage format influenced by the James Bond films. The series continued until 1983 and became one of Marvel's best-selling titles during the 1970s martial arts boom. Shang-Chi's connection to Fu Manchu was downplayed in later stories after Marvel's license to the Rohmer estate lapsed, and the character's father was eventually renamed Zheng Zu. Shang-Chi reappeared in numerous series over the following decades, became a member of the Avengers in 2012, and was expanded...