NOTE

Monday, June 7, 2021

SONS OF THE TIGER PART 4

As presented in DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU Nos. 9 - 11.

"SLAUGHTER IN CENTRAL PARK!"
Writer: Bill Mantlo | Artists: George Pérez & Mike Esposito

"THEY WHO DWELL WITHIN!"
Plot: Bill Mantlo & George Pérez
Writer: Bill Mantlo | Art: George Pérez & Mike Esposito

"GLADIATORS IN THE CRYPT OF TOMORROW
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: George Pérez & Tony DeZuniga

The Plot: (DEADLY HANDS #9) The Sons of the Tiger escape from the collapsing 59th Street Bridge with the mystery woman who triggered the explosion in tow. Bob Diamond rents space in a brownstone for the group, and they head there to recuperate. Bob and the woman, Lotus, head into Central Park for a walk, and some time later, Bob returns, badly beaten. Abe Brown runs into the park to find Lotus waiting in ambush. She nearly kills him, but Lin Sun comes to his rescue, defeating Lotus and vowing an end to the Sons' feud with the Silent Ones.

(DEADLY HANDS #10) Lin removes the device which the Silent Ones have used to control Lotus. The group returns to their brownstone, where Lotus goes to stay with the landlady while Lin, Bob, and Abe use the tiger amulets to enter another plane of existence. There, they battle aspects of themselves and eventually arrive at the stronghold of the Silent Ones.

(DEADLY HANDS #11) The Silent Ones reveal their plan to inhabit the Sons' bodies and return to Earth with intentions to conquer it. The Sons fight back, and ultimately defeat the Silent Ones, then return to Earth.

Continuity Notes: After a brief appearance on the final page of issue 8's story, issue 9 features the first full appearance of Lotus Shinchuko (here known only by her first name). She says that when she was a baby, she was sold to the Silent Ones (Bill Mantlo has quietly dropped "Seven" from the group's name, and indeed when we meet them in issue 11, there are considerably more than seven of them). She never saw them, but was apparently raised by them until the day they gave her to Harrison Budge as a reward when she was thirteen. She then lived with Budge for years (and yes, her words imply exactly the sort of creepiness you're assuming), until the Silent Ones ordered her to blow up the bridge after the Sons defeated him. On the story's final page, Lin reveals an implant on the back of Lotus's neck, which allows the Silent Ones to control her body and speak through her.

As noted above, the Sons move into a brownstone in issue 9, across the street from Central Park. Bob says that his last movie grossed enough to keep them there for the next five years. The place comes complete with a cat who Lin names Tao, a goofy landlady, Mrs. Dalwoody, and a sub-plot as well. Per the landlady, "there's a queer old coot upstairs who's concerned about the noise!"

Issues 10 and 11 find the Sons exploring new uses for the tiger amulets; specifically, in #10, Lin convinces the other to use them to enter something resembling the astral plane -- but it's a place where the Sons' physical forms go as well. In issue 11, while in this plane, the Sons use the amulets to summon a troupe of undead warriors to fight alongside them against the Silent Ones.

The aspects of themselves that the Sons encouner in the Silent Ones' realm all have elements of the design George Perez would later use for Deathstroke the Terminator (specifically, the combination of chainmail legs and flared buccaneer boots just screams Deathstroke, at least to me).

My Thoughts: In his second Sons of the Tiger story, Bill Mantlo engages in that time-honored tradition of all incoming comic book writers circa the 1970s: gently rejiggering the continuity in such a way as to not overtly blow everything up, but to make the series a better fit for his sensibilities. You used to see this sort of thing a lot back then. A new writer would come onto a series and would respect the ongoing threads left by the previous ceator(s), but would also slowly and subtly remold the series. It's somewhat obvious when you're looking for it, but nowhere near as jarring as what the process has become in more recent decades, where a new writer typically means a clean, hard break from what came before, with entirely new costumes, characters, and status quos from the get-go.

Of course, nowadays writers generally complete their pre-planned run on a series before turning over the reins to someone new, so the transition itself is built on a different premise than it was thirty or forty years ago. Back then, you had writers jumping ship or getting fired mid-run, forcing their replacements to continue their stories and sub-plots whether they wanted to or not. Somewhere around the turn of the century, this became less common, and it seems that nowadays the main reason for a writer's run being cut short is if their series is cancelled. In general, under the old model, a "run" was just a segment in a never-ending, serialized story. Today, a "run" is more like a novel, with a clearly defined ending, before the next writer begins the next "novel" in the series.

As much as a curmudgeon as I am about how things were done in the "old days", I actually find both of these approaches valid. The old way led to some strange storytelling now and then, as writers inherited and were forced to run with plot points or characters they clearly had no interest in, but it also felt more exciting and lively somehow. But the new way definitely makes for more coherent and better plotted stories.

Anyway -- Mantlo does give us an ending of sorts in these three installments. The Silent Ones, who have plagued the Sons of the Tiger in nearly every issue since DEADLY HANDS #1, are revealed and then defeated in the span of two issues. And honestly, I'm a little underwhelemed by all of it. Don't get me wrong; Mantlo's writing is fine, and Pérez does a great job of illustrating the Sons' battle with the Silent Ones -- but I just can't imagine this resolution is what Gerry Conway had in mind when he first name-dropped the villains ten issues ago. I could be wrong, but based on context, I feel that Conway's "Seven Silent Ones" were some sort of evil cabal of mortals with a grudge against Master Kee and a desire to rule the Earth. But Mantlo goes really, really big with them here, presenting them as millenia-old beings who walked Earth before mankind, who had a nuclear war before dinosaurs even roamed the planet, and who faded into the ashes of memory after that conflict.

It's a great idea for a story; it just doesn't fit with the Sons of the Tiger. This was, from the start, a grounded martial arts story. I mean, the whole thing is influenced by the KUNG FU TV series and Bruce Lee's movies! These sorts of supernatural sci-fi elements simply don't fit with the genre, at least in my mind. I don't know why Conway left the series after only a couple of issues, but I find myself wishing he'd stuck around long enough to see the Silent Ones through to a conclusion before Mantlo took over.

But it is what it is, and the Sons' inaugural serial is finaly at an end. Next week, we'll find out what happens next...!

6 comments:

  1. While I love me some 1970s Marvel-do not let me get started on Don McGregor's work on Killraven, we'll be here all day and you'll likely be looking for the exit about an hour in-I also admit that the editorial instability that let creators get away with murder also resulted in a lot of sudden changes in overall stories. As you said, a new writer would wander in, look at what the previous writer did, and either go "that's no good, let's try THIS" or, as I suspect happened a lot, asked the previous writer what they had planned only for the previous writer to go "You got me."

    (The latter was the case for Steve Gerber and his long running subplot about an elf murdering people in the Defenders, which, as far as I can tell, Gerber had NO resolution for. Also, don't get me started on Gerber, we'll be here so long you'll be texting people for help.)

    The point of this long ramble was that when Mantlo showed up and totally turned the book upside down, younger me simply shrugged his shoulders and said "Business as usual at Marvel." In fact, it wasn't until much later that I realized how weird it was that the villains of a kung fu story changed into something out of a Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. 1970s Marvel just rolled that way.

    Gotta say, I love that splash page that's captioned as a film script, that's just glorious. Almost like Mantlo was nodding at the kung fu movies that were the obvious inspiration for Marvel publishing so many kung fu books back then.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Funny, I bought the digital KILLRAVEN MASTERWORKS some time back, so eventually I'll wind up reading it and possibly posting about it here. I guess I'd better brace myself when I do! :)

      What I read years ago about the "Elf with a Gun" was that Gerber never intended it to have a resolution. Not sure if that's a myth or if he said as much someplace, but I've always understood that he just wanted it to keep happening, totally random and unexplained forever.

      It's funny; I've read a smattering of Steve Gerber comics over the years, but really, his main influence on me came from the G.I. JOE cartoon series, where he was the story editor for the first season, circa 1985.

      I went back and forth on the first page movie script thing. Initially I thought maybe it was too cute for its own good, but eventually I came around to it, for exactly the reason you mention -- it was probably intended as an homage to the kung fu movies of the era.

      Delete
  2. And interestingly, here's something I found talking about Gerry Conway's stint as EIC, where he was at least TRYING to put out the fires going on at Marvel during the period.

    http://www.scottedelman.com/2011/06/16/it-didnt-all-begin-with-jim-shooter/

    I'm amused that Conway was wanting plots in advance, given how Mantlo came in and went to town on the premise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, there have long been stories about the young EiCs at Marvel in the seventies basically doing nothing and letting the company run amok around them. I can't believe that's entirely true, based in large part on the fact that at least two of them -- Archie Goodwin and Len Wein -- became very successful editors at Marvel/DC and DC, respectively, later on. Though I could maybe see Wolfman twiddling his thumbs or doing freelance writing in his office when he should've been running the company. Not sure why; he just strikes me as that sort of guy.

      (Unrelated but on the same topic, Denny O'Neil apparently did do freelance writing in his Marvel office while he was on the clock as an editor. Jim Shooter said as much on his blog several years ago, and O'Neil himself popped into the comments, mainly to contest something else Shooter claimed, but he also confirmed that one accusation as well.)

      Delete
    2. The problem was less their periods as EIC and more that as each one left the job, they became writer/editors, and they were banging out insane amounts of work just to make a living with no on supervising them. I read on Jim Shooter's blog once that Marv Wolfman in particular had a contract to produce 100 pages of comics a month! Gerry Conway had a similar amount as well.

      It was kind of a snowball effect: Stan Lee was a writer/editor, because he was, you know, their only editor. So when Roy Thomas took the job, when he left he made being a writer/editor the thing that happened when you did. So you got Len Wein and Marv Wolfman and Gerry Conway and Archie Goodwin going that route-though I think Goodwin got moved laterally to editing Epic Illustrated when Shooter got the EIC gig-with no one to tell them what to do. Oh, yeah, and Steve Gerber was a writer/editor because he created Howard the Duck and that book was getting some Hollywood buzz. Funny how that turned out.

      So yeah, when Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Steve Gerber, Gerry Conway, and Archie Goodwin had no one to edit them, all cranking out ridiculous numbers of books a month, things got chaotic fast.

      Did I mention I love '70s Marvel?

      Delete

  3. I’m still amazed when I encounter this kind of cosmic, metaphysical stuff that such writers as Mantlo, Steve Englehart, and of course Jim Starlin explored — or even didn’t explore but used primarily as window dressing — and find myself recognizing how much it resembles stuff that Jack Kirby had already done despite his being from what I think of (and experienced, through my grandparents) as the far more conservative generation that preceded them. Obviously artists like Starlin, Pérez here, and the generationally in-between Steranko contributed mightily through the visuals, themselves inspired by Kirby.

    Meanwhile, back on Earth: There’s a hilariously dramatic panel of Lin flipping off a light switch in #10.

    I’d forgotten that Lotus was named Lotus. My comics brain immediately went to Lady Lotus from the latter days of the original Invaders series published a few years after this — but apparently there’s no familial relation, just a dearth of go-to “Oriental female” names, and the coin flip ruled out Jade.

    ReplyDelete