SONS OF THE TIGER PART 5

As presented in DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU Nos. 12 - 14.

"THE CRACK OF THE WHIP"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: George Pérez & The Tribe

"DEATH IS MY CO-STAR!"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: George Pérez & Jack Abel

"THE VALLEY OF ANCESTORS"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: George Pérez & Dan Adkins

The Plot: (DEADLY HANDS #12) Abe Brown witnesses the murder of a woman while walking through Times Square, and soon finds himself teamed up with the man who had been hired to protect her, a private detective named Nathaniel "Blackbyrd" Byrd. Blackbyrd explains that the woman worked at a nuclear site in New Mexico, where she was contaminated. She turned whisteblower, so the company killed her to keep her quiet. Abe and Blackbyrd eventually avenge the girl, bringing the corrupt company's misdeeds to light.

(DEADLY HANDS #13) Bob Diamond, working on a movie in New York's Chinatown, comes aross a murdered man on-set -- the second death since production began. Bob and Lotus Shinchuko investigate the killings, antagonized at every turn by NYPD officer D'Angelo. Eventually, Bob find that the killer is Mr. Curtis, who wrote, directed, and starred in the original version of the movie from 1925, and who wants to stop production on this remake because it might bring to light the fact that the original film was created as a cover-up for Chinatown's illicit black market. In the end, Curtis dies trying to escape from Bob and D'Angelo.

(DEADLY HANDS #14) While meditating, Lun Sun finds himself in the astral plane, wandering alongside a samurai. Lin helps the samurai fight off a group of bandits, then follows him to a village which has been razed by the forces of Death. Death confronts Lin and the samurai, but Lin takes Death's life and then leaves the astral plane, returning to Earth with a physical gift from the samurai: his sword.

Continuity Notes: Issue 12 features the first appearance of Blackbyrd, who some readers might recall from my look at Roger Stern's Spider-Man run some years ago. Eventually, this Sons of the Tiger retrospective will come full circle with those Spidey stories.

Issue 13 reveals that Bob and Lotus are in a relationship, something Mantlo began to set up a couple issues earlier. Bob is also continuing his career as a movie star, now based in New York rather than California, though his current movie is apparently put on hold after the events of the story.

In issue 14, we learn that the samurai, Kanbei Kikuchiyo, is Lin Sun's ancestor -- so I suppose Lin isn't full-blooded Chinese, as previous chapters suggested.

My Thoughts: With the Silent Ones storyline at last concluded, Bill Mantlo next presents three separate solo tales of the Sons of the Tiger -- a fun exercise in any team-centric series, in my opinion. Much as the point of a super-group is to see them in action together, it's nice to separate them on occasion and see what they get up to when they're alone. So first up, we have an installment in "The Adventures of Abraham Brown". Mantlo leans into the "blaxploitation" angle, with Abe teaming up with a hard-boiled black detective to avenge the murder of a young black woman, and sticking it to the corporate white man to do so. The story is fine; corporate malfeasance generally always makes for a tried-and-true story hook. My only issue is with Mantlo's way over the top "blaccent" for Blackbyrd. It's a bit much (and seems to have been toned down by the time of his Spider-Man appearances mentioned above).

And while Abe's story is pretty run-of-the-mill, it's way better than Bob's installment. Murders on a movie set should be a fantastic hook for a detective yarn, but instead all we get is a few pages of Bob playing investigator before the villain, Mr. Curtis, reveals and then accidentally kills himself in the final pages. Add to this some grossly stereotyped Asian folks, and this one is best left forgotten.

Then there's Lin Sun's story, which is a lot of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo about walking through Heaven and teaching a samurai that there is more to life than killing. In case it's not evident, I've mentioned before that this sort of spiritual stuff just doesn't appeal to me. It feels like a waste of a story that could've been spent instead on Earth, with Lin involved in an actual fight against actual bad guys, rather than a weird inner struggle against the (admittedly cool-looking) human personificaton of Death.

So with these three solo stories out of the way, we will hopefully return to more straightforward Sons of Tiger adventures next week in DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU issues 16 and 17 (they took #15 off)!