SONS OF THE TIGER PART 7

As presented in MARVEL TEAM-UP nos. 39 & 40 and DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU no. 18.

"ANY NUMBER CAN SLAY!" | "MURDER'S BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND!"
Writer: Bill Mantlo | Artists: Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito
Letterer: Karen Mantlo | Colorists: Don Warfield (issue 39) & Janice Cohen (issue 40)
Editor: Marv Wolfman

The Plot: (MTU #39) On a New York City rooftop, Spider-Man evades an assassination attempt, while elsewhere in Manhattan, the Human Torch is captured by the Enforcers and their leader, the Big Man. That night, Spidey runs across the villains attempting to auction off the Torch at an abandoned warehouse, and intervenes to free him. The Torch and the Web-Slinger defeat the bad guys, but are surprised when Sandman and the Crime Master enter the fray.

(MTU #40) The villains decide to team up and capture the Human Torch, forcing Spider-Man to surrender. But next door to the warehouse, the Sons of the Tiger are practicing in their dojo. They leave to investigate the sounds of battle from the warehouse, and free Spider-Man and the Torch. The villains escape, and the Torch departs for a date, leaving Spider-Man to search for the bad guys -- and he finds them, but only after they've captured the Sons of the Tiger. Spidey breaks in to save his new friends, and Crime Master shoots the Big Man during a scuffle. Eventually the heroes win the day and Spidey unmasks both crime lords, revealing Crime Master to be the son of the original, deceased Crime Master, and the now-dead Big "Man" to be the daugther of the original, deceased Big Man.

"FISTS OF DARKNESS, FISTS OF DEATH!"
Story: Bill Mantlo | Art: Pat Broderick & Terry Austin

The Plot: At a subway station, the Sons of the Tiger and Blackbyrd team up with Danny "Iron Fist" Rand to save a woman's life and stop a hitman from escaping New York. The group goes to a bar afterward, where Blackbyrd follows a hunch and is attacked by a gangster named Snake Eyes and his men, the Black Hand, in an alleyway outside. The Sons and Iron Fist come to Blackbyrd's rescue, and during the fight, Snake Eyes reveals he is a cyborg. Iron Fist kills him in battle, and the group heads back into the bar.

Continuity Notes: The Iron Fist team-up is illustrated by Pat Broderick, who had been intended to become the character's regular penciler a few months earlier, and had drawn a couple issues of the series -- but the story goes that Broderick couldn't handle the monthly deadline and had to give up the assignment. (I believe John Byrne has joked, tongue-in-cheek, that he owes his career to Broderick since he was picked for the Iron Fist assigment as Broderick's replacement.)

Snake Eyes' plan is to steal an isotope from the local hospital and ransom it back to the City, which he says needs it to cure a blood disease which has swept through New York, killing people in a matter of hours. I have no idea if this is some kind of real world reference, though I feel like I would've heard of it somewhere if it was! But it's not, it feels like a really weird thing to casually mention as backstory when it, itself, is such a massive event! (Also, later Snake Eyes reveals that he had the disease as well and wanted to use the isotope on himself.)

In case you're wondering what Iron Fist was up to in terms of solo adventures at this time, well -- following a headlining role in eleven issues of MARVEL PREMIERE over the course of a year-and-a-half, the first issue of his very own self-titled series hit stands the same month as his team-up with the Tiger Sons! Also, this issue's final page states that the next issue will see the start of a DHoKF serial starring Iron Fist, written by his usual scripter, Chris Claremont, and drawn by Rudy Nebres. Someday, I want to look at those stories here to go with the classic Iron Fist reviews I posted years ago.

(More years ago than I thought, in fact. 2015? Are you kidding me?!)

The MARVEL TEAM-UP issues feature a few footnotes, informing readers that the Enforcers were beaten by Spider-Man and the Human Torch once before, in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #19, and that the Big Man, Daily Bugle reporter Frederick Foswell, was killed in AMAZING #52. Also, on the final page of issue 39, Sandman randomly starts talking, completely out of the blue, about how he's ditched his "super-villain" costume for a return to his original clothes, because for some reason Bill Mantlo felt this was worth mentioning in the most awkward way possible.

MTU #40 depicts Lin and Lotus talking about revealing their feelings for one another to Bob at the appropriate time, with a footnote directing readers to DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU #19, which we will examine next week.

When the Torch ditches Spider-Man and the Sons for his date, a footnote says readers will see it in FANTASTIC FOUR #164. (And in a little example perfectly encapsulating some of the editorial issues at 1970s, pre-Jim Shooter Marvel, the words "Fantastic Four" are never once mentioned in the issue, while the footnote merely says to "see FF #164", which would be of absolutely zero help to a brand-new reader who might like to follow the Torch into his next appearance. There are other little things like that throughout these two issues, with Mantlo clearly writing to an audience who already knows these characters without bothering to better explain things to newcomers, but that's the most egregious in my mind.)

My Thoughts: Though none of them knows it yet, the Sons of the Tiger and Iron Fist share a backstory of sorts. Iron Fist was raised in far off K'un L'un, where he became a master of the martials arts, while the Sons' mystical amulets will eventually (years later, I believe, in the pages of POWER MAN AND IRON FIST) be revealed to have come from K'un L'un as well. So it's fitting that they all cross paths fairly early in their careers. But, aside from the Sons and Iron Fist learning each other's secret identities, there's really not much to say about this story. It's fine, but it feels utterly inconsequential to either side. Pat Broderick's pencils look really nice inked by Terry Austin here, though -- much better than Broderick's two issues' work on the actual IRON FIST comics!

Moving along to MARVEL TEAM-UP -- obviously the Sons of the Tiger aren't in issue 39, but I included a summary above since it's part one of a two-part tale. Unfortunately, the Sons are entirely superfluous to their appearance here. Yeah, they free Spider-Man and the Torch from the bad guys, but the two were only captured in the first place because Mantlo needed them in some sort of peril to facilitate the Sons' appearance. And you may glean from the summary above that these two issues feature a lot of scenes where the good guys are captured and then freed nearly immediately afterward.

In part, I suspect this is simply due to MARVEL TEAM-UP being what it is -- the "third wheel" Spider-Man title, existing only to showcase the Web-Slinger teaming up with other Marvel characters every month, and therefore leading to some really lackluster issues whose only concern are telling wall-to-wall action stories. And when that's the case, some wheel-spinning is bound to take place. But I have read some very good MTU stories -- mostly from Chris Claremont, whose entire run (i.e., not just the stuff he did with John Byrne) I read around a decade ago -- so I know it's possible to make this series more than its mission statement seems to allow. Mantlo just wasn't feeling up to the challenge for this particular story, I guess.

That said, I do like the "Romeo and Juliet"-esque conclusion, where we learn that Crime Master Jr. and Big Man Jr. bonded over both their dads being killed due to involvement with Spider-Man, and eventually fell in love -- and then, totally independently of each other, hatched plots to take revenge on Spidey which culminated in their becoming unwitting rivals and eventually getting one of them killed. This almost makes up for the fact that, as the story nears its end, Spider-Man identifies Sandman as one of the toughest enemies he's ever faced, and then assists the Sons of the Tiger in defeating the villain by somehow punching him unconscious -- which I've never seen happen to Sandman before.

Next Week, it's back to DEADLY HANDS, full time for the final (?!) Sons of the Tiger story, and the debut of the White Tiger!