Good morning and Happy New Year!
My first blog article of 2026 will cover the eighty-eighth issue of Marvel's The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. The cover showed the titular character locked in battle with a brainwashed warrior atop a tall building in New York. The tale was called "Warriors of the Golden Dawn Part 6: The Leopard and the Dove." The issue had a cover date of May 1980.
Shang and his friends were traveling via helicopter across Manhattan when they saw a spectacular explosion. They assumed that the oil refineries in New Jersey had just been destroyed. Black Jack Tarr was piloting the helicopter, and he turned on the radio to find out more. The radio broadcast said that sabotage of the East Coast's largest oil supply was suspected.
While firefighters were trying to put out the blaze, a couple of local police officers apprehended a man named Sherman Wilkins. Wilkins had been in charge of night operations at the refinery. When he moved, his wig fell off, revealing a pair of electrodes implanted on his head.
Meanwhile, Fu Manchu was busy with his latest plans. One of his mind-controlled warriors arrived to provide his master with a progress report. He stated that several Warriors of the Golden Dawn were prepared to look for Fah Lo Suee. Manchu ordered that his daughter be killed on sight. He knew that Suee had betrayed him and that she'd joined the ranks of MI-6 once more.
While the helicopter landed on a nearby dock, Manchu moved forward with his plans to detonate more explosives, leaving New York's police and emergency forces nearly depleted as a result. He planned to pin the blame for the catastrophes on the Soviets. He then departed with his associates to their rendezvous site, so that they could observe the beginning of what they expected to be World War III.
Shang-Chi and his friends soon met up with Suee and Zaran. Suee explained that Karamenah stayed behind in London to provide the location of her father's base in South America. A strike force was being assembled to destroy the evil warlord's ground-to-satellite installation and hopefully cease transmissions to Shang's brainwashed operatives.
Sir Dennis Nayland Smith noted that their ally, Lyman Leeks, had a list of the people who had been brainwashed by Manchu. He still felt at ease, as if they could be set up for a trap. Moments after saying that, an assailant tossed a knife at Suee's back, and a fight ensued.
As the battle continued, Manchu and his brainwashed soldier, Maru, made their way into a building's control tower. The skirmish moved from the docks to the adjacent sewer tunnels. There, Shang-Chi and his colleagues noticed a nuclear bomb, one that was powerful enough to destroy the city. Smith and Tarr stayed behind to try and take the device apart, while Shang, Leiko Wu, and Zaran followed their attackers in the hopes that they might lead them straight to Fu Manchu. Reston was already on his way to bringing Suee to a hospital.
The chase led to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Shang followed one of the soldiers into an elevator and warned his friends not to follow him. As Shang-Chi made his way up the tower, Smith and Tarr were feverishly working to prevent the nuclear bomb from detonating. Time was definitely not on their side.
Shang eventually made his way to the rooftop, where he saw Maru using a floodlight to signal other soldiers. He caught the warrior's attention, who Manchu was controlling remotely. The fight looked like it would end in Maru's favor until Wu intervened. She was able to distract the Thuggee warrior long enough for Shang-Chi to strike him from behind. His momentum carried Maru over the wall and down hundreds of feet to a grisly death.
Leiko had arrived to apologize to Shang for her earlier dalliance with Reston while the couple was separated, when Shang-Chi asked where Zaran was. Their conversation was interrupted by the emission of a powerful gas from overhead.
Shang held his breath, watching his father state that it was the mimosa distillate, a weapon that he'd used before to subdue threats to his reign. Wu succumbed to its effects. Tarr and Smith were starting to panic, having less than ten minutes to defuse the bomb, as Shang-Chi watched his father ascend a ladder that emerged from the bottom of his escape vessel.
This was another action-packed issue. The storyline was very much in line with other works of fiction during the early 1980s, especially during what was still the Cold War between the US and USSR. The pace was quickened, leading up to the final part of this exciting story arc.
That wraps up this article. Next time, I'll recap the eighty-ninth issue of Master of Kung Fu. We'll learn if Manchu is successful in this final part of the storyline. We'll also find out if Tarr and Smith were able to prevent the nuclear bomb from exploding, and just what the evil ruler had in mind for the city of New York. Until then, have a great week and don't forget to be kind to one another.
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