Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #4 - Yellow Claw reprints

Two short reprints from YELLOW CLAW #2 in the back-up slot this issue, the first of three issues of the series Kirby had drawn during his brief stint at Atlas in 1956. It's possible that these are among the stories Kirby inked himself. Whoever inked them did a great job. The stories are, as is typical for the YELLOW CLAW stories, too short and formulaic to really develop much, but have great visuals.

"Temujai the Golden Goliath" has a couple of naming connections. "Temujai" is an oddly similar name to "Tegujai", the conqueror of Kirby's unfinished novel THE HORDE (presumably both based on Temujin). And even odder, Jimmy Woo's pilot is named "Rocky Davis", published just before the Challengers debut. Anyway, in this story the Yellow Claw has constucted a giant robot in the form of of Temujai, hoping to use it to take control of Asia using people's superstitions.



Jimmy Woo is sent to investigate, gets captured and thrown in with the scientist who invented the artificial skin on the robot, and with the Claw's traitrous neice Suwan takes control of the robot. At the end we find out that the fake skin only lasts a short while anyway, so I guess the Claw's plan was futile.

The next story is "The Mystery of Cabin 361". I guess a page was edited out here, but the plotting on these stories is so jumpy that I can't tell where. In this one, Jimmy spots the Claw and Suwan boarding a cruise ship and goes undercover as a steward. He gets captured again (not the best agent, is he, although I guess it's a genre standard from James Bond or Maxwell Smart), but manages to foil the Claw's plan. In an entertaining variation, the Claw takes the effort to drug Suwan so she can't betray him, but even in that state she's instrumental in his defeat.

As usual in these reprints, lettering is changed so Jimmy Woo is changed from an FBI agent to SHIELD.

Published 1975