Home to Die

Books: The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu no. 70 and Marvel Team-Up no. 75

Published: August 22, 1978

Titles: “Home to Die” and “The Smoke of That Great Burning!”

Cover Price: 35¢

Format: Original paper copies

(I haven’t done a Marvel Time Warp post for the past several weeks, so I’m doing another Marvel Time Warp Two-in-One and covering two books with this post.)

Since I like reading old comics (the books I write about for Marvel Time Warp are more than 40 years old!) and I don’t like spending a lot of money on comics, I read my share of beat-up comic books. Or, to put it more politely, I read my share of well-loved comic books.

Sometimes I luck into a really nice copy of an old book. Nothing that would garner an official “near mint” rating. But something in about the same condition as the typical comic book you would have picked up from a spinner rack at a 7-Eleven or other convenience store in the late 1970s. I’m guessing most comics purchased off a spinner rack in the late ’70s were in “fine” or maybe even “very fine” condition. I suggested on Bluesky a couple of months ago that we create a new grade for books like this: “7-11 mint.” Related: I’m happy to report my copy of Master of Kung Fu no. 70 is in 7-11 mint condition.

As for the content of Master of Kung Fu no. 70, I think it’s fair to call it “action-packed.” I’ve been on a bit of a streak — this is the third action-packed book in a row I’ve read for Marvel Time Warp.

The plot: Kung fu master Shang-Chi is recruited by his pal Black Jack Tarr to travel to New York so the two can babysit an important scientist who is defecting from China. But first they stop by Tarr’s old house on Long Island. Which Tarr filled with booby traps long ago, stuff like trap doors that lead to incinerators and doorways with hidden guillotines. And while he’s in town, Tarr is supposed to meet up with Anna, that one woman from his past who really, truly, broke his heart.

Of course, the scientist and the booby-trapped house and the woman from the past are all unrelated story elements that won’t interact in any way, right?

The story title hyped on the cover of this issue of Master of Kung Fu is “Murder Mansion!” I think that’s better and more accurate than the proper story title, “Home to Die.” Because as soon as Shang-Chi and Jack Tarr enter Tarr’s old house, it starts trying to kill them. Which is bad, sure, but it shouldn’t be too big a deal as Tarr knows where all the traps are and how they all work.

But! Somebody has been in the house recently and changed up a bunch of the traps. So Shang-Chi and Tarr don’t have much of an advantage. And also there are some assassins in the house, from the Black Demon Sect. So Shang-Chi and Tarr are having to deal with deadly dudes along with deadly traps.

It seems like the booby-trapped-mansion is something of a trope. Like, the traps here aren’t that different than the stuff Indiana Jones and his buddy encounter in the temple in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That said, it’s a trope I like.

After it’s all said and done, we find out that Anna is leading the Black Demon Sect assassins. She’s apparently still mad at Black Jack Tarr for choosing his espionage career over her all those years ago. And the defecting Chinese scientist (who never actually interacts with Shang-Chi or Tarr) is actually a spy in cahoots with the Black Demon folks.

Like I said, it’s an action-packed page-turner. The page layouts are dense — usually a busy page in a Bronze Age comic book will contain seven or eight panels. Most pages of this book have at least nine panels, and one has a whopping fifteen panels.

The penciler for this issue is Pat Broderick, and it’s a one-and-done story, so maybe this is a fill-in issue? I think Mike Zeck was still the regular penciler for the series at this point. And according to the Fandom.com Marvel Wiki, Zeck would return for Master of Kung Fu issue no. 71.

Speaking of fill-in issues, I’m never sure what’s going on with 1978 Marvel Team-Up books. But Team-Up no. 75 features an editor’s note on the fan-mail page that implies the regular Team-Up team at this point was writer Chris Claremont and penciler John Byrne, who were also working together on a legendary run of Uncanny X-Men stories at the time. Claremont didn’t write this particular issue, but he plotted it, and the credited writer (Ralph Macchio) does a good job capturing the Claremont vibe with the dialogue and narration.

Byrne’s artwork is top-notch, of course. But the story is middling at best. Basically, Spider-Man and Power Man end up helping out some firefighters after some bad guys set a bunch of buildings on fire. It ends with one of those cloying things where the superheroes look admirably at the firefighters and say “those guys are the real heroes,” and that kind of cloying always rubs me the wrong way.

Week 34 Wrap-Up

It seems like I’ve spent a year trying to cover this one week of comic books from 1978. Anyway, the fourth week of August 1978 saw Marvel publish twelve books — eleven 35-cent books plus the double-sized 60-cent Fantastic Four no. 200. Total cover price for all of those books is $4.45. Adjusted for 2025 inflation, that’s about 22 bucks.

Next time — On to week 35 of 1978! Marvel only published three books that week, so I’ll either be reading a Tarzan book, a Defenders book, or a Hanna-Barbera book.