Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I've previously written on my obsession with Iron Fist, and I plan to continue my foray into analysis of later comics in that franchise, taking a look at how they changed with the introduction of Marvel's answer to the Blaxploitation genre, Luke Cage. Before that I want to explore the strange milieu of Marvel's earlier martial arts hero, Shang-Chi, the "Master of Kung Fu." He made his first appearance in Special Marvel Edition #15 in December 1973, six months before Iron Fist appeared and is one of the first heroes of the martial arts comics boom. Created by the interestingly weird team of writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin to cash in on Marvel's recent acquisition of Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu and their rights to the Kung Fu television show, he paved the way for future martial arts heroes. Shang-Chi is a Wushu master, skilled in both hand to hand combat and and weaponry. He uses both, unlike Iron Fist who tends to just use his hands and fe...

The 70's were an exciting time for superhero comic books. Marvel Comics had revitalized the form in the 60's when Stan Lee and others, including Jack "King" Kirby and Steve Ditko, had created a new breed of heroes dealing with more down-to-earth situations than what was occurring in DC books. These characters tended towards the neurotic and self-doubting, but, more importantly, their lives were set in a world that seemed much closer to the real one. Hell, they had problems and weren't just super powered ciphers. Now some of the art seems archaic and the dialogue is dated and clunky, but at the time superheroes were being redefined for a generation that was mostly consuming horror and romance comics. After Frederic Wertham's S eduction of the Innocen t was released in 1954, most comic publishers had accepted a self-regulated comics code that limited horror, sex, and death, among other things, in comics. EC comics got around the code by publishing magazines,...

The clouds started forming at five o'clock pm The funnel clouds touched down five miles north of Russellville Sirens were blowing, clouds spat rain As the thing came through, I swear it sounded like a train -- Drive-By Truckers, "Tornadoes" A massive F3 tornado came through my hometown of Park Falls, Wisconsin in the summer of 1985. My family and I were spending the night at my grandparent's cabin 20 miles away riding out what we thought was a typical summer storm. Mostly all I remember was reading comics at the cabin and the usual fights I had with my uncle (he is only three years older than me). I kept my comics at the cabin, but after this tornado I got into reading them more. I put them in boxes and I would have to hide them in the basement with each passing summer storm. In the morning my dad went to survey the damage of the storm. We used to have big, sheltering trees in the front yard and these were gone now. They had been toppled over by the winds. On...