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Marvel Comics’ classic formula of real-world history — and all its problems — meeting the fantastic is resonant because it shows even larger-than-life heroes struggle with issues like toxic family environments. Marvel’s Master of Kung-Fu, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest star, Shang-Chi, has been wrestling with having a complicated family for most of his history. Shang-Chi was born into a violent cult and raised by a father who wanted to turn him into a weapon. He dealt with that by combating his dad’s villainous agenda and forged a chosen family that included Marvel heroes like Spider-Man and the Avengers. After Shang-Chi found himself in control of his now late father’s villainous organization, The Five Weapons Society, Shang-Chi was forced to confront his blood family’s violent history head-on.
In Marvel’s latest Shang-Chi series, writer Gene Luen Yang and artist Dike Ruan chronicle the titular character’s struggle to turn the Five Weapons Society into a force for good and what that means for his relationships with Marvel’s biggest heroes. In an interview with CBR, Yang shared which all-star heroes will appear in Shang-Chi and discussed the thrill of exploring the Five Weapons Society’s rich history and its ties to Jimmy Woo’s Agents of Atlas. Also included with this interview is an exclusive first-look at Shang-Chi‘s #5 pages, drawn by Dike Ruan.
CBR: You kicked off this new volume of Shang-Chi with a currently unfolding arc that so far has your protagonist and his new family running into and afoul of icons like Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine. What’s it been like bouncing those characters off of Shang-Chi and his new family?
Gene Luen Yang: These days I’m a fan of both Marvel and DC. The very first comic I bought though was a DC Comics Presents starring Superman and soon after that most of the comics I was picking up from my local comic shop were Marvel ones. There was just something about the Marvel Universe. Their characters seemed very human, very flawed, and very cool.
So, to get to play with these characters I grew up with like Spider-Man and Wolverine was a huge thrill. One of the goals that our team, Darren Shan our editor and artist Dike Ruan, had was that we wanted Shang-Chi to feel like he’s firmly rooted in the Marvel Universe. We felt having him encounter the Universe’s biggest characters would be a way to do that.
It also felt like these first three issues were a way to touch on established continuity and set up new stories by having heroes who have a history with Shang-Chi encounter his new status quo.
That’s right. He hasn’t had his own series in quite a while, but he’s been a prominent guest star in a number of books. He played a big role in the “Spider-Island” storyline and he was a member of the Avengers for a while. So, we wanted to introduce him to new readers, but also acknowledge that he’s been in the universe for a long time and has these established relationships.
Since a lot of Shang-Chi is about family, it feels especially fitting that the Five Weapons Society will encounter Marvel’s First Family, the Fantastic Four, in #4.
In Western cultures, the number 13 is considered unlucky, but the number four is considered unlucky in Chinese culture. So, we wanted to play with that. Four is the number of death. Because four in Chinese is actually a homonym of death. So, in a lot of ways, this issue is about facing death and we have a lot of surprises in that vein. The tragedies of Shang-Chi’s past are going to come to the forefront in Shang-Chi #4.
That’s not what you’d expect from what seemed like a sunny-style team-up with the Fantastic Four.
[Laughs] Yeah. I loved the Fantastic Four when I was a kid. I started collecting when She-Hulk joined the team. I thought there was something so hopeful about them, and we kind of want to turn that on its head in our story.
October’s Shang-Chi #5 embroils your protagonist in an adventure with Iron Man. Besides the iconic nature of the character what made you want to bring Tony Stark into the series?
Iron Man is a real big deal now. He’s the foundation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think even beyond that he actually has this dynamic built into his character that we also want to play with in Shang-Chi.
Shang-Chi’s big thing is he’s struggling in between light and dark, good and evil. He wants to be good, but he’s also kind of afraid that his family legacy is going to push him towards evil at some point. You see the same dynamic with Tony Stark. He started off as this billionaire weapons manufacturer who was selfish. Ultimately, he became good, but throughout his history, he’s fought all these personal demons. He fights substance abuse and selfish tendencies. So I think Shang-Chi and Iron Man offer a good contrast to each other. Personality-wise they’re diametrically opposed, but what they struggle with is very, very similar.
Also, both of those characters have had a foot in the world of spies.
That’s right they do. Shang-Chi has often been played almost as a Chinese James Bond. Iron Man definitely has those espionage elements as well.
When I first read the solicits for November’s Shang-Chi #6, where Shang-Chi encounters Thor, I thought the two didn’t have anything in common, but when I thought about their current status quos it feels like there are quite a bit of similarities
Yeah, I think their personalities have much more overlap than someone like Iron Man. The big problem though of having someone like Shang-Chi go up against Thor is of course the power differential. Shang-Chi is much more of a street-level character on the level of people like Daredevil or Iron Fist. We have a way of solving that power differential that will hopefully be interesting to readers.
It feels like both have been thrust into leadership positions they don’t really want by their families.
That’s right. They both have these weird relationships with their dads and siblings.
Your Shang-Chi art team, Dike Ruan, and colorist Triona Farrell, have given you a fun mood, incredible designs, great acting, and incredible action. They feel like the perfect art team for this character.
They really are. Like you said, Dike is good at action and acting. He’s able to communicate subtle emotions through facial expressions and body language. So I feel incredibly lucky to be working with them. Dike was half of the art team on the mini-series, and now for the ongoing, I think he’s grown by leaps and bounds. His action pieces are just amazing.
Part of the fun of this book, and the mini-series that preceded it, is exploring the Five Weapons Society’s past where we see real-world history collide with the fantastic elements of the Marvel Universe. Are you interested in doing more of that going forward?
Absolutely. I’ve done a couple of projects that were historical fiction like Boxers and Saints and Superman Smashes the Klan. While working on those projects I got really interested in history and historical fiction, and how you can blend what actually happened with more fantastical elements.
So, when I signed on to Shang-Chi I saw a way to do that, especially because of the character of his father who dates back several centuries. Because of that he definitely embodies all of these problematic ways in which Western media has depicted these characters. Embedded in who he is though are these cultural, historical touchstones. So, one of the ways to address the character’s problematic elements is to dive deep into the actual history. Instead of trying to avoid the problematic stuff altogether, we want to go through it to tackle what’s real underneath.
Marvel has always played with this idea of where the fantastical and the historical meet. They meet periodically throughout Marvel’s history.
Speaking of the past, given both groups have long histories and connections to Shang-Chi, do the Five Weapons Society and Jimmy Woo’s Atlas have any kind of history together?
They have a lot of parallels like conflict between the leadership and members of the organizations and conflicts between two different visions. We also saw Shang-Chi and Jimmy Woo interact with each other in Greg Pak’s Agents of Atlas issues. So, we’re going to explore some of that in the future. That’s absolutely part of the mix as we’re constructing these stories.
So far, each issue of this new volume has ended with a shadowy figure enacting machinations against Shang-Chi and the Five Weapons Society. What can you tell us about this person and their endgame?
That story is coming soon. I don’t know if I can say much more beyond that. We are hard at work on that story right now.
Finally, what else can you tell us about your long-term plans for this book?
This will sound super vague, but in the early Shang-Chi comics, one of the symbols associated with the character was the Yin and Yang symbol. Every now and then they’d talk about it in the stories, but I do feel like the underlying idea behind that symbol hasn’t really been explored.
So, we want to explore how Shang-Chi is caught between Yin and Yang. He’s caught between good and evil, between order and chaos, between his family and his American allies. We want to dive deeper and deeper into that as we move forward. So, we will introduce more of his family tree and we’ll also dive into his friendships with other Marvel characters.
The whole team is super thrilled at the reception we’ve gotten. Just the fact that we have the chance to do this ongoing series is great. When I signed on we were just going to do five issues. Because of the fan support we got for the mini-series though we got to do an ongoing. Then our first two issues of the ongoing sold out and got a second printing. It’s been a thrill! We’re incredibly grateful for all the support we’ve got.
Written by Gene Luen Yang with art by Dike Ruan, colors by Triona Farrell, and letters by Travis Lanham and Joe Caramagna, Shang-Chi #4 hits comic stands on Sept. 8.
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