Marvel Comics Presents #1-8 (1988-1989) (Shang-Chi story)

Despite the fact that Shang-Chi is featured in the first 8 issues, along with a bunch of other characters, only Wolverine is on the cover of all of them. Chi doesn’t even make it into a corner box.

On the one hand, I get it: Everyone loves Wolverine. But on the other hand, this is an anthology book and if you really want to sell it, your cover should show that inside these pages you’ll see characters you otherwise wouldn’t be able to read about.

I just wish it were better quality.

Doug Moench revives Shang Chi, and he’s pretty much the only Chi writer worth reading at this point in history. Like most Shang Chi stories, it doesn’t have much to do with the greater Marvel Universe.

That seems to be a pattern with this anthology book: Take characters and let them have true solo stories, dissociated from the rest of 616 continuity. That’s not a bad thing.

The story picks up with there being a reward for Shang-Chi, dead or alive, which is pretty much how his solo book ended.  We then have his female MI-6 contact Leiko Wu kidnapped. She serves only one purpose: To be rescued.

And of course she does get rescued in the end.

Also, she gets her hand cut off by the kidnappers.

If this had been a true attempt to bring Shang Chi back, that’d be one thing—but instead we get eight issues and he disappears again. Replace some of the characters and this could be a Wolverine story or a Daredevil story or even a Dominic Fortune story. Doug Moench is better than this.