On this weeks episode of An Idea of All Time Patrick and I compare the comic book version to whatever it was that we got in the film. Turns out the Shang-Chi comics as well as his crossover appearances bear little to no resemblance to the MCU film.
Shang-Chi first appeared in Marvel comics in 1973 from a combined inspiration from the Kung-Fu TV series and the Fu Manchu novels. Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart modeled his appearance after Bruce Lee. Family struggles were central to Shang-Chi’s character and though the film seems to have tried to keep that theme, it was executed quite poorly. Though most of Shang-Chi’s comic book appearances involved the presence of other heroes he had several huge storylines of his own that the writers could have pulled from. However the source material seemed to be irrelevant to the writers room. Since the rising popularity of the MCU, the Marvel comics have made changes to many characters to make them appear closer to their big screen counterparts, this is a problem for several reasons but mostly because it stunts the MCU itself. If the comics reflect what has already happened on screen at some point the MCU is going to run out of source material for the characters that they have chosen. It also is a bummer for comic book fans who are still a majority of the MCU’s audience. The Shang-Chi comics offered plenty of complicated and interesting storylines that the writers simply refused to use or even research. It really feels like no one on this production team even vaguely understood the character that they were dealing with.
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