YANG - Issue 11
Over the weekend I took my sons up to Diamond Bar to visit the massive Frank & Son's Collectors Warehouse.
In the .25 cents bin I discovered this lost gem from my childhood.
When I came across this comic I could hardly believe my eyes. This was the only "Yang" comic in the entire box, and this exact issue is the only issue of this series I have ever seen in my life.
I'm not really sure where I originally got this comic as a child, but somehow I had this 1977 kung-fu comic in my early comics collection. Finding it in that quarter box was like uncovering a favorite childhood memory.
Reading it now, some 35 years later, the artwork is sloppy, the story is surprisingly about evil Russian seal hunters who club baby seals for their fur and our kung-fu hero, Yang, attempts to stop them.
This comic also reminded me of another Modern Comic I owned at about the same time called "Billy The Kid" which I remember loving mostly because I was a nut for cowboy-related comics as a kid.
I suppose the cool thing is how comics can trigger memories and feelings from your childhood. That cover, those colors, the unusual hero, all combine in my mind to pull me back to being nine years old again.
An even bigger surprise was the full-page ad in this comic for a book on Wicca advertising bizarre secrets to getting rich, reading minds and casting spells. I guess I'm glad I was too young to ever read those ads in the comicbooks. Weird.
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2 comments:
I saw the link to your blog at Comics Reporter. I had, I think, the first half dozen issues of Yang. I don't remember very much -- except that it was Charlton's answer to Marvels' Shang chi and Ironfist and the general Bruce Lee/Kung Fu craze of the 1970s. Thanks for reminding me of the book, and getting me similarly nostalgic as well. I'll have to look around and see if I still have those issues from way back then!
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