Usually this column is reserved for the capes and cowls of this world, but this time around I’d like to make a small exception. But don’t fret, there is a costumed…let’s say, hero! For the frak of it… It’s Deadpool, and he’s really funny in it!
What I’m talking about, is of course, one of the best single issues I read in quite some time, the “Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu” One-Shot Marvel put out a couple of weeks back. That thing is amazing, and exactly the kind of stuff that makes comic books great:
Kung-Fu, a crazy bike-race across the desert, fantastic art, subtitles in one story and Jonathan Hickman. (Yeah, I’m a sucker-up, so what? 
There was no over-arching theme, no crossover, no whatever. Just fun, good ideas and again, fun!
The stand-out is naturally the Hickman penned lead in which Shang-Chi has to participate in a deadly race across the desert, while fighting off the bad guys, including the infamous Hitler Twins and Deadpool! This first story gets more and more ridiculous as it goes along, but that doesn’t matter, because Hickman manages to balance his crazy ideas with great character moments between Shang-Chi and Deadpool, just like he does in his current run on the Fantastic Four. He’s really a stand-out artist in the medium right now. But enough with the gushing, back to the book.
The second story is much grittier affair, with the aforementioned subtitles for a story that is completely in Mandarin (I hope), and lots of amazingly choreographed Kung-Fu. The rainy night setting in a big city might be cliched, but when used right can be very effective. The blacks are striking, and the flashbacks in a sort of sepia tone…
Wait. I’m not rambling. Darn, I fell into a straight-up review of a single issue! How did that happen? Let’s try to figure it out together! It started alright I guess, with an apology for the content. That seems about right. Next up is the introduction of the first subject, and some Hickman praise. Nothing out of the ordinary so far. Then we have descriptions of the stories within the book…aha! There you go. Every time I get into the story I run into the retelling-valley (A place between storyteller-mountain and the TV-Anecdote-Recital Deep). Not that it’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s my column after all, but I’d be kind of shocked if I read the title of something and then get something completely different. So, I better throw in some weird stuff: Batman on a tricycle fighting a giant monkey with Panda bears as claws!
Well, there you go, some rambling. But it was very self-reflectory rambling, with the Fourth-Wall break and everything. And I didn’t even talk about Morrison book. But I suppose I could get some in. Batman&Robin is on its fifth issue, so there is some stuff to write about, especially about the changing art. Then again, this column is at an end. And I can’t write past the end. That would be too meta…
Pete Schueler is currently residing in Berlin, Germany. He’s desperately trying to get his writing career somewhere. Where that is exactly, is not defined yet, but it should be somewhere where it’s visible. He’s been a comic book and pop culture geek all his life, but started reading them funny-books again on a weekly basis just three short years ago. In this time he matured from reading just DC books, to preferring mostly Indie titles. He still has a reverence for the Big Two and superheroes in general, and consumes them at a regular rate. The books, not the heroes. 
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