Deadly Hands of Kung Fu

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The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu
Cover of DHOKF issue #1
Editor Various
Categories Martial Arts
Frequency Monthly
First issue 1974
Final issue
— Number		 1977
33
Company Curtis Magazines[1]
Country United States
Website N/A

Deadly Hands of Kung Fu is a Martial arts comic book magazine published by Curtis Magazines,[1] a short lived imprint of Marvel Comics. The actual publisher's name was Magazine Management Co., Inc. After issue #19 the "Curtis" name logo which appeared on the top left hand side of issues 1-18 was changed to CC; which stood for "Curtis Circulation". There were a total of 33 magazines published plus one "Special Album Edition" before the series was cancelled.

Contents

[edit] Overview

This magazine was published in the early 1970s amidst the "Kung Fu" or "Chopsocky" movie craze. Bruce Lee movies were scoring huge box-office grosses, and the Kung-Fu television series was being watched by millions. Billy Jack the half-Indian, Green Beret martial arts hero was making his appearance, and people were "shaking their booty" to Carl Douglas's hit "Kung Fu Fighting". Kung-Fu was on many people's lips and the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu was there to capitalize on it. The Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu magazine was launched in 1974 and ended 33 issues later in 1977. Some of the recurring "Core" characters of the magazine were:

Each issue had various comic stories from the above mentioned characters, both single issues stories and multi-issue arcs. Most of the issues had some kind of martial arts movie review from a recently released film. Other issues had interviews with authentic Martial arts instructors, while others had interviews with movie or television celebrities related to martial arts.

The early issues had a martial arts instructional section which described some elementary fighting techniques. These were provided by comics illustrator/martial artist Frank McLaughlin. The magazine was strictly black+white with no color except for the cover. The cost of the magazine was .75 cents for issues #1-14. Issue #15 was a "Super Annual" (all reprints) issue and cost $1.25. Issues #16-33 were $1.00, as well as the "Special Album Edition" (June) 1974.

Issue #28, September 1976, was an all Bruce Lee special, including a 35 page comic-format biography, written by Martin Sands, and drawn by Joe Staton and Tony DeZuniga.

When the magazine's run reached the mid-20s, the editors began experimenting by setting some of the comic stories in feudal Japan and starring samurai-type characters, including a four-part story arc called "Sword Quest". The Sons of the Tiger/White Tiger feature ran until the penultimate issue.[2] By 1977 the "Chop-socky" movie craze was beginning to lose steam, which no doubt contributed to the poor sales of the magazine and its cancellation as of its 33rd issue.

[edit] Editors

The magazine had various editors throughout its run;[2] below are each editor and the issues they contributed to:

[edit] Misc

  • As a historical footnote, Curtis Magazines published one magazine issue entitled The Deadliest Heroes of Kung Fu which is NOT widely known. The single issue mimicked The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu mag's format in almost every way except it did NOT contain any "Comic" story elements, but included instructional features by McLaughlin. It also had the virtue of not having a single advertisement within its pages, which is rare for such a magazine. Editor John Warner explained in the issue's editorial that the extended reprint, a discussion of the film Enter the Dragon, originally published in the parent magazine and serialized in three parts there, allowed him to go without ads. Warner further stated that this was a trial balloon for an all-articles companion to Deadly Hands, but it is generally believed that a page count cutback across Marvel's b/w magazine line came entirely out of the article section for Hands, leading to an inventory backlog which this one-shot cleared. [3]
  • Although Curtis Magazines was an imprint of Marvel Comics the Marvel name was never officially on the magazine, but could be found in advertising of Marvel publications, including in the titles of a few other "Curtis" black-and-white magazines promoted herein (Marvel Preview, Marvel Super Action, and Marvel Movie Premiere), and was openly acknowledged by the editors in the editorials and letter columns.
Sample Pages
Cover of the rare Curtis Magazines Deadliest Heroes of Kung Fu
Cover of the rare Curtis Magazines Deadliest Heroes of Kung Fu
Sample page from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #29 p. 48
Sample page from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #29 p. 48

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Deadly Hands of Kung Fu at the Grand Comic Book Database
  2. ^ Warner, John (Jun. 1975). "Editorial". Deadliest Heroes of Kung Fu 1 (1): P. 2. Curtis Magazines. 

[edit] External links