Zheng Zu

Zheng Zu is an ancient, long-lived Chinese sorcerer and criminal mastermind who built the secret Celestial Order of the Si-Fan into a vast global empire. As co-founder and supreme leader of the Five Weapons Society, he fathered and shaped Shang-Chi to serve as his ultimate weapon.

Few villains in Marvel's Bronze Age arrived with the kind of shadowy grandeur that Zheng Zu commanded when Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin introduced him in Special Marvel Edition #15 in 1973 — a debut that helped launch one of the most stylish, morally complex titles of its era. Over more than five decades, this enigmatic figure has haunted the pages of Master of Kung Fu and The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, weaving through 104 catalog appearances alongside a cast of memorable characters including Black Jack Tarr, Leiko Wu, Clive Reston, and Denis Nayland Smith. Three of those appearances carry key-issue weight with collectors, a testament to how central Zheng Zu is to some genuinely landmark comics. His reach has even extended into Secret Avengers, proving that a figure born in the Bronze Age can cast a long shadow across Marvel's modern landscape.