The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #19

History

Marvel's editors had made a deliberate editorial decision to retire the Sons of the Tiger feature and replace it with a fresh solo character, and it was Archie Goodwin — who edited the magazine starting with issue #18 — who presided over that transition. Goodwin assigned Bill Mantlo to write the new feature, and Mantlo, wanting to depict what he called the 'gritty/city slums' of New York, approached George Pérez specifically because he believed Pérez had intimate personal knowledge of South Bronx life. Pérez, who was Puerto Rican himself, drew on neighborhood friends for character names, used his own brother's face as a reference for Ayala's features, and modeled the character's mother on his own; Mantlo later recalled that the black-and-white magazine format gave the two of them unusual latitude, describing their process as 'pretty much did as we pleased' with minimal oversight from the main color-comics editorial department. The issue's White Tiger story, titled 'An Ending!', was inked by Jack Abel over Pérez's pencils, while a separate Iron Fist lead story — 'Shall I Love the Bird of Fire?', the first chapter of Claremont's six-part 'Firebird' serial — was written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Rudy Nebres; both Mantlo and Pérez made cameo appearances within the White Tiger story itself.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance and full origin of Hector Ayala as White Tiger (Bill Mantlo, writer; George Pérez, penciler; Jack Abel, inker) in the story titled 'An Ending!'
• Hector Ayala is the first Puerto Rican superhero in American comics history and Marvel's first Hispanic superhero; he is a college student at Empire State University in New York City's South Bronx.
• The Sons of the Tiger — Abe Brown, Bob Diamond, Lin Sun, and Lotus Shinchuko — disband in this issue and discard their three Jade Tiger amulets, which Ayala discovers and dons to gain the White Tiger's powers.
• The issue also contains the first chapter of Chris Claremont's six-part Iron Fist serial 'Shall I Love the Bird of Fire?' (the 'Firebird' arc), illustrated by Rudy Nebres, which introduces new characters Jade and the villain Dhasha Khan and retells Iron Fist's origin.
• The issue includes a Jim Starlin Shang-Chi frontispiece pinup, an eight-page non-fiction article titled 'Dragon of the Mind,' a one-page editorial by Archie Goodwin, and additional martial-arts feature articles — reflecting the magazine's standard anthology format mixing comics with journalism.
• Published as a black-and-white magazine by Magazine Management Co. (Marvel's imprint that operated outside the Comics Code Authority), edited by Archie Goodwin with John Warner as associate editor.
• Bill Mantlo and George Pérez make in-story cameo appearances in the 'An Ending!' White Tiger sequence.
• The issue has been reprinted in the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu Omnibus Vol. 2 (2017), which collects issues #19–33, and in the Iron Fist: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu — The Complete Collection (2019).

Cast · 8 characters

Full credits

Key issues in The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu

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#22 1st appearance — Jack of Hearts