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spyspyspy

#my art #tf2 #tf2 spy #tfc spy #Fu Manchu #tfo spy #team fortress classic

It pains me to say this, but if you want to talk critically about supervillains broadly and racialized villains in particular, you really need to familiarize yourself with Sax Rohmer's original Fu Manchu stories.

This is not an endorsement of their style, which is florid pulp nonsense, or their content, which is preposterously racist in a bewildering variety of ways. However, if you're familiar with the material, you will begin to recognize Fu's innumerable imitators and descendants, which include some actual pastiches as well as knockoffs. (For example, Marvel has several direct Fu Manchu ripoffs, including the Yellow Claw and the Mandarin, but Shang-chi from MASTER OF KUNG FU was originally the literal son of actual Fu Manchu, and the MASTER OF KUNG FU comic featured a variety of characters from the Fu stories, used under license from Rohmer's estate.)

You can find various summations and essays online about what Fu Manchu represented as an embodiment of racist "Yellow Peril" paranoia, but if you haven't read the stories themselves, it's easy to underestimate how influential and pervasive they've been and how much Rohmer's blend of lurid pulp melodrama and batshit conspiracy theory racism has shaped subsequent comics and pulp entertainment.

If you're interested in the Batman villain Ra's al Ghul and his daughters Talia and Nyssa, I cannot stress enough how useful it is to have read the Rohmer stories and their treatment of Karamaneh and Fah Lo Suee [sic]. (Karamaneh appears in the original serialized novel, but Fah Lo Suee isn't named and doesn't become a major figure in the series until THE DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU in 1931.)

The earliest of the novels are in the public domain in the U.S. now, and Allison & Busby compiled all of the Rohmer material into five volumes of THE FU MANCHU OMNIBUS in the 1990s. They're highly objectionable, but unfortunately essential.

#comics #pulp #sax rohmer #fu manchu #ra's al ghul #talia al ghul #nyssa al ghul #shang chi #master of kung fu #it's not that rohmer invented anti-asian racism #but he certainly distilled it #and that particular flavor became part of the core dna of a lot of stuff

Photos from Sir Christopher Lee's autobiography "Tall, Dark and Gruesome" US edition. - Part 4

I should have uploaded those ages ago. Here's the fourth batch. The rest can be found here.

#christopher lee #sir christopher lee #gitte lee #christina lee #tall dark and gruesome #horror icons #dracula #francisco scaramanga #fu manchu #hammer films #hammer horror #queen elizabeth ii #peter cushing #ursula andress #ai-generated alt text

An orangutan named Fu Manchu kept escaping from his zoo enclosure by using a wire he had shaped into a key. Whenever his keepers checked on him, he would hide the wire in his mouth.

#orangutan #escape #zoo #key #clever #Fu Manchu #intelligence #animals