This is just a monster of a collection. 1100 pages. It's gotta weigh four pounds. It's hyooooje!.

And it's fun to revisit these stories, forty-odd years after I first began visiting my local Braemore Variety Store on the way home from Grade 7. That variety store holds a special place in my heart and my history. It's where I first discovered Star-Lord, Howard The Duck, and a bunch of Marvel's larger black & white magazines, like The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.

I was never a Kung Fu fanatic. I didn't watch the David Carradine series, it took me two more decades to see a Bruce Lee movie...I simply wasn't the target audience for this series.

But, hot damn, I loved Shang-Chi and Iron Fist.

This series shows the very worst of Marvel's 70s output, with the abysmally banal Sons of the Tiger. Those stories are just bad. The writers could never get their shit together enough to actually do something with them (at least, not in this collection). And, though I've always admired George Perez's art, he seemed out of his element here, and he was constantly paired with substandard inkers, which muddied his normally-crisp lines.

The first few Shang-Chi stories aren't the best either, but when the ridiculously talented Rudy Nebres stepped in as artist, the book simply exploded and became a gorgeous treat to behold.

Overall, it's a fun book, but good lord, I can't imagine paying $160 for this collection. Thankfully, I managed to find it on sale for $50. ( )