In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover how Karate Kid of the Legion of Super-Heroes wasn't drawn the way he was intended in the comics for a decade!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and second installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends. Click here for Part 2 of this week's legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Karate Kid was originally intended to be Half-Asian but Jim Shooter's teenage artwork didn't quite get the idea across.
STATUS:
True
In THE VERY FIRST Comic Book Legends Revealed I ever did, the very first legend I tackled was the amazing story about how Jim Shooter started writing professional comic books when he was just 14 years old. It's kind of amazing how some of the legends I've written about in the early years are a lot more well-known now than they were then. It's not that Shooter's origins were hidden back in 2005, of course, but I still feel like it's more well-known now.
In any event, Shooter's approach for breaking into comic books is one of the most impressive but also sort of bewildering ideas you can imagine. On the particularly impressive side of things was Shooter's understanding that the Marvel Comics of 1964-65 were a good deal sharper than most DC books of the era, so Shooter's idea was to pitch DC on stories that were more like Marvel ones. Really thoughtful idea, right?
The bewildering idea is that Shooter, who didn't really know how comics were done at the time, literally just wrote and penciled a two-part Legion of Super-Heroes story and sent it to Mort Weisinger to see if he wanted to buy it! Shooter was a heck of a young writer, but he was not what you would call a professional artist by any stretch of the imagination. However, shockingly enough, not only did Weisinger buy the two-parter, he even decided to tell artists Sheldon Moldoff and Curt Swan (who drew the first part and second part, respectively) to use the pages by Shooter as the layouts for the issue! Both Moldoff and Swan did pencils of their own, but Moldoff, in particular, seemed to really stick to the basic designs of Shooter's layouts...not in a good way. Moldoff was a great artist and that issue was...not great. Lot of awkward poses.
However, the layouts also had a TON more action than a typical Legion of Super-Heroes story of the era.
One of the other audacious things about Shooter's story was that he actually added FOUR new Legionnaires to the Legion in that story! Can you imagine pitching an editor with a story where you add four new members to the team? But hey, it worked out! One of the things Shooter felt that the Legion lacked was action characters. He felt that everyone's powers were too passive. Everyone just pointed and fired a blast from their fingers or whatever. So that's why Shooter loved the idea of Karate Kid, and wow, devoting PAGES to a fight between Superboy and Karate Kid was a bold, bold gambit at the time...
The problem was, as Shooter explained to my pal Glen Cadigan in Glen's seminal work, The Legion Companion (I'd link to it, but I think it's out of print and I don't think it does Glen any good for me to tell you go buy a used copy on Amazon, ya know?), "In my crummy drawings, he was Half-Asian...when Shelly drew him, he made him like an American. Which is a shame." As I noted in another old Comic Book Legends Revealed, one of the other Legionnaires introduced in that issue, Ferro Lad, was going to be Black, but Mort Weisinger wouldn't approve it. Shooter was trying to diversify the Legion and he kept coming up short.
The next issue's artist, Curt Swan, also chose not to draw Karate Kid as Asian in appearance (it's quite possible Weisinger told him not to, as well)...
Reader Alec F. wrote in to note that Dave Cockrum drew Karate Kid as Asian during his run on the series, as shown in Superboy #201...
Nine issues later, Shooter (who had left comics and returned) and Mike Grell did Karate Kid's origin in 1975's Superboy #210 and Grell made sure to make him not only Asian, but based visually on Bruce Lee...
It took until the 1970s, but it got done, at least!
Thanks to Glen Cadigan and Jim Shooter for the information! And thanks to Alec for the note! I provide my e-mail in every installment for people to make suggestions, but you can also use that e-mail if you have a correction or an amendment!
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - How did an Academy Award sketch lead to the formation of an unlikely comedic film duo?
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!
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