Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu Omnibus Vol. 2 Hardcover – June 6, 2017

I bought the first volume elsewhere. You really have to have both volumes to watch the evolution of this magazine.I'm starting to read this volume now, and the magazine really seems to making it's "explosion" at this point. One could say "finding its feet".The first issues in Volume 1 seem not much more than what was a mail APA. You can watch as the assembly of the magazine progresses along with the types of articles.Early on, there are articles where basically someone goes and watches a movie, writes about it, and/or gives a synopsis of the entire movie. This is a good thing as martial arts movies simply weren't available in a lot of US cities at the time.This was groundbreaking at the time.Reading it is like reliving my own experiences with "getting into" martial arts. I have to say, there is a lot of that "I know about martial arts" that had convoluted the true history of Chinese martial arts pretty much to this day. I'll give a quick defense of this. You have to look historically for what went on. There is intermingling, but a lot of history was lost. Part of this was due to the Chinese Communist revolution. Part of is due to the confusion that all Chinese martial arts came from Shaolin ... which is not true. Chinese martial arts (non-military martial arts) was always somewhat secretive so there is likely little or no documentation on may lost Chinese martial arts (the Chinese Communist actively killing all the martial artist that they could find and destroying all the writings on Chinese martial arts and medicine that they could find ... well... yeah ... they did that...)The articles on martial arts history try to be as accurate as they can be for the time. There is a lot of hearsay.Deadly Hands of Kung Fu works to bridge the gap between the martial arts comics, martial arts movies, and martial arts training.Iron Fist basically just made guest appearances in Volume 1. Sons of the Tiger gets a makeover instantly in Volume 2. And the Daughters of the Dragon will finally make an appearance. The magazine is entirely different from the way that it started and that is in a good way. It has stopped being an "exploitation" title and is becoming it's own thing by this point.And this is a heavy book. No doubt. This is not a light-weight volume. It probably weighs five pounds.I'm very glad that I purchased it and looking forward to reading the rest of it.

A tasty book that was worth the wait! Nice slick paper and good printing. I had hoped the book would have the original magazine height and width like the Eerie and Creepy reprint hardcovers, instead of being comic book dimensions, but I got over that disappointment quickly; the full pages are still easy to read; the lettering and art does not look squished. The full cover color reprints are awesome to behold; the stories are all reprinted in their original black and white; they look great. This omnibus also reprints all of the original contents pages, letters pages, editorials, and articles related to the Kung Fu fad of the seventies. I originally read DHOKF #29 when I was a kid and it was way over my head but still hypnotizing to me. As an adult, it is fun to be able to read the issues leading up to #29 and those beyond to see the context of the chunk of story I originally saw. While I could do without the dated non-comic prose articles, they kind of add to the overall fun of the book. Recommended if you liked the Black and White Marvel magazines from the seventies. It's a gorgeous book!

This volume wraps up the complete run of Marvel's Deadly Kung Fu magazine format book. Of primary interest to those who grew up reading it but never saw the complete arch or found out how it ended or for people who like martial art in general. Nicely put together in hardcover format for repeat readings and study of the art. Most of the characters showcased in this series survived the 1970's craze and were reused later in new contexts. Decent art in a solid format.

Lots of fun black and white comics. Lots of fun articles. Stuff from up and comers Chris Claremont, George Perez, an Bill Mantlo. And it is the start of Jack of Hearts from Avengers

Loved the series not crazy about the martial arts stories in between wasn't crazy about them when they were first published either. But it does make me nostalgic. The stories on the heroes though is very good loved them then love them now.