K’ing Kung-Fu #1: Son Of The Flying Tiger

K'ing Kung-Fu #1: Son Of The Flying Tiger, by Marshall Macao
No month stated, 1973  Venus Freeway Press

The other week I was in a resale store with a used book section and it was the expected junk you find in such places – lots of textbooks and John Grisham paperbacks and stuff. Just as I figured I was wasting my time I came across this rare first installment of the seven-volume K’ing Kung-Fu series, squished between two hardcovers. How exactly this beaten little paperback made it to a store in Frisco, Texas we’ll never know, but at times like this I figure the trash gods are at work so I ask no questions. Plus it only cost me 60 cents!

I’ve never bothered tracking down K’ing Kung-Fu because, for one, I’ve spent enough time tracking down various obscure men’s adventure series and paying through the nose for many of them, and also because the plot has just never appealed to me. I read somewhere that the series is set in the early ‘60s or something and honestly, that’s not the era I think of when I think “kung fu.” I want pure bell bottom fury, as I’ve always referred to it – martial arts mayhem set in the funky ‘70s. I mean, at least Mace got that right, even if the books themselves sucked. But regardless this series must’ve done well enough that it garnered seven volumes, though this might’ve had more to do with the aggressive publication agenda of Freeway Press. Like The Savage Report, this one promised to be a monthly series, which must’ve been a helluva schedule for the writers to keep up with.

Speaking of which there appears to still be some mystery on who “Marshall Macao” was. I’ve gone with Brad Mengel’s Serial Vigilantes Of Pulp Fiction, which states that it was someone named Thaddeus Tuleja. However it would appear it was actually Thaddeus Tuleja III, as this is the name that appears on some of the copyrights of the K’ing Kung-Fu books (this first one’s copyright Venus Freeway Press). Brad further states that Tuleja was born in 1941; I’ve come across online mentions of a Thaddeus Tuleja who was born in 1917 and died in 2001. Presumably this was Thaddeus Tuleja II, and further I’ll guess it was he who published the WWII naval battle history book Climax At Midway in 1960. Google brings up a mylife.com listing which states there’s a Thaddeus Tuleja who lives down in Austin, but this one’s year of birth is given as 1944. I mean how many Thaddeus Tulejas can there be?? Well anyway, for convenience I’ll just refer to the author as “Macao.”

While the other books might indeed take place in the ‘60s, this first installment doesn’t even leave the 1950s – it opens with a prologue set on December 26, 1941, with old kung fu master Lin Fong in Rangoon, introducing himself to a never-named American pilot. This guy is one of the Flying Tigers – the text implies he’s the guy who organized and trained them – and Lin Fong keeps referring to him as “the Flying Tiger.” Flash-forward ten years and now Lin Fong’s in the middle of the Gobi Desert, raising the guy’s son: Chong Fei K’ing. Macao flashes forward and backward throughout the text, so that we know by adulthood K’ing will have a handsome face, muscular build, “chestnut colored” hair that goes to his shoulders, and blue eyes, the latter a source of much conversation of the Gobi natives.

When we meet him K’ing is only eight years old and knows nothing of the outside world, nor even anything about his famous father or his mother – a Chinese woman, apparently of some fame herself. Methinks Macao must be building some mystery here, but who knows. This first installment is not concerned with any of that at all and is more of an overlong origin story for the hero, showing how he goes from being a Tao master before he’s ten to becoming one of the chief kung fu warriors ever by the time he’s a teenager. Lin Fong drops some Heavy Knowledge on him throughout; the book is stuffed to the gills with “kung fu wisdom” because, as Zwolf so accurately stated, the Kung Fu TV show was big at the time and “readers would want that.”

But man there’s a lot of expository dialog throughout. Like when Fong tells the kid about how he first saw his dad in aerial combat, on December 25th, 1941 – ie the day before the prologue – and it goes on for several pages, with Fong describing the battle. Fong has it that as he watched the fight he knew the lead Flying Tiger pilot would have a son who would be the greatest kung fu warrior of all time. Yet despite all this Fong doesn’t feel the need to say who exactly K’ing’s dad was, let alone his mother. The narrative implies that even K’ing doesn’t know either of them, and has only seen his mother from afar or some such shit. Like I say all this stuff is just sort of dropped in the text and not expanded on. I got the impression I was more interested in it than Macao was.

Lin Fong is a master of the Tao and all that jazz and goes into almost mystical connotations of the power of kung fu, which lends the novel a sort of proto-Star Wars vibe. This is particularly true in the quasi-mthical story (again told via endless exposition) of the Blue Circle and the Red Circle, aka the good guys and the bad guys. Basically there was this ancient kingdom with various sages who were kung fu wizards, and eventually it split down the line between good and evil, with Lin Fong now the master of the Blue Circle. This stuff doesn’t really get played up much until the final quarter. The majority of the book – which by the way has big print, guaranteeing a quick read – details K’ing’s training in kung fu, with only occasional moments of kung fu action. The narrative employs almost a juvenile vibe, mostly because it’s relayed through young K’ing’s limited understanding of things – that is, when the perspective doesn’t abruptly jump to some other character without any warning. Macao is an unrepentant POV-hopper.

The first action scene happens to be K’ing’s first action scene, as well as the first time he takes a life. Lin Fong and K’ing live in a shack in the middle of the desert, and Fong is seen as almost godly by the natives. Thus they come running for help when bandits attack a village and kill some people. One of them wears ancient armor and a mask and declares himself the spirit of Gengis Khan, but of course he proves no match for Lin Fong. Turns out these are bandits who are into the opium trade and Ling Fong and K’ing destroy the place. In addition to hands and feet they also use weapons, and in fact K’ing’s first kill is via machine gun. By the way Lin Fong relates to K’ing that in his seventy-plus years he’s killed over a thousand people! But to quote Arnold, “They were all bad.”

Speaking of which, around this time a third character is introduced to the narrative: Kak Nam Ting, two years K’ing’s elder and Lin Fong’s other kung fu protégé. It’s intimated that he too has some mysterious but important parentage, and now he’ll live here in this damn shack in the middle of the Gobi with them and train in the higher arts of kung fu wizadry. More “cosmic power of the Tao” talk ensues, but laughably Kak ends up proving it’s all baloney, or at least that Lin Fong isn’t the wizened martial arts mystic he claims to be. Because even a glue-sniffing kid could see Kak’s plain evil straight off the bat – hell, even 8 year old K’ing harbors brief suspicions when he meets him – yet Lin Fong is oblivious. He’s so busy pondering the profundities of the Tao that he doesn’t realize his own student is like a step away from growing a moustache so he can twirl it.

Despite this K’ing and Kak become best friends and the novel jumps forward five years. The two travel around the Gobi and get in various adventures. All the while Fong only becomes more evil, wearing special bracelets and learning spells or something that will help him beat K’ing in their sparring sessions. Fong remains oblivious, too busy meditating. He’s quick to talk, though, treating us to a story that runs several pages of full exposition – bad flashsbacks to his earlier WWII story – all about the origins of the Blue Circle and Red Circle. As if on cue an evil American karate champion shows up at the shack one day, accompanied by two martial arts kids, and challenges him.

Instead of jumping into the fray, it’s back up into that damn meditation tower for Fong. In reasoning that sounds absurd coming from a guy who has admitted to killing a thousand people, Fong swears that whoever kills this evil American karate guy will become evil himself. WTF? Of course this dude, who announces himself as Loki, is a rep of the evil Red Circle. Kak is familiar with him and says there’s nothing mystically special about him; he’s just some asshole champion who has killed a bunch of his opponents. Lin Fong keeps meditating and stays out of the fray. Things go the expected route with Kak taking on all three of them and apparently ripping them to pieces – again all of it relayed via clunky exposition.

Here the novel takes a “shocking” turn, but no spoilers because the back cover copy blows it, anyway: Kak kills Lin Fong. This is also unintentionally humorous because first Kak just unloads on the guy, ridiculing him and calling him a coward and all that jazz, and Lin Fong just stands there and takes it. Then Kak blows him away with a pistol, and I have to say I wasn’t much upset because Lin Fong got on my nerves. But K’ing, who has stood there in shock, finally jumps to the attack, leading to a practically endless fight between the two boys. This should give you an idea of how the kung fu action scenes are rendered in the novel:

As mentioned this one doesn’t even get out of the 1950s so we leave K’ing where we met him, in the Gobi; Kak has escaped, with two “gouges” on his brow thanks to K’ing. I assume he’ll return in future volumes, but the only other one I’ve got is the fourth. I wasn’t blown away by this first one so I doubt I’ll do anything to correct that…unless of course the trash gods deem to put another of these in my path someday. I’d say my favorite thing about Son Of The Flying Tiger is Barry Windsor-Smith’s cover; he’s credited on the back under his original dba of “Barry Smith.”