The Paperback Kung Fu Phenomenon Part 1 – The 1970s!

The following column was originally printed in Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatic 46, which was published in January of 2023. You can buy a copy of it here.

While the martial arts have been a deeply ingrained part of various Asian cultures and their literature for centuries, their influence in western culture was a direct result of military exposure to Eastern fighting forms during World War II in both China and Japan and later during the Korean War. Servicemen brought an interest in these esoteric fighting styles back home with them and soon their influence found its way into the collective psyche. Shortly thereafter, the Hong Kong movie scene exploded in the late 60s and spilled over into the rest of the world in the early 70s. Suddenly Kung Fu was everywhere from the suburban neighborhood cinema to TV screens, comic books, and even Top 40 commercial pop radio (Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting was a worldwide #1 smash hit record in 1974!). 

Coinciding with this surge in popularity was the explosion of the serialized men’s adventure books which were taking over the paperback market in the wake of the success of Don Pendleton’s The Executioner series. It was a match made in heaven and almost overnight publishers began to pump out series that featured Shaolin-trained Kung Fu fighters, nearly supernatural ninjas, karate killers, samurai gunfighters, and all manner of secretly trained spies whose weapons were primarily their hands and feet.

Let’s back up just a bit... I was 10-years old when the Kung Fu television series starring David Carradine debuted in the US in 1972. I was beyond excited for its debut and found it very intriguing, but it was by no means the wall-to-wall action that I was expecting and craving. It was philosophical and slow and when the fights occurred, they weren’t especially impressive. Everything changed the following year when Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury (aka The Big Boss) hit US cinemas and seemingly overnight we had something very different on our hands with nonstop action and a new level of fight choreography that is still impressive today.

1973 would also be my personal introduction to men’s adventure paperbacks with the publication of K’ing Kung Fu #1: Son of the Flying Tiger from Venus Freeway Press, a publisher I would later learn was primarily known for their porn-related output. I talked my mom into buying me that paperback on a trip to the grocery store and I read it cover to cover in under 24 hours (I still own that copy with my name written in careful cursive on the inside front cover)). It was like mainlining pure action mixed in with elements of Oriental mysticism and fantasy and I was instantly a junkie for more of it. Thankfully, American publishers were quick to jump on board the trend to provide regular fixes for addicts like me.

Suddenly most every paperback publisher was pumping out new martial arts-based titles every month for the next several years with some making it into the 80s. The following is my attempt to provide a collector’s list of the major martial arts men’s adventure paperback series of the 70s with a short description and review.

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K’ing Kung Fu by Marshall Macao 
(Venus Freeway Press)
Son of the Flying Tiger (1973)
Return of the Opium Wars (1973)
The Rape of Sun Lee Fong (1973)
The Kak-Abdullah Conspiracy (1973)
Red Plague in Bolivia (1974)
New York Necromancy (1974)
Mark of the Vulture (1974)

An awesome blend of Chinese fantasy and martial arts detailing the eternal struggle for control between the Masters of the Blue Circle and the Masters of the Red Circle, two mystical Kung Fu clans. Our lead character is Chong Fei K’ing, the half American, half Chinese son of a World War II fighter pilot who is raised in the Gobi Desert by a Kung Fu master serving the Blue Circle. K’ing’s arch nemesis is another boy, Kak Nan Tang, who is trained by the master, but eventually kills him and becomes a servant of the Red Circle. The book series begins in the 1940s and runs into the 60s, and that period setting makes it quite unique. Investigations reveals that the series was apparently written by an author named Thaddeus Tuleja III, but Marshall Macao is the cooler name! Of note is that the US editions featured cover art by Barry Windsor-Smith for the first 4 books, the next 2 by Dick Giordano, and the final by Chris Achilleos.

Black Samurai by Marc Olden 

(Signet Books)
Black Samurai (1974)
The Golden Kill (1974)
Killer Warrior (1974)
The Deadly Pearl (1974)
The Inquisition (1974)
The Warlock (1975)
Sword of Allah (1975)
The Katana (1975)

There may be no better example of 70s-era martial arts funky coolness than Marc Olden’s Black Samurai series. Where most martial arts-related authors focused on Chinese martial arts (and almost exclusively Kung Fu), Black Samurai found its inspiration in the Japanese fighting arts of Bushido warriors, embracing Samurai katanas, shuriken, karate, and aikido. Our main character is Robert Sand, an African American GI who isn’t simply trained as a samurai, he excels to be the greatest student in his temple school. The first book is a classic revenge tale with Sand doling out righteous justice against a group who slay all of the students and the master of the samurai school. Over the course of the ensuing series Sand becomes the sole private troubleshooter for a former US president with each book in the series representing a new mission that the Black Samurai undertakes to stamp out threats. The series is exceedingly well written and even incorporates a fair amount of emotional heft into the proceedings while still retaining its hip 70s groove. Highly recommended.

Kung Fu Featuring Mace by Lee Chang/C.K. Fong 
(Manor Books)
The Year of the Tiger (1974)
The Year of the Snake (1974)
The Year of the Rat (1974)
The Year of the Dragon (1974)
The Year of the Horse (1974)
The Year of the Boar (1975)
The Year of the Cock (1975)
The Year of the Ape (1975)

Victor Mace is a Shaolin monk who battles the Mafia, teaches at a martial arts school, and occasionally works for the CIA in this series created by Death Merchant author and all-around loon, Joseph Rosenberger. The plots are bare bones to the extreme with fight scenes that go on and on for pages and pages in excruciating detail. And Rosenberger mixes up his martial arts and culture with reckless abandon. Mace uses shuriken and katanas (Japanese) and when he executes a specific technique it is almost always referenced as a Japanese karate term instead of the appropriate Chinese Kung Fu terminology. All that said, The Year of the Boar was a standalone entry by men’s adventure legend Len Levinson and it towers over the other entries in plot, style, and pacing, as well as being the action highlight of the entire series. The last couple were written by Bruce Cassiday (as C.K. Fong) doing his best to emulate Rosenberger’s endlessly tedious overly-detailed fights with no discernible plot. It’s definitely worth the effort to track down Levinson’s installment; the rest are only for the very curious or the lover of unintentionally bad pulp.

Jason Striker, Master of Martial Arts by Piers Anthony and Roberto Fuentes 
(Berkley Medallion Books)
Kiai! (1974)
Mistress of Death (1974)
The Bamboo Bloodbath (1974)
Ninja’s Revenge (1975)
Amazon Slaughter (1976)
Curse of the Ninja (1976)

The Jason Striker series has several things to distinguish it from other martial arts series beyond the fact that it’s co-written by highly prolific science fiction and fantasy author, Piers Anthony. For starters, it’s all written in first person from Striker’s point of view, and what a doozy of a point of view it is! Striker is a dense, boorish character and the books are all the better for it. Another unique aspect is that although Striker touts himself as a master of ALL martial arts, his primary go-to style is Judo. Yeah, that Olympic sport where people grapple and throw each other around instead of punching or kicking (Anthony and co-writer Fuentes were Judo practitioners themselves). There’s not a lot of cohesive or cogent narrative, but they are awash in funky 70s trappings. As the series goes on supernatural elements are introduced and everything starts to go off the rails, but in a decidedly fun pulpy way that works in spite of the outlandishness of it all. In the end it’s worth a gamble to see if this is your style of goofy fun.

Sloane by Steve Lee
(Pinnacle Books)
The Man with the Iron Fists (1974)
A Fistful of Hate (1974)

Sloane was a short-lived 2-book series credited to Michel Perry under the name of Steve Lee. On the surface it would appear to be a clone of the Kung Fu TV series with a practitioner of the Shaolin arts in the old west. However, beyond the western window dressing, there is absolutely nothing here to tie the two together. Instead what we get is a straight-up Piccadilly Western-style revenge tale filled to the brim with sadistic violence, sex, and a near horror vibe. The action is virtually non-stop and actually quite well written. In typical Piccadilly fashion, no one is safe and death is plentiful. Tod Sloane may be a bit of a cipher as he smokes his cheroot stogies and doles out beatdowns, but it all moves at a great clip and keeps going in unexpected directions.

Mondo by Anthony DeStefano
(Manor Books)
Mondo (1975)
Cocaine Kill (1977)
A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (1977)

The best description I have ever read for the Mondo series was coined by Glorious Trash blogger Joe Kenny: The book comes off like the grindhouse classic Rolling Thunder meets Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter. Mondo is a classic badass anti-hero, an unstoppable force of nature even before he trains under an elderly Japanese martial arts master. These books are brutally violent in terms of action and sex, both of which are plentiful. There’s also a big dose of Mack Bolan Executioner-style gunplay involved, though most of the series is comprised of Mondo using his skills with fists and feet to destroy anyone in his path—mobsters, assassins, or Kung Fu masters. Mondo stands apart from all other martial arts series by virtue of its sleaze factor and grimness.

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This is not an exhaustive list. Several titles could have been included if I had simply shifted the ratio of emphasis on martial arts-related content. The most obvious addition in this regard would be The Destroyer series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, where the killing art of Sinanju is as much a character as Remo or Chiun. But the martial art is not its main focus, which is what the paperbacks in this column all have in common—remove the martial arts and they all lose their sole reason for existence. And that is what made them worth all the effort for me personally. I will cover TV and movie tie-ins, standalone paperbacks that didn’t spawn a series, and titles from the 1980s in a future column.