Writer: Shuizhu and Greg Pak

Art: Ario Anindito, Rachelle Rosenberg, VC’s Travis Lanham, and Gunji

Price: $3.99

Release Date: July 24th

After Battling in War of the Realms, Lin Lie gets his own ongoing series. Let’s dive into his story!

Lin Lie is battling Chiyou, the God of War, 5000 years ago. He’s not a warrior, but he has a sword. However, he can’t pick it up! His dad saves him from Chiyou but is killed in the process…..

Lin wakes up from the same frequent dream. He talks with his friend Cheng about Lin’s missing dad and brother. He gazes at the wall at a sword his dad gave him right before he disappeared. Cheng gives Lin a lead on some grave robbers who were with Lin’s dad when he got the sword.

Lin proceeds to track down the grave robbers and they tell Lin they’ll give him the location of where his dad was in exchange of a Jade Cicada that Lin is in possession of. Lin agrees but puts the Jade Cicada box that he built that the robbers couldn’t figure out how to open. As Lin prepares for his trip a delivery man drops off a package…. from his Dad! To be continued….

Story Two: At an antique shop in New York City Lin questions the shop owner of a map to the Valley of Tombs that Lin’s dad had sold him. He threatens the shop owner with his sword but is knocked to the ground by none other than Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu!

Later in Flushing, New York Shang-Chi uses a log as a training device and encourages Lin to listen, and that his real enemies are all around, watching. To be continued…..

This is an oversized issue #1, and at $3.99 is a great deal for your money at 30+ pages. It’s broken up into two stories.

The first story has a very distinct Indiana Jones vibe to it. Lin Lie looking for a map to track down his father. It works very well.

The second story features Shang-Chi, a character that’s been around the Marvel Universe since 1973. I’m not familiar with him very much at all, but it doesn’t matter. The book says he’s the “Master of Kung-Fu”, so that’s good enough for me. I was a bit skeptical in his training scene. My first thoughts were to the training scenes in Karate Kid movie, and to the Luke/Yoda scenes in The Empire Strikes Back. Shang-Chi’s explanation though of why Lin failed erased any doubts I had though.

Final Thoughts

This is a perfect example of how to start off an ongoing series. Perfect balance of introduction and set up of the story. I wasn’t overloaded with too much info. I want to know what’s next, and look forward to reading Lin’s adventures!