#jademan

It’s crazy, but it’s true. Remember me babbling about how that caped “Underworld Warrior” on Tung Sing’s packaging art was cashing in on the wrestling, the ninja, and the Japanese superhero genre at once? Well, I probably missed to mention another important link. A link that for some reason didn’t come to my mind before I saw a bunch of comic book scans from fellow collector Lawrence Conti (@kiddkyodo on Instagram). It’s almost a shame that I haven’t mentioned The Crimson Ghost (1946) as a possible blueprint for our “Ultra Tumba Luchador” before. The character’s striking appearance is much, much closer to that UW design than any Golden Bat reference that I was seeing when I put together those first two articles on the Underworld Warriors origins

But let’s talk about those scans that Lawrence sent me. My theory has been that the UW artwork was kitbashed from various pieces, and styles. That it might be aping 60s & 70s English pulp horror comic book covers, I said. What I didn’t know until yesterday is that our infamous Underworld Warrior is actually a villain, coming straight from a Hong Kong comic book series called The Force of Buddha’s Palm! We can even find that UW coffin in one of its issues! The series was published by Jademan comics, created by no other than “the Godfather of Hong Kong comics” Tony Wong. At least that’s what I have learned! The villain is called the “White Skeleton”, and the particular edition where he’s shown in that typical UW pose was published somewhere between 1982, and 1984. So a few years prior to Tung Sing’s Underworld Warriors, which were released around 1986/87. The first English editions of Force of Buddha’s Palm were published in 1988, btw.

The fact that the identity of our mysterious “Ultra Tumba Luchador” is finally solved keeps blowing my mind. Thanks for that, Lawrence! Our “Warrior” is a shameless, straight copy of a Jademan character. A bootleg, not a knock-off! The question in fact is, if we can call Wong’s “White Skeleton” a knock-off of Republic’s Crimson Ghost. Maybe. Maybe his design was even influenced by Japanese superhero Golden Bat, or Mexican wrestlers in skeleton suits. But maybe “White Skeleton” is nothing but a popcultural, Chinese interpretation of the classic depiction of the Grim Reaper. So would the Crimson Ghost be.

Drunken Fist #13