Gene Day is the regular artist now. This book delivers only top-shelf artists. The writing continues to be good–some of the best of Doug Moench’s extensive and impressive career–and yet, at the same time, the book still feels past its prime.
All comic series that go on for 100+ issues reach this point. Find themselves telling the same stories again and again. For some reason, it works better for me with superhero books than it does with Shang Chi. Maybe because there really aren’t any “new” villains, there’s next to no crossover with the rest of the Marvel Universe–it’s a closed system, without much versatility. It also might be because a single person has essentially written this book for so long. So he’s re-doing his own work.
In short, I probably would have liked these issue more if I hadn’t read the ones that precede them. And it’s also true that as good as Gene Day and Mike Zeck are, they’re not Paul Gulacy–who was a visionary for this character.
After these issues, the final arc for Shang Chi begins.