TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN FOES : EGG-FU

ugh.

It’s hard to believe that, facing the apparent need to develop a food-based Chinese super-foe to bedevil Wonder Woman, that the creative team went with “Egg-Fu”, considering that General Tso was right there. Just give the guy a gun that turns people into chickens, ta-da, you’re done. Of course, it’s absolutely unbelievable that there was an apparent need to develop a food-based Chinese super-foe to bedevil Wonder Woman in the first place, but here we are – Egg-Fu!

I actually would've respected this whole endeavor a
little bit more if the sound effects had read
"CRANK CRANK CRANK" and "CLAACK!"

Debuting in Wonder Woman vol.1 No.157 back in October of 1965, Egg-Fu was possibly the unlikeliest-looking super-villain in the history of the form; even moreso than the world-devourer Galactus in his original short-pants, ‘Fu was intended to be a world-shattering menace and enemy of the freedom of man and he was a gigantic racist Easter Egg stuck in the ground whose Fu-Manchu moustache could be used as a weapon. “Hee-ho!” as said the big egg himself.

Even more amazing, Egg-Fu wasn’t just a one-timer; following his shattering dissolution at the hands of the Avenging Amazon, the lineage of Egg-Fu persisted, and Wonder Woman ended up facing his four-generations-removed descendant Egg Fu the Fifth! I’m shocked they didn’t call him Egg Fu Young, but whatevs, peeps, comics move fast. The horrifying part of this is realizing that Egg-Fu had three other descendants between himself and the relatively pint-sized Egg Fu the Fifth, Egg-Fu's two through four – lord, does it continue? Is there an Egg Fu 1,000,000 in the 853rd Century? Surely there should at least be a dozen of these guys, right? Each one a different size and wielding a different power? There, I actually just updated Egg-Fu for the twenty-first century, do I get to write the next big crossover event?

Actually, Egg-Fu WAS updated for the modern day in the pages of DC’s inaugural weekly comic book experiment Fifty-Two, in which he was reimagined by the power players scripting the series as a brilliantly evil mutant cyborg bearing – for some reason – the name of a prominent 4th century BC Taoist philosopher.  I dunno man, comics. Whatever the case, the revived “Chang Tzu” is a valuable reminder that there’s no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution, which if there were ever a proper epitaph to put on the gravestone of comics, that there’s a contender.

As an outro, it’s worth mentioning that there’s a THIRD Egg Fu, his robot twin who bedeviled the Metal Men and went by the name “Dr.Yes”, because of spy movies. That’s why they do things in comics sometimes, because movies did something. Meanwhile, there’s yet to be any sort of villainous Chow Mein, Kung Pao, Won Ton, Dim Sum, Congee or Egg Roll even though you can readily picture racist caricatures and dumb pun-based powers for each of ‘em.

Oh NOW he can say "R" words.