As Shang-Chi finds his unassuming life interrupted by Marvel’s heroes again, he reminds a major Avenger about the gift he let languish.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Shang-Chi #1, by Gene Luen Yang, Dike Ruan, Triona Farrell and VC’s Travis Lanham, on sale now.
Things are looking up for Shang-Chi after a recent harrowing encounter involving his evil father Zheng Zhu’s secret progeny and making a new home for himself in San Francisco’s Chinatown. And when the Master of Kung Fu finds the fantastical elements of the Marvel Universe intruding on his life, Shang-Chi takes the opportunity to remind one of his oldest superhero buddies, Spider-Man, about how he gave him the chance to significantly improve his powers through one-on-one martial arts training to further hone his senses.
To Shang-Chi’s disapproval, Spider-Man hasn’t been keeping up with his training.
Interrupting a dinner date, Spider-Man and Shang-Chi team up to take on supernatural forces threatening the city, with one of Shang-Chi’s long lost sisters tagging along for the hard-hitting ride. Shang-Chi inquires if his old friend has kept up with the Way of the Spider, the martial arts fighting style that Shang-Chi developed and taught him sometime ago. As Peter Parker ruefully admits he let his training fall to the wayside in favor of relying on his signature Spider-Sense once again, Shang-Chi reveals that the inner chi-based training that he taught Spider-Man would only serve to greatly enhance Peter’s Spider-Sense to levels he has never experienced before as the two return their focus to the task at hand.
Shang-Chi had come through for Spider-Man at a time when Peter was at his most vulnerable and without his Spider-Sense to warn him of incoming danger. Spider-Man previously used a device he developed to negate an upgraded Scorpion’s powers only for his plan to come with the unexpected side effect of neutralizing his Spider-Sense. Shang-Chi trained Peter to hone his senses and use his wall-crawling powers to innovate new combat techniques until Peter eventually regained his Spider-Sense during the crossover event “Spider-Island.” With his powers restored, Peter fell back into his old habits rather than retain what Shang-Chi had taken the time to teach him.
Spider-Man was actually the very first superhero that Shang-Chi teamed up with after leaving his father’s cruel tutelage in a remote hideout in the mountains of China. Taking place in 1974’s Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 by Len Wein and Ross Andru, a misunderstanding between Shang-Chi and the web-slinger in Manhattan leads them to come to blows before they cleared up their differences to take on a mutual threat and quickly become friends in the immediate aftermath. Since then, the two heroes embarked on several team-ups, with their latest adventure demonstrating how much Shang-Chi understands a world of mysticism that a man of science like Spider-Man has often struggled with comprehending.
With so much constantly going on in Peter Parker’s life, the time and patience to train in Shang-Chi’s mental conditioning and sensory heightening will likely always elude the web-slinging superhero. If Peter took the time, he could potentially have some of the sharpest fighting skills of any super-powered figure in the Marvel superhero community. Shang-Chi has expertly honed his body and mind to become the Marvel Universe’s ultimate martial arts warrior — with all due respect to Iron Fist — and developed the perfect way for Peter to become a stronger Spider-Man. Spider-Man may be too easily distracted as he balances great power and great responsibility. but Shang-Chi knows that Spider-Man already has the keys to take his superhero skills to the next level.
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