I could have stretched this one into two separate posts, but since they would both concern the very same character (again, much like Karl Kort, never seen again after this story, sadly), and are from the same story, I chose to do a “two-in-one” with the best / worst two panels featuring this fascinating “yellow peril” villain, General Fang, featured in The Incredible Hulk #5, from 1962.
The first is after the Hulk, disguised as the Abominable Snowman (don’t ask), had destroyed a few of Fang’s tanks and weapons. Naturally, his men are worried:
But Fang, reminding me of a couple of bosses I had in the past, knows how to deal with those pesky outside contributions. I bet the other guy, the one with the simian look and the ridiculous huge bowl with a star, will not ever think, in the future, of offering the slightest suggestion to his most glorious general!
The next panel comes a bit later in the story, after Fang has ordered the launch of his missiles into the peaceful neighboring country of “Llhasa”, which is of course not meant to be Tibet (whose real-life capital is “Lhasa”, with just one “L”), perish the thought.
As the caption in the panel says, the Hulk stops the missiles, but Fang doesn’t know that yet, and so he orders his cavalry (just the right choice for attacking snow-covered mountains, I guess) to attack, and to “strike terror to those who were foolish enough to survive (his) missile attack“.
Because, when General Fang attacks your country, to even survive is but mere foolishness. Makes sense. 🙂 I must use this phrase more often…
Something else I’ve never understood: look at the first picture, where you can see Fang’s medals. Now, Fang is a brutal, absolute dictactor in his country, so it stands to reason that, any medals he has, he bestowed on himself. Which means that he could give himself a lot more medals (enough to fill his entire shirt, at least), on one hand… but, on the other hand, they are really valueless: he simply gave them to himself. Why even wear medals, when you’re the absolute number one in your country? Why would any dictator care about medals at all?
As for the “dared to advise me” thing, I’ve just imagined an even more exaggerated version: a villain so arrogant, so conceited, that he believed that, if you told him anything at all, you were implying that he didn’t know it already… so he’d have you killed. (I’ve just thought of a way around it, too — try to guess!)
Peter David, in his novel “Tong Lashing”, from his absolutely brilliant “Sir Apropos of Nothing” series, almost went that far, with an emperor that considered himself divine and all-knowing. So, the main character (Apropos), which had just arrived from a distant land, couldn’t talk to the emperor without dangerously offending him (and being executed for it)… since he obviously came from a land the emperor knew nothing about. So, just by telling him where you came from, you would be comitting blasphemy. (He also found a way around it, a bit different from the one I thought, above.)