"Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" Confronts Its Racist Past

The debut story of Shang-Chi in 1973 was rife with racial slurs and he was introduced as the son of the infamously offensive caricature Fu Manchu.

"Shang-Chi" tells the story of a martial arts master confronting his dark past. That's the plot of Marvel's new superhero movie, but it's also an apt description of the franchise's reckoning with its racist comic book origins almost 50 years ago. "It was actually very personal," says director Destin Daniel Cretton. Ron Han, founder of POC Culture, says, "Over the course of numerous decades — his initial run of his book had 125 issues — and never had he had an Asian writer telling his story until Gene Yang, which is essentially last year."