“Fu Jitsu” #1

Maybe not the hero we asked for. Maybe not the one we need. But he’s the hero who’d spend three years holding his breath in a sensory deprivation chamber under two miles of Antarctic pack ice just to forget about a girl. And that’s not nothing. He’s Fu Jitsu. And his saga starts here…

Cover by Wes St. Claire

Fu Jitsu #1
Written by Jai Nitz
Illustrated by Wes St. Claire
Lettered by Ryane Hill

Fu Jitsu is the world’s smartest boy, and has been for the last hundred years. Wait, what? Fu is an un-aging genius, and has had adventures around the globe and around the galaxy. From Einstein and the Wright brothers, to Gandhi and Johnny Unitas, Fu has met everyone in history while protecting Earth from Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man, and his dangerous magi-science.

Fu exiles himself to Antarctica to try and forget the painful breakup with his ex-girlfriend, Rachel. Meanwhile, Wadlow returns from the far-flung future and sends James Dean, his ultimate assassin, to kill Fu at the South Pole. And you thought your teenage years were tough?

From Jai Nitz, the award-winning writer of El Diablo, Sucide Squad Most Wanted and Dream Thief comes this action-packed new series with art from Teen Titans Annual artist Wesley St. Claire!

… Or rather, it continues.

Jai Nitz laces the pulpy, martial arts meets mad science mashup in “Fu Jitstu” #1 with just enough time travel trickery and callbacks to real world events that the history between Fu and his nemesis, Robert Wadlow, feels real and long-suffering. There’s a busy script at play here, with Nitz threading Nazi occultists, early-20th Century dive gear, a weapon called the Atomic Katana, and the recent pair of lacklustre 8-and-8 seasons from the Indianapolis Colts into a Looney Tunes episode’s worth of madcap action insanity.

People love throwing out comments like this story or that could only have been told as a comic. To the letter, comments like that are probably only true about five percent of the time. What I think they really mean to say is that to tell the same story in a television or cinematic world would be a logistical or budgetary nightmare. This issue features, among other highlights, James Dean as an assassin wielding an AK-47 and no compunction for mowing down a research base full of harmless lab techs. Now even with the techno-magic that let Rogue One’s visual effects artists bring Peter Cushing’s likeness back from across the uncanny valley, watching the aforementioned scene unfold with the original rebel without a cause would take a suspension of disbelief measured in increments roughly equivalent to a mortgage payment.

But comics are comics. And with Wes St. Claire already making a radiant feast of spot blacks bubbling off the fission-y, fuschia glow of Robert Ludlow’s Atomic Katana, Jai Nitz is able to get away with about as much as he damn well pleases. And that lack of restraint and inhibition in “Fu Jitsu” #1 makes for an opening salvo that crackles with irreverence and panache. St. Clare’s art has a sketchy, minimalist quality in places that seems like it’s just barely keeping up with the breakneck pacing. Violent as it may be, the characters just seem to just boogie through the fight sequences. Yet, St. Clare is clever enough to tighten up the fuzzy groupings of gestural lines whenever he needs to emphasize Fu’s lithe, wiry strength.

Common perception of kung fu is that it’s the more acrobatic and mystic of the martial arts, whereas ju jitsu is much more cerebral and methodic. In that way, our hero’s name is a delightful portmanteau referencing his status as both the eternal warrior and the world’s smartest boy. But maybe that’s just a highfalutin way of clarifying what Nitz conveys efficiently in Fu’s response to James Dean taunting after the wunderkind is shot through the shoulder.

Dean is a bit remiss that there won’t be any actual combat, hand-to-hand. “Be careful what you wish for,” Fu responds with a palm pressed to the wound. “I mastered cellular kung fu in the thirties.” St. Clare overlays this moment with a panel shaped like a microscope slide, where tens of tiny versions of himself coax along white blood cells and platelets to a highly expedited recovery.

And for all the giddy enthusiasm within “Fu Jitsu” #1, Nitz and St. Claire aren’t afraid of rubbing up nice and close to the darker side of their universe. Nitz references zombie blacksmiths forging the Atomic Katana in the fires of Nagasaki with a type of playful poor taste. St. Clare, on the other hand, tightly cross-hatches a splattering, splash-page of the moment with a horrific cadre of Warren-era grotesqueries.

Character development doesn’t seem to be in high demand here. Or, at least not for now. The order of the day is to introduce the world and its major players. And Fu seems about as clever and enlightened as he’ll ever be. Although it remains to be seen what sort of chaos will be introduced as he’s thrust back alongside the girl he went to such lengths – or depths, rather – to forget.

“Fu Jitsu” #1 is an infectious ball of fun. Jai Nitz and Wes St. Claire’s sensibility is delightfully off-kilter. It feels like Nitz is only starting to peel away the wrapper that’s kept Fu Jitsu and Robert Ludlow locked in their sprawling power struggle. And there’s an intoxicating sense that any number of historical persons or events will get drawn into the duel. Whatever or whomever may be coming down the pipe, it seems a foregone conclusion that St. Claire’s art will handle the embellishments with crackle, flurry, and flourish.

Final Verdict: 8.0 – Cellular kung fu, zombie blacksmiths, mystic X-ray toasters – how’s that for an all-new, all-different trinity.