Zheng Zu

Few villains in Marvel's Bronze Age arrived with the kind of shadowy grandeur that Zheng Zu commanded when Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin introduced him in Special Marvel Edition #15 in 1973 — a debut that helped launch one of the most stylish, morally complex titles of its era. Over more than five decades, this enigmatic figure has haunted the pages of Master of Kung Fu and The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, weaving through 104 catalog appearances alongside a cast of memorable characters including Black Jack Tarr, Leiko Wu, Clive Reston, and Denis Nayland Smith. Three of those appearances carry key-issue weight with collectors, a testament to how central Zheng Zu is to some genuinely landmark comics. His reach has even extended into Secret Avengers, proving that a figure born in the Bronze Age can cast a long shadow across Marvel's modern landscape.