In July 1988, Kung Fu Special #1 by Jademan comics hit the comic shelves. It was an introduction to the comics that would compose the Jademan line-up. These
Oriental Heroes was by far the cream of the crop, in fact if all of
Jademan's titles had been at the level set by Oriental Heroes
they may well have survived. In Hong Kong the series had started long
before the spot that Kung Fu Special started at and went on long after issue 55.
The issues pre-issue 1 were more cartoony and light hearted in style. It appears that
the only villians retained from these issues are Chan Ou Wan,
Skeleton Secretary and some of The Secretaries henchmen. The basic
storyline involves Tiger Wong and Gold Dragon
systematically working there way through Global Cult. There previous
encounter was in Hong Kong where they fought and killed Firey God
. Now they have finally reached the top of Global Cult which consists
of The Supreme and the rest of his family. An additional motivation
for battling Global Cult is revenge against Chan Ou Wan for killing
Tiger Wongs' brother Dragon Wong.
One of the major problems with the Jademan comics was in the
translating. Blatent spelling and syntax problems were evident. There was
also a huge problem with dialog coming out of the wrong character.
In China, comics are read from back to front which is no problem to
adjust for a U.S. audience but the big problem was that the
individual frames were set to be viewed from right to left. Each
frame had to be cut and reset to be read from left to right.
Considering that frames are of varying sizes and shapes
this is an understandably difficult process. The last problem was in the
manner in which text would be presented. A character may have a thought
balloon when he is clearly speaking. Text may be placed in a box which is
traditionally understood to be information from a storyteller but instead is
words spoken by a character. All of these problems left the Jademan comics
often difficult to understand.