deejayway wrote:
A vast overstatement in my opinion. Sadly, when MoKF was bad, it was very, very bad.
Moench's first efforts were very lame, as he madly tried to find his own voice. Furthermore, he was working with a very young, inexperienced and over-worked Paul Gulacy, as well as Ron Wilson, who made Shang Chi look like the Hulk with a Beatle wig.
Hah.  If ever an artist was mismatched with a series, it was Ron Wilson doing his Kirby/Buscema hybrid on MOKF.

I agree that the worst issues of MOKF can be as bad as anything else Marvel published in the 70s or early 80s, and your summary of the low points is spot-on.  Englehart quit the series because of editorial demands that the book feature (in his words) "wall to wall violence."  Moench had to labor under this action-oriented mandate in his early issues, as well as the requirement that Fu Manchu be featured as the antagonist in every single issue.  These limitations make issues #20-28 often repetitive and uninspired.  When Moench finally was given the green light to change direction with issue #29 and write some stories without Fu, the series took off like a rocket.