The Yellow Claw

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Real name: Unknown


Date of birth: Around 1850
Place of birth: Somewhere in mainland China


Eyes: Blue
Hair: None
Height: 6' 2''
Weight: 210 lbs
Other distinguishing features: The Yellow Claw has a pale yellow skin color quite unlike the skin tones of other Orientals.
Race: Human


Occupation: Would-be conqueror
Legal status: Citizen of the People's Republic of China with no known criminal record
Marital Status: Married many times
Identity: Secret
Known relatives: Suwan (grandniece, deceased)
Base of operations: Various hidden bases throughout the world


Skills & abilities: Yellow Claw possesses the normal human strength of a man of his physical age, height, and stature who engages in intensive regular exercise. He also has superhuman psychic abilities with which he can influence another person's sensory perceptions, causing that Person to see, hear, and even feel the illusions the Claw projects into his or her mind.

Yellow Claw has considerable knowledge of both sorcery and science, most notably biochemistry. Among his greatest achievements, is elixirs that prolong his life and genetically engineered beasts. Combined with considerable skill in robotics, he has also made a lot of progress in both robots like LMDs (Life Model Decoys) and cyborgs.

Yellow Claw is a master of the Chinese martial arts and a formidable hand-to-hand combatant.

Equipment: The Yellow Claw has made use of a wide array of highly advanced weaponry. He can weaken a person's will with his "id paralyzer." Slaves who have been subjected to the id paralyzer are commanded telepathically by the Claw through helmets they wear that transmit and amplify his mental orders.

The Yellow Claw often uses gigantic mutated beasts with or without cybernetic implants, such as giant spiders, created in his labs.


Continuity: Marvel Universe (616)
Publisher(s): Atlas
First app.: Yellow Claw (vol. 1) #1 (1956)
Creator(s): Al Feldstein
Country of origin: USA


Background notes: After the communist revolution in China in the late 1940s and the effects it had on both China and the rest of the World, along with the war in Korea and the Cold War really gaining momentum, a World conquering threat from Asia made sense to do in the mid 1950s. Sax Rohmer and Alex Raymond had already made this type of villains popular with Fu Manchu and Emperor Ming respectively (even though Ming was not from Earth) and at this time Atlas had not become the innovative Marvel Comics yet (it would also be about 15 years before Marvel licensed Fu Manchu for its Master of Kung Fu series), so The Yellow Claw was created.

From a historical perspective, Yellow Claw is interesting. He is a part of a long line of ethnic stereotypes that the American comics use to reflect how they perceive the rest of the World. During WWII it was the evil Germans and Japanese, in the 1960s it was the communists, especially China and USSR, and since the Cultural Revolution in Iran in 1979 its been the Middle East that supplied a lot of the villains, especially since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Contrary to Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless, Yellow Claw haven't been used very much in stories, and so he has been allowed to retain his status as evil Chinese World conqueror, even today, which makes him a very unique character.


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