You may be asking yourself: why the review of Master of Kung Fu #126 – and why now?

Well, the past few weeks have been amongst the biggest in professional wrestling history, yet the drama has spilled out of storylines and the ring – and into the real world, where it’s had some messy consequences.

AEW wrestler CM Punk had recently returned from a lengthy suspension, which was partly enforced because of his reaction to some criticism from fellow wrestlers – resulting in a very public meltdown at a post-show press conference.

That meltdown led to a violent backstage altercation, which saw everyone involved suspended.

Punk was seen as the catalyst for this mess, but was allowed to return to the company to work on a different show to anyone involved in the fracas.

Yet it seems that his ego and sensitivity got the better of him once again – and, just before emerging to take part in the opening match at AEW All In – at Wembley Stadium, for what turned out to be the biggest wrestling show in history, Punk physically attacked another wrestler and, reportedly, placed backstage staff and AEW owner, Tony Khan, in harm’s way.

Punk was publicly fired days later, just before two huge shows in his home town of Chicago, where he is near universally beloved by local wrestling fans.

Why am I explaining all this in a review of a Shang Chi comic book, of all things?

Well, CM Punk himself wrote this one-off issue; all of the recent drama helped remind me that Punk had a hand in writing a number of comics – so curiosity finally got the better of me and led me to checking it out.

It’s not the disaster I was exp, though it’s not what I’d call a great comic.

Shang Chi is supposedly on a day off amidst huge numbers of animals disappearing from the zoo. Attacked by ninjas, he’s soon in the clutches of a kung fu obsessed supervillain, who’s got evil plans for our martial artist hero.

It’s quite a fun story, which feels incredibly old school. There’s an attempt at humour with the Hand ninjas involved throughout the story that mostly falls flat.

The exposition heavy plot also falls kind of flat too, leading to a story that feels incredibly light and somewhat inconsequential, despite a few dark moments.

It’s all, well, fine. It’s just a bit forgettable and incredibly generic, despite the weird kung fu aspects just shoehorned in.

It seems that it might very well be the end of the line for CM Punk in wrestling; though he tried his hand at MMA (very unsuccessfully), perhaps his future is in writing for comic books again?

On the strength of this issue, it seems he could do with some more practice – but it’s far from awful.