'Pre-retcon' Mandarin was a beast. His mastery of chi was > most others I've seen in comics - as far as the abilities he was able to muster are concerned. He's one of the only sub-Hulk characters who's been able to peel back Tony's armor [pre-extremis] with fisticuffs alone [after repeated strikes, of course]. To be honest, I could see his superhuman stats/intellect/fighting prowess taking the majority over KK. *shrugs*
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Last edited by Galan007 on Jul 9th, 2008 at 03:54 PM
Gender: Male Location: Hiding from The Doctor, shhhh.....
Ok. I looked over the wiki. It says he's back to his armor-smashing level and....
"The Mandarin has been revived in the current arc of Iron Man. Apparently he has been in a prison in central China for some time. In this story it has been revealed that he has lost his hands (most likely the hands that were sent to Temugin were, in fact, actually the Mandarin's). He has also been living with no food or water for years. His ability to survive so long without food or water is likely due to his mastery of chi. Despite being handless and starved, he was able to kill several men armed with guns via his mastery of the martial arts"
That's pretty damn good.
". Though he has his Extremis disabled, Iron Man defeats the Mandarin while wearing the Silver Centurion armor by tearing the rings out of the Mandarin's spine, and then freezing him to death. Iron Man then prevents the Extremis-outbreak. But when the Mandarin's apparently frozen body is autopsied, all that is found is a blackened husk... not unlike an Extremis chrysalis."
This indicates he may have the Extremis virus, and all it's buffs.
__________________ Wanted: New sig. Something crazy, zany, and slightly evil. Will give sig credit to whoever's I sport.
Mandarin suffered a kind of temporary "soft" retcon. I say soft, because the comics never said anything about a force-field enhancing his blows.
Rather, his OHOTMU entry listed a force-field that was nowhere to be found in the comics.
Around the same time, he stopped using martial arts attacks in the comics, and started depending entirely on the rings to fight.
So there seems that there was some editorial decisions involved in all this, but that decision was kind of half-assed.
His most recent appearances haven't mentioned a force-field, and have gone back to the idea that he is a superhuman martial artist. So basically both pre-retcon and current Mandarin are the same Mandarin. The force-field guy was someone who fully existed only in the OHOTMU, though one could say the quiet way he stopped using martial arts in the comics amounts to a brief soft-retcon.
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Jul 9th, 2008 02:51 PM
