Fu Manchu
| Fu Manchu | |
|---|---|
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| First appearance | The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu |
| Last appearance | Emperor Fu Manchu |
| Created by | Sax Rohmer |
| Portrayed by | Arthur Hughes Harry Agar Lyons Warner Oland Boris Karloff John C. Daly Harold Huber Frank Cochrane Henry Brandon Glen Gordon Christopher Lee Peter Sellers Nicolas Cage |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Scientist, Super-Villain |
| Nationality | Chinese |
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character introduced in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the twentieth century. The character was also featured extensively in cinema, television, radio, comic strips, and comic books for over 90 years, and has become an archetype of the evil criminal genius while lending the name to the Fu Manchu moustache.
"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."
Supervillain Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, thuggees, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using "pythons and cobras ... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli ... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons.
In the 1933 novel, The Bride of Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu claims to hold doctorates from four Western universities. In the 1959 novel, Emperor Fu Manchu, he reveals he attended Heidelberg University, the Sorbonne, and University of Edinburgh. At the time of their first encounter (1911), Dr. Petrie believed that Fu Manchu was around 70 years old. This would have placed Fu Manchu in the West studying for his first doctorate in the 1860s or 1870s.
According to Cay Van Ash, Rohmer's biographer and former assistant who became the first author to continue the series after Rohmer's death, "Fu Manchu" was a title of honour, which meant "the Warlike Manchu". Van Ash speculates that Fu Manchu had been a member of the imperial family of China who backed the losing side in the Boxer Rebellion. In the earliest books, Fu Manchu is an agent of the secret society, the Si-Fan, and acts as the mastermind behind a wave of assassinations targeting Western imperialists. In later books, he vies for control of the Si-Fan, which is more concerned with routing fascist dictators and halting the spread of communism. The Si-Fan is largely funded through criminal activities, particularly the drug trade and human trafficking ("white slavery"). Dr. Fu Manchu has extended his already considerable lifespan by use of the elixir of life, a formula he spent decades trying to perfect.
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Wikipedia