Ghost Fox Killer
1935 - Hu Li Jing is born in Ghost Fox City, a dimensional nexus within the Paths Beyond adjacent to the Chinese Realm of Death.
1949 - Hu Li Jing assumes the mantle of Ghost Fox Killer, tending to the souls of evil men in Hong Kong, maintaining the connection with Ghost Fox City.
13 years ago - Hu Li Jing first meets Fang Zhifu, forming their unique bond.
8 years ago - Hu Li Jing becomes a founding member of China's Great Ten out of loyalty to Fang Zhifu.
The Great Ten represent one of my all-time favorite Grant Morrison creations. They did more than just build a new team of original Superheroes (Or Super-Functionaries, in this case), but they built a whole history around them, giving each character a truly unique story and sense of place, and structured it all around the history and politics and culture of a very real-world take on China and all it's complexity. It's an incredible piece of worldbuilding, and while it's tragic that they don't have that many appearances, it's also very understandable, because they are such an intricately woven tapestry, I can see why it would be difficult for other writers to pick them up.
Hu Li Jing's StoryLike the rest of the Great Ten, Ghost Fox Killer is another deep dive into various cultural and historical concepts from China. She is of course, exactly what she appears to be; a cool, lethal femme fatale archetype. But her story has been constructed out of a collection of really compelling ideas. She's a resident of a city that exists just beyond the veil of death, whose foundations rest on the ghosts that she collects here, in the regular world. In practice, as she collects armies of living informants or ghostly footsoldiers to serve her, she also starts to resemble old radio serial characters like the Green Hornet.
But then her story also ties into the history of crime in the city of Hong Kong. I don't know how true this is, because I'm not a historian, but in her story we learn that when Shanghai was carved up into five different districts by colonial powers it became impossible to enforce the law from one district to the next, making it a haven for organized crime, but that the triads then fled to Hong Kong after the communists took over in 1949. This then makes Hong Kong her hunting grounds for evil men, and soon it becomes the most haunted city in the world as she farms the souls of gangsters to strengthen the connection to Ghost Fox City. This is just such a complex and interesting concept of a character, and it plays out in such a strikingly visual way. Their story also includes the bond between Hu Li and August General in Iron... It's just a story I wish we got more of. |
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