Jimmy Woo is Marvel’s first Asian American hero, debuting in comic books in 1956. Woo has gradually emerged from being repeatedly linked in culturally stereotyped settings to become an endearing and consequential character in his own right.

Jimmy Woo and the Yellow Claw

Jimmy Woo’s origins were in a new Asian menace comic book, Yellow Claw, published by Atlas Publications, an earlier name for Marvel Comics. The Yellow Claw was clearly patterned after Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, but his name also evoked comic book history. One of the most memorable villains of the Golden Age of Comics in the 1940s was an arch villain of the original Daredevil, a character published by Lev Gleason. Originally named the Green Claw, by his second appearance he was simply known as the Claw. He was featured in his own series of stories. Clearly meant to appear both Asian and monstrous, the Claw also proved to be one of the most persistent Golden Age villains. He appearied in more than 40 different issues of Gleason comic books, including Silver Streak 1-2, 7, 11; Daredevil 1-31; Captain Battle, Jr. 1-2; and Boy Comics 89-93, spanning the years 1939 to 1953. His influence on the creation of the Yellow Claw should not be underestimated.          

Jimmy Woo was the young F.B.I. agent assigned to investigate and take down the villain. If the Yellow Claw embodied every possible Asian menace stereotype it was clear the Jimmy Woo was intended by editor Stan Lee and writer Al Feldstein (of E.C. Comics fame) to be the heroic and non-stereotyped counterpoint. If so, the colorist may not have received the memo. Inside the cover of that first issue, both the skin of the Yellow Claw and Woo were colored a sickly pale yellow, though unfortunately not atypical of comic books of this period. (On the cover of that first issue, both characters were colored in a more realistic fashion.

A directive apparently went out to have Jimmy Woo and the villain’s grand-niece Suwan’s skin coloring to be rendered the same color as the White characters beginning with the second issue. But it was apparently too much to hope for that the skin of a character called the Yellow Claw would be colored in any way other than that sickly pale yellow.

Also unusual for the time, Jimmy Woo was given a romantic interest, the Yellow Claw’s grand-niece Suwan. Suwan was a sympathetic character who was at least partially under her grand-uncle’s hypnotic control.

With that same second issue, the creative team of Al Feldstein and Joe Maneely was replaced by none other than Jack Kirby. While the nature of a comic book centered around a villain necessitated that the Yellow Claw never be entirely defeated, Woo proved to be an effective counterpoint, undoing every one of the Claw’s schemes.

Jimmy Woo in Steranko’s SHIELD

Jim Steranko was the wunderkind of Marvel Comics in the mid-1960s. Clearly the Yellow Claw had made a significant impression of the young artist ten years earlier, as he choose the Asian menace as the second character to challenge SHIELD (Baron Strucker, the head of HYDRA, was the first). Presaging the return of the Yellow Claw, however, was the entrance of the handsome and courageous Jimmy Woo, who reappeared in 1967, in Strange Tales #160.

Woo was now described as an old friend of Captain America. Both Nick Fury and Woo now both had their roots in World War II continuity, then over twenty years in the past, making them rather virile fellows in their forties. (Adherence to any sense of consistent aging was soon abandoned by Lee and his crew of writers.)

While Steranko’s artwork was the epitome of cutting edge sixties art, the yellow coloring of the Yellow Claw’s skin remained a troubling throwback to earlier eras. But Steranko’s rendering of Jimmy Woo was even more progressive than the original. The man was clearly a stud, the only character other than Fury himself to have his shirt torn asunder to reveal a slender, but well muscled chest. Unfortunately, Suwan was not so lucky. She was definitely sexy, too, but in the climatic closing moments of the saga, she meets her maker while rescuing Woo from one of her uncle’s creative death traps.

Woo’s shirtless soliloquy, as supplied by Steranko, was just a soapy as anything Stan Lee might have come up with.

Steranko supplied a twist ending that was something of a tour deforce, even if if didn’t make a ton of sense. (The Yellow Claw was a robot created by Dr. Doom who was playing a chess game with an artificial intelligence he created, both of them apparently manipulating the characters involved.) But in the original series, the Yellow Claw was also a master of robotics and could have just as easily escaped defeat by having a robot version of himself be the one to do battle with Fury and Woo. Regardless, Suwan appeared to still be genuinely dead.

Readers of the era ate up the stunning turn of events, too enamored of Steranko’s extraordinary style to view it as anything but a moment of wonderful bravura storytelling.

As for Jimmy Woo, his purpose in Steranko’s saga fulfilled, the Chinese American F.B.I. agent only appeared in a few more stories, a few by less talented hands after Steranko’s abrupt departure from the series. Though he did become a full fledged agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of SHIELD versus Godzilla

It seemed that not that many Marvel writers remembered Jimmy Woo, of if they did, had no particular interest in reviving him as a character. Not until Marvel obtained rights to develop a comic book devoted to none other than Godzilla himself. The premise of the series was that SHIELD would take on the challenging task of trying to subdue the monster. Dum Dum Dugan, one of Fury’s WW2 Howling Commandos, would head up the team trying to take down Godzilla. Another former commando, Gabriel Jones would also join the effort. The final member of team would be the newest SHIELD agent, Jimmy Woo.

Godzilla was a Japanese monster, after all. Or at least one whose creation originated in Japan. Robert, the Japanese youth who befriended Godzilla was to be a member of the cast, along with his grandfather, scientist Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi and his assistant, the lovely Tamara Hashioka. You could almost imagine the gears turning in writer Doug Moench’s mind. Jimmy Woo could also serve on Dugan’s team. And if everything unfolded as it might, Woo could serve a potential love interest of Tamara.

The first issue of the Godzilla comic book was cover dated August 1977, once again almost exactly ten years after Jimmy Woo’s least appearance. Woo was definitely a secondary character in the series, allowed his moments in the narrative but seldom taking center stage. By the end of the comic book run, with the menace of Godzilla apparently receding, Woo asked Tamara to stay in the United States. Tamara said no, the doctor needed her, but left open the possibility of a return to American at some later date. If she ever did, that particular story was never told.

Flashback: A 1950s Atlas Heroes Super-Team

A speculative story told in 1978 by the ever observant Watcher, Marvel’s passive recorder of events, raised the possibility that an earlier Avengers-like team of 1950s superheroes led by none other than Jimmy Woo had operated before the formation of the Avengers everyone knew. While lacking super-powers of his own, Woo was clearly the right man to lead the new team because the Yellow Claw had returned, with a team of super-powered villains all his own. As told in What If #9 (6/78) and set in 1958, Woo was still with F.B.I. and newly assigned to guard President Eisenhower.

Woo gathers a team of heroes that, for the most part, had appeared in 1950s Marvel Comics (then known at Atlas). His team consisted of Venus (who appeared in 19 issues of her own comic book from 1948-1952), Marvel Boy (who debuted in his own comic book in 1950), a rehabilitated killer robot (appearing only once in Menace #5 in 1953), Ken Hale, the Gorilla-Man (a one-off character from Men’s Adventures #26 in 1954), and finally the 3-D Man, an ersatz fifties hero introduced in 1977 in Marvel Premiere #35. Jann of the Jungle and Namora, two heroines also active in 1950s comic books, assisted in the locating Gorilla-Man and the robot respectively.

The gathered group managed to dispatch Yellow Claw and his team, but to the chagrin of the gathered heroes, President Eisenhower asked them to disband the group and pretend they had never existed. He deemed the team too unusual to be accepted by the American public.

Jimmy Woo’s Return in Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.

Ten years later, in 1988, Jimmy Woo returned yet again, this time in a mini-series clearly intended as a love letter to Steranko’s much loved tenure on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. While the series did its best to emulate the feel of the original, Jimmy Woo’s role in the proceedings was decidedly unsatisfactory. Indeed, the series suggested that Woo had been killed and the agent Nick Fury interacted with was a sentient Life-Model Decoy who had gone rogue in service of Hydra. The decision of the writer to utilize the character in this way was particularly unfortunate as, with the exception of Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu, there were virtually no viable Asian American heroes in the Marvel stable. This continuity was largely forgotten in future years and so was Jimmy Woo.

A New Life as the Head of Atlas Era Heroes

Jimmy Woo missed his usual once a decade revival in the 1990s. But it was worth the wait, as Woo was elevated to main character status with the release of Agents of Atlas #1 in October 2006, the first of a six issue miniseries. In it, Woo and his team once again encounter the Yellow Claw, now sometimes referred to as the Golden Claw to minimize the racial stereotype. At the start of the miniseries, Woo is portrayed as an older man, in his fifties or older. In the course of a mission, he is badly injured and in essence brain dead. Ken Hale, Gorilla-Man engineers a “rescue mission” in which he takes him to Marvel Boy now the Uranian’s space ship. There, using Uranian science, Woo’s body is restored to a youthful thirty something status. Since all of his memories are gone, however, the Uranian must use his extensive recollection of Woo’s personality and memories which unfortunately end in 1958. In that way, the 1958 Jimmy Woo is restored as a youthful and vital agent, with vivid memories of the Yellow Claw and still in love with the apparently deceased Suwan.

The old team is brought back together, though in this timeline, Namora was a member and not the 3-D Man. And in the present they must take down the Atlas Foundation which is headed by the Golden Claw. Once again defeated, this time the Claw declares Woo to be heir to his empire. Under Woo’s leadership, the Atlas Foundation becomes a force for good and the old team become Agents of Atlas.

As the new Director of the Atlas Foundation, Woo also obtains a royal advisor, an ancient dragon by the name of Mr. Lao. A rather delightful if imperious character, Mr. Lao will remain for the next two iterations of the team.

The Agent of Atlas miniseries was successful enough to prompt an ongoing series that debuted in April 2009 and ran for eleven issues. The series is capped by the good news that Suwan is still alive. But the bad news is she now calls herself the Jade Claw and she seeks to take back of her father’s organization. In the end, the Jade Claw is defeated, but Woo refuses to take her life, hoping to bring her faction in line. But, for the moment anyway, he has washed his hands of her.

Yet another series, simply titled Atlas, debuted in July 2010. Running only five issues it served to wrap up the stories of the Agents of the Atlas Foundation as told by Jeff Parker. And with only nominal exceptions, Jimmy Woo slumbered for another ten years.

The New All Asian Agents of Atlas

The character of Jimmy Woo has never had an easy time finding his way back to the Marvel spotlight. But this time he had a biracial Korean-American writer guiding his destiny, Greg Pak. The writer described how he “grew up in an era when it was rare to see multidimensional Asian characters in American media.” Pak had a vision of an all Asian and Asian American superhero team.

Beginning in a series of stories in the Totally Awesome Hulk comic book featuring Amadeus Cho, a character Pak co-created in 2005, and graduating to a mining series War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas, Woo was instrumental in pulling together a new team.

In this iteration, the Agents of Atlas include Amadeus Cho, AKA Brawn; Cindy Moon, Silk; Shang-Chi, martial artist supreme; Seol Hee, Luna Snow; Dan Bi, Crsent; Lin Lie, Sward Master; Lei Ling. Aero; and Pearl Pangan, Wave. Raz Malhotra, the new Giant Man also interacts with the group.

Jimmy Woo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jimmy Woo has gained increased prominence with his role in the Antman and the Wasp movie and the WandaVision streaming series. As played by actor Randall Park, Woo displays a lighter side in these appearances, displaying a bemused reaction to events rarely seen in the more consistently serious comic book appearances. He also hasn’t had the opportunity to display as much of his fighting prowess which is very much in evidence in his comic book appearances. Park makes Woo a very appealing character and likely insures a larger presence going forward.

Mark Carlson-Ghost