TV series with Asian characters in the title role are a rarity.
Before the current Kung Fu reboot/updating on The CW, there were less than a dozen, and the second one ever was an animated cartoon!*
Here's the never-reprinted first issue of the Gold Key comic based on the cartoon...
Here's the never-reprinted first issue of the Gold Key comic based on the cartoon...
Writer Mark Evanier and artist Warren Tufts adapted the pilot episode "The Crown Jewel Caper" into a book-length comic tale on an incredibly-tight deadline, using an early script and storyboards.
*The first series with an Asian performer as the title character, 1951's Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, about an art gallery owner/amateur sleuth starring the legendary Anna May Wong, is long-lost with all videotapes and kinescopes destroyed during a legal dispute over the defunct DuMont network's assets.
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A memorable and rare example of positively-portrayed Asian characters on 70s TV. Chan himself was voiced by an Asian-American actor (Keye Luke, who had played #1 son in some of the old Chan movies). The children were mostly voiced by Asian-American actors, though a couple were not. Jodie Foster, for example, played Anne Chan. Charlie remained a bit of a racial stereotype; the kids were just standard American cartoon kids, but of Chinese descent.
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