Paul Gulacy (; born August 15, 1953) is an American comics artist best known for his work for DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and for drawing one of the first graphic novels, Eclipse Enterprises' 1978 Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species, with writer Don McGregor. He is most associated with Marvel's 1970s martial-arts and espionage series Master of Kung Fu. Biography Early life and career Paul Gulacy was raised in Youngstown, Ohio, and as a teen was inspired by art of Jim Steranko on Marvel Comics' Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. He went on to study at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Fellow Youngstown resident Val Mayerik, a Marvel artist, introduced him to another local Marvel artist, Dan Adkins of East Liverpool, Ohio, for whom Gulacy would work as an assistant, and who suggested Gulacy prepare a six-page sample for Marvel. "He sent it to an editor named Roy Thomas", Gulacy recalled, "and two weeks later I got the phone call telling me I was hired." Gulacy's initial work as a Marvel freelancer was penciling the 15-page story "Morbius, the Living Vampire" in Adventure into Fear #20 (cover-dated Feb. 1974), written by Mike Friedrich and inked by Jack Abel. Following this came an inking assignment, over penciler Bob Brown on the superhero comic Daredevil #108 (March 1974). At some unspecified point during this time, Gulacy did a small amount of artwork for the pornographic magazine Hustler, explaining that comics artist Jim Steranko, whom he had met through Adkins, had turned down what Gulacy called "a couple of jobs" and suggested Gulacy instead. "I did them. They offered me more and a lot of money, but I turned them down. ... I consider it a skeleton in my closet." In 1974, Gulacy began work on the character with which he became most associated, the philosophical martial artist and secret agent Shang-Chi, in the comic Master of Kung Fu (cover-billed as The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu) #18 (June 1974), inked by Al Milgrom. That initial story and one in the next issue were written by Steve Englehart, but issue #20 (Sept. 1974), co-written by Gerry Conway and Doug Moench, and the same month's Giant-Size Master of Kung Fu #1, written by Moench, marked the beginning of a Moench–Gulacy collaboration on the increasingly complex, cinematic feature about the son of longtime pulp fiction supervillain Fu Manchu, who teams with