The original comic strip Tiger’s Tale saw print, first in the pages of the January 1996 issue of World of Martial Arts magazine. The first official issue published in Kung Fu Tai Chi was the February+March 1996 issue (back then, the magazine was titled Kungfu Wushu Qigong, but that’s a whole other story). Patrick wasted no time in launching Tiger’s Tale, which was included in the following April+May issue. It ran until October 2000.
Having a comic in a martial arts magazine might seem incongruous, but there were many others. The martial arts economy is driven largely by kids, so every martial arts magazine attempted to add comics to their pages at some point. All the major newsstand martial arts mags tried. Black Belt and Inside Kung-Fu both ran comics for a short stint. There were even magazines specifically designed to target kids that contained comics. They all failed, usually within a few issues. Tiger’s Tale remains the longest running comic strip ever published in a newsstand martial arts magazine.
Below is a selection of those early comic strips.