DOG BROTHER #1
Real Name: Sihing
Identity/Class: Mystically-altered human (1830s to present, Chinese)
Occupation: Mystical champion
Group Membership: Immortal Weapons (Bride of Nine Spiders, Fat Cobra, Iron Fist (Danny Rand), Prince of Orphans (John Aman), Steel Phoenix (Davos), Tiger's Beautiful Daughter)
Affiliations: Army of Thunder, Avengers (Luke Cage, Iron Man (Tony Stark), Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers), Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross), Steve Rogers, Wolverine (James Howlett)), Ayi, Black Cat (Felicia Hardy), Cloak (Tyrone Johnson), Dagger (Tandy Bowen), Dog Brother #1 (unrevealed), Hercules, Kaine, Misty Knight, Lei-Kung the Thunderer, Shang-Chi, Shroud (Max Coleridge), Sidai, Venom (Flash Thompson), War Machine (Jim Rhodes), Colleen Wing, X-Men (Cyclops/Scott Summers, Emma Frost, Gambit/Remy LeBeau, Storm/Ororo Munroe), Young Allies (Firestar/Angelica Jones, Gravity/Greg Willis, Spider-Girl/Anya Corazon)
Enemies: Absorbing Man/Greithoth (Crusher Creel), Agamotto, Changming (Quan Yaozu), Zhou Cheng, Decapitator (Ai Apaec), Hongmen, Hydra (Xao, others), Lightning Lords of Nepal, Queen (Adriana Soria), Titania/Skirn (Mary McPherran)
Known Relatives: Unidentified parents (deceased)
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Under-City
First Appearance: Immortal Iron Fist#8 (October, 2007)
Powers/Abilities: Dog Brother #1 the latest in a long line of champions of the mystical Under-City. He is a master of martial arts; his special moves include the razor dervish attack, blood-hunger's blade, and choking wind. He can also harness and control his own chi energies. A master of both armed and unarmed combat, he carries a number of swords and knives and wears a heavy suit of armor. He is also a brilliant tactician, and extremely quick-witted. He is frequently accompanied by a pack of stray dogs, whose chi energies empower him and apparently prolong his lifespan and vitality.
History: (Immortal Weapons#3/1) - Sihing lived an idyllic life with his fisherman father and fieldworker mother in Hong Kong until they were both killed in the First Opium War in 1841, when a British cannonball struck their boat. Sihing eventually found himself living in the streets of Canton, where heard tales of the legendary Dog Brother #1, prankster assassin, defender of orphans, and champion of the mystical Under-City. After a few years, he met and befriended a fellow orphan named Sidai. Sidai was new to the streets, so Sihing taught him how to steal food to survive. Later, as they rested underneath a bridge, they were accosted by a group of drunken thugs. Sihing tossed Sidai into the river to protect him, and took a beating until the drunks lost interest and left. The next day, Sihing and Sidai collaborated with Sihing's friend, a prostitute named Ayi, to rob one of her wealthy clients. Pursued by the police, they lost their pursuers in an opium den, only to run right into the criminal Hongmen. The Hongmen recruited both boys to serve as drug mules, and to serve as bait for rival gangs; although they were fed and housed, they both knew that the life of a drug runner was short. Sihing became concerned that Sidai was adopting the criminal mentality, so he told him about Dog Brother, and promised that he would come to rescue them. One day, they were assigned to smuggle barrels of gunpowder with another boy; when they ran into a group of suspicious policemen, one of the cops struck the third boy's barrel with an axe, triggering a massive explosion. Both Sihing and Sidai survived, but Sidai's leg was broken. On their next drug run, Sihing had to carry Sidai; when they were spotted by a cop, they couldn't escape. He took their bribe, but wanted their drugs...and more. Sihing stabbed him, then hid out with Ayi. The Hongmen soon caught up with them, and took both boys out in a boat to make an example of them. Sihing tried to comfort Sidai with a tale of Dog Brother, but Sihing angrily accused him of making his stories up, and claimed that Dog Brother was a fraud. The Hongmen then killed Sidai, enraging Sihing; he broke free of his bonds and started fighting the Hongmen, but the Hongmen were armed. Before they could kill the boy, however, they came under attack from Dog Brother, who slew them all. He apologized for his lateness, but told Sihing that he had needed to fall "all the way". He brought him below decks to rest; the next morning, Dog Brother doffed his armor and told Sihing that his time had ended, and it was time for a new Dog Brother. At Dog Brother's urging, the reluctant Sihing performed the cut of continuity, killing Dog Brother with his own sword. The chi energy from Dog Brother's pack of dogs flowed into him, and Sihing donned his hero's armor and steered the boat into the rising sun.
(Immortal Iron Fist#13 (fb) ) - At some point in his history, Dog Brother was confronted with a group of foes; when they wouldn't yield to him, he chopped off all their heads and laid waste to their village.
(Immortal Iron Fist#16 (fb) ) - At some point in the past, Dog Brother
battled
the Lightning Lords of Nepal.
(Immortal Iron Fist#8) - With the eight capital cities of Heaven in alignment, one of which was Dog Brother's Under-City, a tournament was held in the Heart of Heaven to determine their alignment in the celestial clockwork. Dog Brother attended the tournament, and was assigned to fight the Bride of Nine Spiders in the first round.
(Immortal Iron Fist#10) - Dog Brother faced off with the Bride; immediately, she unleashed a massive torrent of venomous spiders from her chest cavity. Overwhelmed, Dog Brother tried to take the fight to her, but he was unable to stop her and surrendered.
(Immortal Iron Fist#12) - Dog Brother introduced the fight between the Prince of Orphans and Fat Cobra, but the Prince interrupted him, and announced that he wished to battle the Steel Phoenix instead. Dog Brother agreed, and watched as the Prince demolished his opponent. Later, as the Immortal Weapons dined together, Tiger's Beautiful Daughter suggested that they ask the Prince to join them. Iron Fist agreed to go ask him, and Dog Brother joined him, for backup. Nonetheless, the Prince shooed them away.
(Immortal Iron Fist#13) - Dog Brother regaled the other Weapons with a tale of his past, even getting Davos to crack a smile. The Prince of Orphans then approached them, and told them that Hydra was planning to destroy K'un-Lun - an act that, while the cities were joined, would destroy them all. Dog Brother and the others joined him to battle Hydra's forces outside the gates of K'un-Lun.
(Immortal Iron Fist#14) - Dog Brother and the other Weapons, joined by Lei-Kung the Thunderer, his Army of Thunder, and Danny's friends Luke Cage, Misty Knight, and Colleen Wing, tore through the Hydra troops, saving K'un-Lun and their own respective cities. After the battle was done, the Weapons elected to join Iron Fist on Earth, to investigate the dying words of Hydra leader Xao, who had claimed there was an eighth mystical city.
(Immortal Iron Fist#16) - In a library hidden within
Rand International, Dog Brother and the other Weapons researched Xao's
family history, learning that he was a descendant of the Lightning
Lords of Nepal. They reported their findings to Rand.
(Immortal Iron Fist#19) - Dog Brother, Fat Cobra, Bride of Nine Spiders, and the Prince of Orphans came to the aid of Danny, who had been trapped in his dojo by Zhou Cheng, the servant/host of the Iron Fist-killing monster Ch'i-Lin. They saved Danny's students, who Cheng had mesmerized, and drove him off.
(Immortal Iron Fist#20) - Dog Brother, Fat Cobra, and the Prince of Orphans investigated Zhou Cheng's penthouse, where they found a map to the eighth city...and also triggered a bomb. Luckily, Cobra's massive body absorbed most of the blast, and they managed to save most of the map. They raced to see Danny at the Rand building, where he had just slain Cheng, and saw to his safety before telling him of the map.
(Immortal Iron Fist#22 - BTS) - Lei-Kung the Thunderer, new ruler of K'un-Lun, learned that the eighth city had been used as a prison for political enemies by previous rulers, and sent the Immortal Weapons to mount a rescue mission there.
(Immortal Iron Fist#20) - Several months later, Dog Brother and the Immortal Weapons journeyed to the gate to the eighth city, atop a snow-capped Chinese mountain.
(Immortal Iron Fist#22) - The Weapons focused their chi energies, just as their predecessors (including an ancient Dog Brother) had done, and after some time, the gate opened and they tumbled into the city. Weakened by their recent energy expenditure, they were unable to fight back when a troop of monsters captured them and brought them before their leader, Changming (actually the ex-Iron Fist Quan Yaozu). One by one, Dog Brother and the others were sent into gladiatorial combat against giant creatures, only being pulled from the arena when they were at the brink of death.
(Immortal Iron Fist#23) - Dog Brother and the other Weapons, while kept isolated from each other, began communicating with each other by leaving messages in Morse code on the arena floor.
(Immortal Iron Fist#24) - Dog Brother and the other Immortal Weapons were brought out to watch Danny fight the man Changming claimed was the first Iron Fist, Quan Yaozu; Tiger's Beautiful Daughter tricked the guards into helping her escape, then freed the others. They fought through Changming's monstrous guards and tore the arena/prison down, freeing the prisoners inside. Although Dog Brother suggested that Changming had probably planted agents amongst them, Danny insisted on freeing them all. Together, they raced towards the city gates...
(Immortal Iron Fist#25) - While Iron Fist, Tiger's Beautiful Daughter, and the Prince of Orphans tried to open the gate, Dog Brother, Fat Cobra, and the Bride of Nine Spiders fought off the demon hordes. The three were unable to open it, however, and Fat Cobra sent Dog Brother and the Bride to help them while he held off the horde alone. Together, the five of them successfully opened the gate...just as Changming had wanted, as he ambushed them with his secret army, with which he hoped to invade K'un-Lun as revenge for his abandonment. As the demons formed into a massive living ladder to reach the gate's entrance, Dog Brother and the other Weapons clambored up it, reaching the top in time to close it and subdue the few demons who had gotten through.
(Iron Man 2.0#5 (fb) ) - Afterwards, Quan Yaozu made an agreement with the Immortal Weapons; he bound them to the eighth city, ensuring that if its gates were ever breached again, they would be summoned to close them.
(Heroic Age: Heroes) - Steve Rogers researched Dog
Brother #1.
(Iron Man 2.0#6) - When the Asgardian Serpent (Nul) summoned the seven hammers of his Worthy to Earth, one of the hammers - that of Greithoth, Breaker of Wills - broke upen the gate above Beijing, summoning the Immortal Weapons and the Prince of Orphans' ally, War Machine, to the hammer's crash site. They battled the demons who had begun to emerge from it, but were beaten to the hammer by Titania (who had already acquired the hammer of Skirn, Breaker of Men) and her husband, the Absorbing Man. Titania fought off the Weapons and War Machine while the Absorbing Man grabbed the hammer, gaining its power.
(Iron Man 2.0#7) - Dog Brother and the other Weapons awoke to find that the hammer-wielding duo had departed. The adventurer Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, told them they had left and then fled himself. The hell-gate remained open, however, and the Weapons began to align their chi energies to close it - despite War Machine's doubts, which Dog Brother angrily rebutted. As they did so, however, the mystical entity Agamotto, who Iron Fist had encountered in an adventure with the Avengers, took possession of him. Dog Brother sensed that something was wrong and attacked him, but Rand easily handled him, as Agamotto had cut off the other Weapons' connections with their home cities. He soon felled the others, but War Machine took him down, breaking Agamotto's hold over him and allowing the gate to close.
(Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu#2 (fb) - BTS) - During the "Spider-Island" crisis in Manhattan, the Bride of Nine Spiders fell under the malign influence of the Queen (Ana Soria) and her servant, the shapeshifting god Ai Apaec, the Decapitator. She abducted Dog Brother, Fat Cobra, Tiger's Beautiful Daughter, and Iron Fist and held them prisoner in web-cocoons in an abandoned mansion for Ai Apaec to feed on.
(Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu#2) - Shang-Chi saw the cocooned Weapons when he investigated the mansion.
(Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu#3) - Iron Fist and the Bride freed the other Weapons from their imprisonment and led them against the Decapitator; however, they were still weak from their ordeal, and he quickly swatted them away. They pressed on, however, giving Iron Fist time to cure Shang-Chi of his arachnid mutation. Shang bade the Weapons to go defend the city while he stayed behind to battle Ai Apaec.
(Amazing Spider-Man II#672/Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu#3) - Shang-Chi led the Immortal Weapons into battle against the now-massive Queen and her mutated minions. They fought valiantly alongside the Avengers, X-Men, and other heroes, although it was Spider-Man's clone Kaine who ultimately landed the killing blow.
Comments: Created by Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, and David Aja.
I'm working under the assumption that the Dog Brother whose origin is given in Immortal Weapons#3 is the same Dog Brother who's around in the modern era.
Dog Brother also appeared in Defenders IV#6, where he was killed by the Prince of Orphans; however, since the events of that series were later erased from time and relegated to an alternate universe, it presumably never happened, and Earth-616's Dog Brother is still alive and well.
Profile by Minor Irritant.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Dog Brother #1 and his predecessors have no known connections to:
Sidai has no known connections to:
Ayi has no known connections to:
(Immortal
Iron Fist#23 (fb) ) - Centuries ago, a champion of the
Under-City allied with the other Immortal Weapons to drive back a horde
of demons and imprison them in the extradimensional "eighth city" -
unfortunately, Iron Fist (Quan Yaozu) had to trap himself there to seal
them in.
He presumably had the same armaments, fighting skills, and abilities as the current Dog Brother.
--Immortal Iron Fist#23 (23 (fb)
(Immortal
Weapons#3/1 (fb) ) - Dog Brother rescued child slaves in a diamond
mine in Africa, slaughtering their captors.
(Immortal Weapons#3/1) - In 1840s Canton, Dog Brother attacked a boat of Hongmen, who had just killed one orphan street boy and were about to kill another; Dog Brother ultimately slew all the Hongmen. He apologized to the surviving boy, Sihing, for his lateness, but told him that he had needed to fall "all the way". He brought him below decks to rest; the next morning, Dog Brother doffed his armor and told Sihing that his time had ended, and it was time for a new Dog Brother. At Dog Brother's urging, the reluctant Sihing performed the cut of continuity, killing Dog Brother with his own sword.
This Dog Brother presumably had the same abilities and armaments as his succesor. His special moves included bite of the rabid fang, white crane swift kick, double lotus strike, cobra's last bite, volcano of blood, the unforgiving blade, the judgment of Solomon, and the cut of lex talionis.
--Immortal Weapons#3/1 (#3/1 (fb), 3/1
(Immortal Weapons#3/1) - An orphan in 1840s Canton, China, Sidai was new to the streets, so Sihing taught him how to steal food to survive. Later, as they rested underneath a bridge, they were accosted by a group of drunken thugs. Sihing tossed Sidai into the river to protect him, and took a beating until the drunks lost interest and left. The next day, Sihing and Sidai collaborated with Sihing's friend, a prostitute named Ayi, to rob one of her wealthy clients; some boys taunted Sidai when he claimed to be a descendant of legendary martial arts master Zhang Sanfeng, and Ayi advised him to be strong. Pursued by the police, they lost their pursuers in an opium den, only to run right into the criminal Hongmen. The Hongmen recruited both boys to serve as drug mules, and to serve as bait for rival gangs; although they were fed and housed, they both knew that the life of a drug runner was short. Sihing became concerned that Sidai was adopting the criminal mentality, so he told him about Dog Brother, and promised that he would come to rescue them. One day, they were assigned to smuggle barrels of gunpowder with another boy; when they ran into a group of suspicious policemen, one of the cops struck the third boy's barrel with an axe, triggering a massive explosion. Both Sihing and Sidai survived, but Sidai's leg was broken. On their next drug run, Sihing had to carry Sidai; when they were spotted by a cop, they couldn't escape. He took their bribe, but wanted their drugs...and more. Sihing stabbed him, then hid out with Ayi. The Hongmen soon caught up with them, and took both boys out in a boat to make an example of them. Sihing tried to comfort Sidai with a tale of Dog Brother, but Sihing angrily accused him of making his stories up, and claimed that Dog Brother was a fraud. The chief Hongman then struck Sidai, breaking his neck and killing him.
--Immortal Weapons#3/1
--Immortal Weapons#3/1
images:
(without ads)
Immortal Iron Fist#12, p7,
pan1 (main image)
Iron Man 2.0#5, p16, pan3 (headshot)
Immortal Weapons#3/1, p10,
pan6 (as a child)
Immortal Iron Fist#10, p4,
pan6 (with helmet)
Immortal Iron Fist#14, page 13, panel 3 (in action)
Immortal Iron Fist#23, page 5, panel 5 (ancient Dog
Brother)
Immortal Weapons#3/1, page 25, panel 3 (previous Dog
Brother)
Immortal Weapons#3/1, p10,
pan1 (Sidai)
Immortal Weapons#3/1, p10,
pan2 (Ayi)
Appearances:
Immortal Iron Fist#8 (October, 2007) - Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker
(writers), David Aja & Roy Allan Martinez (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#10 (December, 2007) - Matt Fraction & Ed
Brubaker
(writers), David Aja & Kano (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#12 (February, 2008) - Matt Fraction & Ed
Brubaker
(writers), David Aja, Kano, & Javier Pulido (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#13 (May, 2008) - Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker
(writers), Tonci Zonjic, David Aja, & Kano (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#14 (June, 2008) - Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker
(writers), Tonci Zonjic & Clay Mann (pencils), Kano (art), Stefano
Gaudiano (inks), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#16 (August, 2008) - Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker
(writers), David Aja (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#19-20 (December, 2008-January, 2009) - Duane
Swierczynski
(writer), Travel Foreman (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#22 (March, 2009) - Duane
Swierczynski
(writer), Travel Foreman (art), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#23 (April, 2009) - Duane
Swierczynski
(writer), Travel Foreman (pencils), Tonci Zonjic & Tim Green II
(art), Tom Palmer (inks), Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Iron Fist#25 (June, 2009) - Duane
Swierczynski
(writer), Travel Foreman (pencils), Juan Doe (art), Tom Palmer (inks),
Warren Simons
(editor)
Immortal Weapons#3/1 (November, 2009) - Rick Spears
(writer), Tim
Green III (art), Warren Simons & Alejandro Arbona (editors)
Iron Man 2.0#5-7 (July-September, 2011) - Nick Spencer (writer), Ariel
Olivetti (art), Alejandro Arbona (editor)
Spider-Island: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu#2-3 (November-December, 2011) -
Antony Johnston (writer), Sebastian Fiumara & Leandro Fernandez
(pencils), John Lucas (inks), Alejandro Arbona (editor))
Amazing Spider-Man I#672 (December, 2011) - Dan Slott (writer),
Humberto Ramos (pencils), Victor Olazaba & Karl Kesel (inks),
Stephen Wacker (editor)
First Posted: 08/16/2013
Last
updated: 08/24/2013
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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