Iron Fist: The Return Of K'un Lun

Iron Fist: The Return Of K'un Lun is one of those collections that brings together a lot of mini-series that Iron Fist starred in during the 90's.

Best to remember it was the 90s and later eh?

Lots of lines. Lots of detail. Lots of word dialog boxes. This is taken from the initial story arc where things had to be dark! Dark I say!

It features the first return of Davos, the Steel Serpent. It's a fairly standard no-brainer but it could also be looked at as a herald for future plot lines.

See, last time we saw the Steel Serpent, he was consumed by the Iron Fist, dissipated into the ether. But not so! Instead, he was pulled into "the anomaly," a gem found in K'un Lun. In that Gem, he learned various martial art moves from numerous Iron Fists that were already in the gem. So Danny is apparently not the only Iron Fist there ever was...

After those two issues, we get a three issue limited series that features the return of Danny's 'sister' and some action with the plant men. This is probably the best of the books in here in that the story, written by Dan Jurgen, is fair and the art is solid.  We even get to see Scimitar make an appearance and while it's not spectacular or anything, the fact that the writer even knew enough about Iron Fist to drag him out of retirement is impressive.

After that, we get the title story, it's Iron Fist and Wolverine, which spreads out to the Avengers, various X-Men, and more in The Return of K'un Lun.

The story is decent.

The art? Man, terrible. I'm not an artist. I could draw better than some of the work featured in these issues.

This isn't even the worst of the offenders. Just one I picked at random. Marvel and DC need to start their liberal arts college so that they have a great pool of talent to draw from. Either that of pay more. Something. Ugh.

The story revolves around Iron Fist being captured and his power, the Iron Fist, stripped away from him (again). This time by a youth known as Junzo Muto. In this storyline, he's the leader of the Hand. He's a phenomenal martial artist who easily bests Iron Fist, and apparently took on Night Thrasher and the New Warriors back in the day.

The weird thing is, on the side, I'm thinking, Junzo? Who is this? The Hand has made numerous appearances since this series came out but the kid was nowhere to be seen. It's like Marvel forgot how bad the storyline was and let it go.

Anyway, Junzo was going to merge K'un Lun right atop of Japan's capital city, and use it to take over the world! He gets stopped and manages to escape and even does so with the Iron Fist. From what I've read in other sources, Iron Fist managed to get his abilities back in an issue of the Black Panther, not included in this collection.

Ugh.

The book wraps up with Breathless, another limited series with an okay storyline and even worse art.

Ugh.

I got nothing. Iron Fist runs through many bad guys until he winds up murdering the head of a cult because he can't let him get away to kill again. During the battles, his biggest fight up to that point is probably against "Karen" who fights Iron Fist in a custom that is almost exactly identical to Psylocke's.

All in all, a rather poor collection. Great for completist and those who want to catch up on all things Iron Fist. Story wise better than art wise.

Am I missing something in my assessment? Have others read this and been blown away by its quality and I'm missing some key elements? Have there been some other apperances by the leader of the Hand that qualifies his abscence since these issues? Hit me up with some comments.

Iron Fist Epic Collection: The Fury of Iron Fist

Iron Fist, Epic Collection, The Fury of Iron Fist, collections from 1974 to 1977. It includes Marvel Premiere 15-25, Iron Fist 1-15, and Marvel Tema Up 62-63. Totals some odd 400 full-color pages.

Much of the continuous work is done by John Bryne, well known for his work on X-Men, Avengers, and later, his title, Next Men. There are a few other who's who of artists included in this volume including Gil Kane and Patrick Broderick,

These tales focus on Iron Fist origin and introduce many of the enemies and allies that would become main streams of the Marvel Universe, some of them taking on a much larger life than their initial introduction here would indicate.

Part of that is due to the author and writer combo of Chris Claremont and John Bryne. For example, when Sabertooth makes his introduction here for the first time in comics and appears in later volumes of Power Man & Iron Fist, few would suspect that Sabertooth would probably become more popular than Iron Fist himself (arguably) and have more appearances in X-Men comics.

For those unaware, Iron Fist is a martial art comic that took advantage of the martial art craze in the 70s. It was not the only comic to do so. There was also Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, and the black and white magazine, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, where Shang-Chi and Iron Fist met and battle.

Some of the other characters introduced in the series include the Daughters of the Dragon, Colleen Wing, and Misty Knight; the latter can be seen in Sam Wilson's new Captin America titles.

For villains that are introduced and updated at a later time, we have such favorites as the Steel Serpent and the already mentioned Sabertooth.

Many of the other villains, though, some off as one trick ponies such as Scimitar whose only made a handful of appearances in the 40 years since the comic came out.

There is a nice play off of the character's original motif through the original story. Iron Fist is not only a deadly warrior, but he gained his skills to avenge the death of his father and mother. They were both killed by a friend during a trip to the mystic city K'un L'un, and only Danny survives it.

Danny undergoes a series of trials and tribulations cumulating in fighting a dragon and gaining the dragons' 'heart' and becoming the Iron Fist! This is an ability that still hasn't been fully explored, but it's primary use? Danny can summon his 'Chi' into his fist and strike very hard with it.

He's also been known to heal, meld minds, fight off radiation poisoning, fight off magic attacks, and other little cat out of the bag tricks.

But Danny became the Iron Fist to kill a man. When he finally finds that person, a wealthy tycoon who's surrounded himself with death traps and unique individuals to destroy Iron Fist, he discovers that this old man has suffered the ravages of time, lost his mind, and even his legs.

Iron Fist cannot bring himself to take that vengeance so instead, a newcomer, the Ninja, not just a ninja mind you, but the Ninja, comes out and does it. This leads to the daughter of the man Iron Fist came to kill, thinking Iron Fist is the murderer and set up a long sequence of events where Iron Fist has to discover what the Ninja wants, how to convince others that he's not a murderer, etc...

In the 30+ issues, the reader gets in this volume, there's some solid groundwork laid for future authors and writers.

If you're excited by the Nextlix series, this is an excellent trade to add to your collection.

Escape From The Eighth City: Immortal Iron Fist

Outside of a terrible chest cold and 'Snowmagedon' here in Chicago, I've been catching up on my reading. In between The Monks of War and a fiction book called the Religion (which will have many of its own postings), I've also taken some time to dip into the digital pool of Marvel Comics onilne offering again as I'm a subscriber to the yearly bit.

Iron Fist was one of my favorites as a kid who enjoyed all things martial arts growing up in the 70's and 80's although more by proxy in the early 80's as I was only born in '71. Still, it's some good stuff between Iron Fist, Shang Chi, White Tiger, Sons of the Tiger, and other bits that Marvel did in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu.

Anyway, the Immortal Iron Fist went into a new storyline in #22, "Escape From The Eighth City." The mystical city of mystical cities had been mentioned before, but now we find out what it really is. Turns out it's a prison city. "It has been constructed to house the monsters, demons, and criminals that plagued K'un-Lun thousands of years ago."

Well, that's interesting but it's not really unique. Even Dungeons and Dragons has hit the prison scene a few times, once even with Eberron. But there's a nice bit of honesty here.

"Unfortunatley it has been... abused over the centuries. The former leaders used this feature (one way stop) to cleanse K'un-Lun of her enemies. Enemies being a very loose term."

This is pretty much a easy switch to a martial art based campaign, a super hero based campaign, a science fiction campaign, or a fantasy campaign. A hidden prision has been used for years to hold people illegally and someone specific, or something specific is needed from there. Even though no one else before you has ever escaped, we need you to go?

Oh, and by the way, arena fighting with various hordes of monsters is the standard form of entertainment. Don't forget to write!

The Immortal Iron Fist

When I was a young man, I used to devour comics. My first RPG was actually the original yellow Marvel Super Heroes boxed set. Good times.

I recently purchased a digital subscription to the Marvel comics library. It's like some eight thousand comics. It's allowed me to read some old favorites without having to dig through a ton or boxes, as well as discover some newer favorites.

Among those newer titles, is the Immortal Iron Fist. Well, favorite in terms of what it means for RPGs at least.

Iron Fist is a low grade super hero who hails from another plane that masters the art of kung fu on a hidden city and uses his increidble power to fight evil.

But his people's culture... well, they're pretty ancient in some ways and this can easily be yanked for a Eastern flavored D&D game or one where you want to kick up the planes a bit. You see in Immortal Iron Fist #8, as expalined to young Danny, "K'un Lun is one of the seven capital cities of heaven. Each appearing on the mortal plane according to timetables charted amongst the stars. But once every eighty eight years, these apperances align in the Heavenly Convergence and we celebrate this with a mighty tournament."

"Sections of Each City join together creating the Heart of Heaven, a palace where our contests take place. Aspects of each city, as well as earth itself will be found there. It is unlike anywhere you have ever been , with rules and laws only unto itself."

It goes on for a bit but the cool factor is pretty strong there. Propechy, cosmic alignments, events that can only happen at certain conjunctjuors and all sorts of other solid stuff make the Immortal Iron Fist well worth looking at for someone who wanks to spice up the background of his monk character.

Taken to another area though, it could tie into different aspects of games like D&D 3rd edition with sorcerous blood lines, or even fighting schools. Getting people together to celebrate and beat on each other is a tradition that crosses many boundies after all.