The Immortal Iron Fist #1-7

The Immortal Iron Fist #1-7

Originally released in 2006

Written by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction

Art by David Aja (#1-2, 4), Travel Foreman (#1, 3-5, 7), Sal Buscema (#4), and Russ Heath (#6)

My main exposure to Iron Fist has been through the Netflix series, where I stopped after the first episode because I was already sick of the multiple identical plane crash flashbacks.  I knew that the creative team behind Hawkeye (Matt Fraction and David Aja) had been involved in an Iron Fist series, so I chose to give that a try.

It feels like the goal of this series is to expand on the Iron Fist mythology.  I don't know how much of it was established beforehand, but this series flashes back to the Iron Fists who came before Danny Rand, shows mystical cities other than K'un L'un (which are involved in a tournament of their champions), and establishes an ominous villain looming in the shadows who's known as the Crane Mother.

As Danny's company is facing a hostile takeover by a Chinese company, which has hired HYDRA to take the "hostile" part in a much more literal direction, a previous Iron Fist named Orson Randall has made his way to America.  Randall was the Iron Fist in 1915, but his experiences in World War 1 traumatized him, steering him away from fighting and towards copious amounts of drugs.

As a side note, there's a running gag during the Hawkeye series where characters mistake Hawkeye for Iron Fist.  Having read this, I can understand why; during the issues where Aja does the art, when Danny is unmasked and bandaged up, he looks extremely similar to Hawkeye in that series.

Against the advice of his lawyer, Jeryn Hogarth, Danny refuses to make a deal that would involve selling a highly advanced train to a Chinese company.  However, they've taken Jeryn's mother hostage, and are planning to have the train travel straight through the mountain range where the mystical city of K'un L'un appears every ten years, which doesn't bode well.

After some difficulties (whenever Orson uses the Iron Fist powers, Danny can't, and vice versa), the two of them ultimately meet a few issues in.  Being well over a hundred years old, Orson has quite the storied history - among other things, he met Danny's father and was seemingly the one to tell him about K'un L'un in the first place.

Masterminding the takeover is Davos, also known as the Silver Serpent.  I don't know much about the character, but he seems to be Danny's arch-enemy, and he seems very entitled, acting as though he was the only possible choice to become the Iron Fist and that Danny cheated or stole it from him.

Orson came to America to give Danny a book that contains the history and fighting techniques of all of the Iron Fists in history, to prepare for the tournament that K'un L'un would be involved in.  There are seven cities participating in all, so I'm not sure how the tournament would be set up (you'd think there would be eight), but while tournament arcs are a mainstay of anime and manga, you don't seem to see them often in western comics, so I'm interested to see how it turns out.

This storyline culminates in Davos, HYDRA, and the Crane Mother's daughters launching an attack on Danny Rand's company in order to kidnap Jeryn Hogarth.  Luke Cage, Misty Knight, and Colleen Wing get involved, and the three of them are really entertaining for the short time that they're there.

Issue 7 gives us a flashback to one of the earlier Iron Fists, and it seems like flashback issues like this are going to be acting as a break between multi-issue arcs.  The Iron Fist in question, Wu Ao-Shi, is the (as of now) last woman to take on the mantle of Iron Fist, and her story about facing off against pirates is an entertaining one.

In addition, her romance with an unnamed fisherman is a touching one, with the two of them having trouble with reconciling his humble lifestyle and her life of punching dragon hearts and raining thunder down on pirate kings.  They try to make it work regardless, and despite it being a single issue storyline, I grew invested in where their lives would take them next.

I'm already far more engaged than I was with the Netflix show.  Focusing on different Iron Fists seems like a good idea, as it allows the series to experiment with different tones and characters beyond the modern New York setting.  As well, I'm curious to see how the tournament arc will pan out, or if it will be interrupted by something - I'll be a little disappointed if we don't get a fist fight in a hall of mirrors at some point in this series.