Issue(s): Iron Fist #1, Iron Fist #2, Iron Fist #3, Iron Fist #4
Cover Date: Nov 75 - Apr 76
Title: "A duel of Iron!" / "Valley of the damned!" / "The city's not for burning!" / "Holocaust!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Writer
John Byrne - Penciler
Al McWilliams / Frank Chiaramonte - Inker

Review/plot:
Iron Fist breaks into Stark Industries in order to try and find Colleen Wing. He runs into Misty Knight, who is also searching for Colleen.

Then Iron Man attacks.

After the misunderstanding fight, Iron Man says that he'd like to help but he has "more urgent commitments". Jerk.

Meanwhile, Colleen briefly escapes captivity. But she runs into someone else, who knocks her out.

The mystery man turns Colleen back over to Hassan. We then see him contact Ward Meachum, and we also see that he's got a partial version of the same tattoo as Iron Fist.

Misty discovers that the people who have Colleen are from a place called Halwan, but after visiting Colleen's father in the hospital and a flashback involving the H'ylthri plant people that are enemies of the people of K'un-Lun...

...they first head to England. There they get into a fight with an armored opponent named the Ravager.

Iron Fist eventually busts open his armor, revealing that the Ravager is really Radion (not that it would make a difference to Iron Fist, although i guess finding out that the guy in the suit isn't just a guy but a radioactive guy would be pretty shocking).

We learn Radion's origin. Scientist Henri Sorel, was working on a cure for radiation poisoning when some goons representing Ward Meachum showed up, demanding the cure for Meachum. In the subsequent scuffle, Sorel was exposed to radioactive isotopes.

Iron Fist is able to help draw the radioactivity out of Radion...

...but Fist himself is injured during the fight. He uses his Chi powers to heal himself.

Much later, near the end of the Power Man & Iron Fist series, Danny will be dying of radiation poison and he has to go to K'un-Lun so that he can be healed with the help of Lei Kung, which seemingly contradicts that fact established here that he can already heal himself on his own. For the No-Prize, i'd argue that while Iron Fist was fighting a radioactive opponent here, he's actually dying from the physical injury, not the radiation. He thinks about being "all broken inside", after getting caught in an explosion and having a building fall on him. So maybe for actual radiation poisoning he was unable to use his Chi.

We first see signs of Misty having super-strength in these issues...

...and then we subsequently see one of her arms getting blown off, revealing that it is mechanical.

As for Colleen, we learn that she's a captive of Hassan's "Master".

While Iron Fist is thought dead after the Radion explosion, we again see the mystery man with the tattoo. He almost seems to have the iron fist power himself, but he implies that Iron Fist denied him that honor, and he wants to kill him for it.

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - formative Iron Fist stories. First modern Master Khan. First Steel Serpent.

Chronological Placement Considerations: The character Steel Serpent begins to appear in these issues. This is actually the second Iron Fist villain called Steel Serpent; the first appeared in Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu #10. But that guy only had one appearance, so i wouldn't tag him even if i had that issue (which i don't).

References:

• Misty Knight previously appeared in Marvel Premiere #21.
  
• Radion previously appeared in Marvel Two-In-One #9, and it's said that he was working with the Puppet Master in that issue in hope of finding a cure for himself.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Iron Fist vol. 1

Hey there

I am doing some research on Misty Knight. I was hoping someone can help me with the first two issues of Iron Fist. I really need the information. Can someone help me. ja4house@yahoo.com. Thanks.

Hi Julie - what information are you looking for? It's better to ask here rather than via email since if i don't know the answers i'll bet some of the regular commenters will.

I don't see the radiation healing power stances as a contradicting themselves. Danny wonders about it twice more later in his all-too-short series, in issues #7 and #10. It is clear that he realizes that _something_ protects him from certain kinds of damage yet doesn't really control it. He is beginning to figure out that it is directed towards energy attacks in #10.

It is no contradiction that he is shown to have the capability but no training or clear understanding of it in PWIF #118-#120.

http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/iron_fist_57.shtml

http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/iron_fist_810.shtml

http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/power_man_iron_fist_118-120.shtml

The H'lythri I expect were named after a plant fungus h.lythri, a wound pathogen commonly associated with fertiliser burn to leaves when combined with irrigation.

The "h." in "h.lythri" stands for Harknessia which could be used to finally explain why Agatha was one of the Celestial Madonna candidates.

Given this, a better origin for New Salem would have been that it was a secret H'lythri colony and they are all plant clones like the Iron Fist killed at the end of the original Power Man & Iron Fist series.

Is this John Byrne's debut with Marvel?

One issue earlier, in Marvel Premiere #25.

Oh, cheers. I'd have never have guessed from his earlier work that he'd be such a superstar in the 80s. He's probably the 1st artist even at my young tender age noticed he had a distinct look. Then McFarlane's Spider-Man came along and that reaaallly stood out.

Byrne also had several illustrations and covers for FOOM before MP #25.

I think part of the problem with Iron Fist suffering from radiation poisoning in Power Man/Iron Fist #118-120 is not just the healing ability that Iron Fist manifests in Iron Fist #4, but also that he somehow he is unaffected by the radiation that Radion bombards Iron Fist with at the end of issue 4, wherein the narrator notes that the radiation should have killed Iron Fist but somehow does not.

The implication here appears to be that it is related to the Chi-power healing Iron Fist used earlier in the issue. And unlike that healing effort, Iron Fist seemingly does not have to concentrate to protect himself from the radiation exposure.

The early Iron Fist material (Marvel Premiere 15-25, Iron Fist 1-15, and Marvel Team-Up 63-64) was recently reprinted in the Epic Collection "The Fury of Iron Fist." Since it's a color reprint, it's a definite upgrade from Essential IF, Vol. 1.

The character got off to a rocky start in Marvel Premiere. There were interesting ideas, but the execution was often mediocre or poor. It didn't help that there was no stable creative team on the project until Claremont and Byrne finally elevated the material to something of genuine significance.

Bryne's superiority to the previous artists is immediately apparent from something like the back flip that Iron Fist executes in IF #1, p. 5, bottom row of panels. Byrne's seemingly effortless command of anatomy and perspective makes an action scene like this work so much better than his predecessors (esp. Arvell Jones) could. The grace and virtuosity of the images finally match those of IF's own moves. And overall, from here Byrne would only improve.

We don't get a lot of clear views of the unmasked face of Davos (The Steel Serpent), but when he first appears in #1 p. 10, it strikes me that he looks a fair bit like how Byrne would later draw Madison Jeffries in Alpha Flight. (And there's no sign of the prominent scar on his face that would get retconned in later as the character gelled.) Claremont and Byrne did a great job of keeping him in the background from that point until he emerged as IF's greatest nemesis to date in the culminating MTU issues.

The writing in Iron Fist -- using second person perspective -- was a really interesting experiment and largely effective at getting you into the lead character's head while still maintaining some distance from him. I still remembered that sequence of Iron Fist healing himself for the first time almost word for word all these years later. Thanks for posting it here! Claremont always had a real gift for dialogue -- as seen many times in Uncanny X-Men (particularly the last two issues of the Dark Phoenix arc, where issues of love and death were portrayed in such moving ways) -- and the innovative use of the Iron Fist here gave you a sense of greater depths to this particular mythos. Issues 3 and 4 were an outstanding and surprising story of both Danny's and Radion's need to redeem their mistakes.

Danny Rand the great Metaphor for explainining the lost art of converting etheric energy into material form or Chi Energy. I am hoping he graces us with his presence on the Luke Cage Netflix series! All Danny needs is a bit more function to his costume for more Ninjaesque movement.

The end of issue 2 is where we first see the city of K'un-Lun in its entirety. It's quite beautiful, as drawn by Byrne. The OHMU describes it this way: "K'un-Lun is the stronghold of a colony of humanoid aliens, place of origin unknown, whose spaceship crash-landed upon a small, extradimensional world approximately a million years ago. The ship's warp-drive engines somehow created a permanent, oscillating rift between the pocket world and Earth's dimension, causing the settlement to shift into Earthly space periodically on a site in the remote Himalayan Mountain range in Tibet. The K'un-Lunians built a city around their inverted spaceship, cannibalizing materials from its interior and using its basic design as their architectural style. No citizens alive today are aware that the Central Hall of Ancestors was once the spaceship that bore them to their world."

There are some signs here that Claremont and Byrne are rethinking certain plots on the fly in addition to the reveal that Iron Fist absorbs energy in some way (which is dropped when this series is canceled), Davos goes from speaking like a street thug in his introductory scenes to employing High Villain speak as the character concept solidifies.

More striking is the way they steer the book away from kung-fu and fantasy elements towards more straightforward superheroics. With the exception of Master Khan, IF and company mostly fight science-villains and costumed super-villains from here on, and a major plot point in the Radion story is that iron Fist -- introduced as a vengeance-seeking kung fu movie archetype -- will fight unrelated baddies to save innocents in lieu of pursuing his personal quest.