Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1992-08-01 00:05:11 |
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Marvel Comics Presents #111 (Iron Fist)
Issue(s): Marvel Comics Presents #111 (Iron Fist story only)
Cover Date: 1992
Title: "Menace of the Mad Abbot!"
Credits:
Joey Cavalieri - Writer
Alexander Morrissey - Penciler
Brad Vancata - Inker
Mark Powers - Assistant Editor
Terry Kavanagh - Editor
Review/plot:
Iron Fist is beating up some rapists when he hears a high pitched sound, so he just kind of wanders off.
The sounds lead him to an abandoned church that is full of coffins with arcane markings, which in turn are full of mummies.
The mummies are being called by Thanademon, who sadly is not Thanos trying to fit into the ever expanding world of Hobgoblin characters.
Iron Fist was recently in a deathlike state himself, which is why he heard the noise that is calling the mummies. But that noise is also threatening to control him. However, Thanademon says that one of the mummies is resisting his control thanks to an ankh necklace that it's wearing, so Iron Fist takes the ankh for himself. The mummy looks so surprised to see its necklace getting taken away.
And now it's time for Iron Fist vs. mummies (and priests).
Iron Fist works his martial arts magic on everything that needs hitting, including some chains that were holding up a gong.
Final evaluation: It's Iron Fist vs. mummies!
Quality Rating: C
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP place this after Iron Fist's appearances in Cage #9-13.
References:
- Iron Fist was in a deathlike state until Namor #23.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
Thus begins Iron Fist's association with MCP, which would last for some time. A few issues from now he has a six-part team-up with Ghost Rider, immediately followed by two back to back solo serials, and then several eight page stories of a very underwhelming quality. As a result, for a few months every single issue of MCP had Wolverine, Ghost Rider and Iron Fist, which got dull quite quickly.
I wonder what the behind the scenes reasons were for this. I remember seeing in the letters pages and other places that Iron Fist, following on from his revival in Namor the Sub-Mariner, was supposed to get a new ongoing series. At one point Jae Lee was supposed to draw it. But it never actually materialized. Instead we had a three issue Spider-Man / Iron Fist team-up drawn by Lee, and after that Daniel Rand took up residency in MCP for a while. It felt like someone at Marvel really wanted to promote Iron Fist, but the best they could get was a slot in MCP.
Joey Cavalieri's presence here is extremely strange. He was basically a longtime exclusively DC guy, and I think he'd already been an editor there for a few years when this saw print.
He had recently become the editor of Moon Knight.
He was also the editor behind Marvel's 2099 line, which premiered a few months after this story saw print.
According to the Midtown Comics website, all of the Iron Fist stories from MCP are getting collected into a trade paperback. Yeah, I get it, the character is now starring in a Netflix series, and Marvel wants to rush out some TPBs to cash in. But couldn't they come up with anything more, um, memorable than this material? Maybe issue a new printing of the Iron Fist Epic Collection that contains his 1970s solo stories?
Oh, well, once Marvel decided to release eleven massive volumes of reprinting the entire Spider-Man: Clone Saga, I suppose it was only a matter of time before pretty much everything else from the 1990s eventually got the TPB treatment.
Iron Fist's Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu series is getting an omnibus, so it seems like Marvel is putting just about everything with IF back into print. I'm tempted to get the DHOKF collection (or are there two?). Is that series officially out of continuity, or will Fnord review it?
I doubt there's any reason for it not to be in continuity; fnord has already reviewed a couple issues of it, though I don't think he's reviewed any IF solo stories from it. He's mostly been holding off because there haven't been any reprints of it; he complains about the lack of any reprints of non-Shang-Chi stuff in the entry for Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu #1. In any event I don't think he has any omnibuses in his project for the same reason he hasn't made any of the original DHoKF issues a priority in spite of what he says there: he prefers his comics in regular comic size, although it sounds like he may have to choose one or the other if he wants to complete his DHoKF collection, though maybe the Iron Fist stuff will be reprinted in the Epic format at some point the way Marvel is going.
Iron Fist's DHOKF stories are definitely canon, My priority for the time being is moving forward though, so no immediate plans to add them. Still great that they're getting reprinted.
Seems like Marvel is going to be collecting most of the MCP stories somewhere or other. There are new Excalibur and Wolverine tpbs which collect MCP stories along with others. Iron Fist just didn't have others going on at the time.
If thats the case, they need to do it in digest form or one huge B&W collection.
