55. Power Man & Iron Fist vol 1 #108 ... Marvel ...

During the mid 80s when this series came out as a monthly, if you are to tell any reader that Power Man is going to be a major character in the Avengers or that the Fist can be a huge seller as a solo character, people would say you are F-ing nuts. It's a book that was barely scraping by when they were 2 solo-es and when combined together, same problem

All that changed when Bendis brought Luke Cage aka Power Man to his New Avengers and Luke not only fit in but became some sort of group leader! And when Matt Fraction took hold of the Fist, he and David Aja expanded on the myth to become a full fledge complex character instead of just using the kung fu and mystical lore as some cheesy backdrop. So it seems like a character in the right hands can be a hit!

With that said, why did we select 108 for review? It's a personal reason because this is the first issue of the characters we encountered back when we were 11 years old and cycling around to the neighbourhood roadside magazine shack looking for new stuff to read

However, even though the cover and colours were good to attract an 11-year-old, sad to say the story while entertaining was not enough to pull us back on a regular basis and we dropped it within a few issues

As for 108, we see a Power Man and Iron Fist, Heroes for Hire, always short on clients and money with bills mounting. So when someone hired them for a job they took it. Turns out that there is someone mental who has been hurt and has this power to shoot fiery bolts from his eyes. So he decided to go take it out on the world starting at a building where Heroes for Hire has their mates within. Naturally a guy with fiery eye bolts cannot stand up to the steel-hard-skin of Cage, right? So no surprises there in terms of how fast the fight was over. This more than anything led to the downfall of the book. With one martial artist and one street fighter, one would hope for more brawling and fisticuffs, not just a few panels. The soap opera element may be fine for older readers but not for 11-year-olds

Ratings: 5/10