338. Iron Fist (1996) #1 ... Marvel ...

20 years ago (wow) back in the late half of the speculation boom ... where everything grim n gritty is considered cool to the max ... Marvel decided to roll out Iron Fist ... now at this point, his history is a complete mess with people almost similar names being Iron Fist, being dead, or perhaps not dead and what have you ...

Anyway forget all that!

All you need to know is that when martial arts were cool, Marvel had Iron Fist and Shang-chi. Iron Fist was featured in one of those mags that introduced new characters and proved popular to elevate himself to his first solo ongoing which lasted about a year or so ... and then with waning popularity and sales was sandwiched together with Luke Cage into one combined team called Heroes for Hire

As for his history, basically he was a kid when he lost his folks and was found by a special mystical city called Kun Lun. He was raised there including trained for his martial arts. At his coming of age, he challenged Shou Lou, a dragon and won and hence his chest is emblazoned with a dragon tattoo. Aside from martial arts, his power is to focus all his inner chi or energy to one of his fists making it super powerful but a feat like this would leave him weakened ... kind of like Ultraman who always wait until the end to unleash his zapping beams ahahahahahah!

Well, got that?

The artist here is Robert Brown (who) and inker is Rey Garcia. If you like your artwork full of lines and dots and splotches masquerading as details, then this works. However, I do believe given time, Robert would develop to be good on his own although I have no idea if he has done much more besides this

Anyway, the story opens with a depressed Iron Fist fighting a small platoon of mercenary thugs like people and him thinking long soliloquy about how his Iron Fist is not as powerful as it once was. So why was he attacked? It apparently, at first, seemed to him that everyone is after a gem stone that he encountered. Naturally, to make matters complicated, this is not entirely true because his one and only nemesis Steel Serpent, a fellow rival from Kun Lun is seeking a way to come back to our world and the world of the living

And behind all these shenanigans? There are others from Danny's past plotting away. Are they going to be friends once more and something nastier? Well, this is the first of two part limited series. I guess they want us to pick both issues up eh?

Ratings: 5/10