Top Single Issues – The Immortal Iron Fist #9

If you haven’t read the relaunch of The Immortal Iron Fist by Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and David Aja (with a few assists from other artists) then you really need to check it out. Their entire run was collected in an omnibus and it must be one of the most quality books Marvel offers. I could easily write an article about their entire running as being one of the best of all time but instead I will focus on just one issue. It’s an excellent example of how a comic can do action exceptionally well.

The first arc looked at Danny Rand, the Immortal Iron Fist, finding out there was still another Iron Fist alive and relatively active. The arc culminated with Rand being drafted into a mystical fighting tournament between all of the Immortal Weapons of the different capital cities of Heaven. It’s a great idea and was spawned when one of the writers looked at their poster of Enter The Dragon, a classic Bruce Lee movie where he fights in a big tournament. The concept was tweaked and works extremely well as an idea for this character and his world.

This issue is Round 2, and as such presents the fight between Iron Fist and Fat Cobra. Fat Cobra was introduced in the previous issue and became an instant fan favourite. He is a rotund sumo style fighter who quickly dispatches 100 Shaolin Terror Priests and then calls for his wenches. He’s the sort of monstrous scrapper who gets the job done and then just wants a drink and some food. He’s like a mythology character and he makes for great juxtaposition against someone as dedicated as the Iron Fist.

But before we make with the fighting we get a little history first. Like the vegetables before dessert. We are learning the history of Danny Rand’s father, Wendell Rand, who died travelling to the city of K’un L’un when Danny was a young boy. We see that Wendell had previously been to K’un L’un and been trained there. The style of the captions is written in the second person, just as the first issues of Iron Fist way back when also were. It’s a great callback and it really puts you into the scene as Wendell trains against Davos, a man whose insolence and petulance will lead to him becoming the Steel Serpent and the major nemesis for the Iron Fist.

Here, Davos beats Wendell, but then also later befriends him. This is an example of prior continuity being added to and thus changed and it is something that Brubaker often does, and often does very well. To understand that the greatest enemy of our favourite chi-powered hero was once the friend of Rand’s father makes everything seem so much more tragic. There is obviously a fall from grace coming and the dramatic irony is more chilling than funny.

This flashback is only 3 pages which means it gets to be punchy and strong but it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a great way to add to the layers of the title without it overtaking it either. I’d be interested in seeing many comics adding a three page preface that covers some sort of hidden history. It’s an effective way to world build and offer outside views of set ups and characters which we already know.

We then cut to the present and open on Danny Rand meditating and reading a book, a book that details the history of the Iron Fist. He is catching up slowly on so much that has come before. It is a great thing that this title made one of its major priorities to expand the Iron Fist corner of the world and add true depth and connection to it.

Looking at this first page, you can see that David Aja is one of the best artists working in comics today. It’s not just his art that is exceptionally but also his ability to lay out a page. As Rand sits meditating, the book sits in front of him and Aja places an insular circular panel around it. He doesn’t need to do this but by doing so he trains the eye down to this place. He makes sure you understand it is important; it’s almost like having a zoom in on the object but without wasting another panel in doing so. It’s a more subtle effect and Aja often uses it to masterful effect.

The next row of panels shows Rand using a newly discovered fight move with his hands and then using it to swirl energy through the room. Aja breaks up the one image of Rand performing the ‘Black-Black Poison Touch’ and he also breaks the moment up by giving us the staccato thoughts running through Rand’s mind as he executes such a new form of his deadly art. We also get two more circular inset panels, both around Rand’s hands. This is because his hands are where his power manifests and we can see this as they glow with the chi energy that he harnesses.

The final row on this page is Rand looking forward but being able to sense the intruder behind him due to his heightened awareness. There is an inset rectangular panel showing the servant girl and the side of Rand’s head as they connect. Aja is the most gorgeous cinematographer of a comic sequence and just this one page proves that. It’s truly something to marvel over.

How David Aja has not yet been put onto another ongoing at Marvel is beyond me. It seems apparent he cannot handle a monthly workload, but plenty of other titles ship bi-monthly and I’d definitely handle 6 issues a year of Dr Strange from Aja. Damn, that just gave me a little buzz. Moving on.

Rand and the girl fight, which is strange in K’un L’un because the women are never trained, it is against law. Legal or not, the fight is beautiful as Aja paces the action and even throws some of the dialogue into the motion as the woman attacks and Rand defends and captures. She then lands a trained kick to Rand’s face, in a panel that looks like a propaganda piece of art as it directs the circular power of the panel to the girl’s foot and not Rand’s whiplashing head that took the impact. She tells Rand she has some secrets and then tells him to throw the upcoming fight against Fat Cobra. Rand doesn’t know what to do or believe. Seeing our hero need to make himself become a loser in the next round is a tough pill to swallow.

Rand ponders “This is not the way we do things in my line of work.” The image in the panel is simple and small, only about an inch square; it shows a section of text from the Book of the Iron Fist. It’s not written in English so I know I can’t read it but what it specifically says doesn’t matter, what it means is that Iron Fists throughout history are not used to laying down. They fight, against all odds, always. For Rand to throw the fight he will be going against his legacy. So you have to wonder, would he be shaming his mantle?

Without much time to think about it we’re turning the page and are thrust into the fight. Aja has a great way of tying information into his pages and still making them look dynamic. It’s not exactly crafting a poster or an infographic, this is art as only a comic page can be. The top of the page ornately frames the two fighters and announces this is the ‘Tournament Round One:’, seeing Fat Cobra and Iron Fist in the middle of a packed stadium tells us the rest. We get this quiet moment before the fight will explode. The Prince of Orphans bets with Steel Serpent for Iron Fist to win; this isn’t just a bet it’s a selection of sides. Right here we see who the Prince of Orphans is going to cast his fate with. It’s a sneaky moment that tells us much more.

Throughout the entire fight, Aja doesn’t play a single panel straight or square. He leans the action through the force of the panels and he makes the motion feel slicker purely through design. The very first panel, of Fat Cobra, starts slim and progressively angles wider as if he’s drawing the power into his hand for the ‘Cudgel of Misfortune’ and making the panel more fat for the power it must contain. The next panel explodes as Iron Fist is blown away. Then the ‘Whirlwind of Impending Doom’ sends Danny, in the next page, through a panel and into what appears to be Hong Kong. This fight is not going the way Rand envisaged, in many respects.

Aja uses panels to slow down Iron Fist’s  ‘Burning Chi Thunderfoot’ as it launches and lands on Fat Cobra’s head. The impact is discoloured, tinted, and certainly something to linger on. Aja controls the pace of the fight like a cinematographer, adding speed ups and loitering for slow motion and it makes this fight one of the best to ever be committed to the comics page.

It is a shame that Aja’s work here is so incredibly masterful because it takes away from the pulp-fu fun of the words of Brubaker and Fraction. Both men do a commendable job at matching the tone and fu of the scene with their word selection and pacing and yet it really is the page, the panels, and the art that take this fight to new heights.

After Fat Cobra drops Iron Fist with ‘The Devil’s Skullcrusher’ (see, because of the scribes I got to write that sentence, pure awesome), the final page of the fight is filled with panels. Fat Cobra’s fists pummel Iron Fist into submission, repeatedly. The sheer number of panels make the beating feel more fierce, blood spatters spray out from certain panels, this isn’t a page of comics but rather a crime scene document. The Iron Fist yields and it doesn’t feel like he threw that one, he was simply bested.

To celebrate victory, Fat Cobra announces to all and sundry, “Bring me my victory wenches!” This is the sort of man who knows when a fight is over.

We get a brief flashback that shows Wendell Rand beating Davos in a sparring battle. The two form an alliance, of sorts, and vow to constantly demand the best from each other, neither ever yielding without reason. This is a history lesson about how those trained to become the Iron Fist work, and we also see where Steel Serpent started.

We cut back to Rand meditating to heal. He knows he didn’t throw the fight and this makes us instantly understand how formidable a fighter Fat Cobra must truly be. He is then accosted by the same girl as earlier and she leads him to a machine of Tesla proportions. She has been cast as its keeper due to the sins of her father, Orson Randall, a man she has never met. The sins of the father focus heavily in this comic as Rand’s father was once a warrior trainee of K’un L’un, and Orson Randall has been an absent father, and Davos’ father is Lei Kung the Thunderer, trainer of all those who would be the Iron Fist. What one generation does and chooses effectively affects those who come after.

Rand is able to use this machine to travel back to Earth, even though such passage is only usually available every ten years as the two plains of existence align. He wanders into China and though he sees his old Heroes For Hire partners, Luke Cage, Colleen Wing, and Misty Knight, he has more urgent matters to attend to. The Iron Fist must save a dying old man who was writing the history of the immortal weapons of K’un L’un. Rand must see the bigger picture and delve into his history to understand the key to his future.
The final panels drift off in size as Rand walks away from anything else he knows and commits to a quest he only has time for because Fat Cobra beat him.

This issue is a perfect match of action and story. Brain and muscle. Fu and, well, more fu. Rand and Fat Cobra is the title card fight but beneath it all is a simmering study of how this kung fu dynasty ruins men but makes for such gorgeous fights anyway that no one will ever stop it all.