Marvel continues its inexplicable range of C-list relaunches with another two books this week.

Iron Fist has been around for almost thirty years.  He debuted in 1975, with a title that lasted a mighty 15 issues before being cancelled.  Then he was moved to co-headline Power Man & Iron Fist, which actually did quite well and lasted from 1981 to 1986.  At the end of that title, Iron Fist was killed off.  By the time he was brought back several years later, nobody cared. 

He had a miniseries in 1996, and no one cared.  He had another miniseries in 1998, and no one cared.  He starred in the second run of Heroes for Hire, which lasted 19 issues.  Finally, he co-headlined a miniseries with Wolverine in 2000, and no one cared.  I'm sure there's a hardcore of Power Man & Iron Fist fans hankering for the heady days of 1985 who are incensed by the suggestion, but let's get real here - it's Iron Fist.  The built-in audience is tiny.

Given his less than stellar track record, you might well wonder why Marvel are trying him again.  Well, god knows, frankly.  I gather it's been optioned for a movie, but then so has Werewolf by Night (snicker) and you don't see anyone reviving that.  He's just one of those third-tier characters that Marvel and DC inexplicably keep on reviving every few years, even though it never works, simply because they unaccountably feel that there ought to be an Iron Fist comic out there.

So, creators James Mullaney and Kevin Lau face an uphill struggle with this title - especially considering that, as is Marvel's wont these days, it's just been thrown onto the market with negligible publicity.  Do they overcome the obstacles in their path?  No.  They do not.

As far as I can tell, this is Mullaney's first work in comics.  A search on Google reveals that he (or someone of that name) has been putting out Destroyer novels since 1998 - a series which started back in 1971 and is now up to an insane 133 novels.  I didn't even know they were still making them, to be honest, though I remember Marvel having the comic book rights for a while.  Anyway, this is a rather generic "hero loses way, quits to find himself" story.  It's not completely horrible, but it's not inspired, and the final scene is hopelessly undermotivated as Iron Fist just decides to call it quits and go home in the middle of a fight.

Lau, meanwhile, is a problematic artist.  My main difficulty with him is those godawful big eyes he insists on giving to female characters.  It's not that I have a problem with the manga style as such, but Lau seems to have taken certain elements of manga and shoved them into a different context where they don't work.  Most aspects of Lau's art look basically realistic and are within the established ground rules of north American art.  Throw a manga female into that set-up - especially one with a non-cartoon body - and the faces look grotesquely deformed.  It just doesn't work.

It certainly doesn't help that Lau's action sequences flow terribly.  Iron Fist is a martial arts hero and, above all else, you need an artist who can convey the fluidity and movement of martial arts.  That is a very difficult thing to do, which is probably one reason why Iron Fist has never worked.  Lau's fights cut confusing to reverse camera angles and have characters being hurled around by apparently unseen forces.  It's not so confused as to make the plot impossible to follow, but it certainly lacks panel-to-panel flow and fails to convey any of the kinetic appeal of martial arts movies.

A below average comic rather than a terrible one - but it'll be dead within a year. 

Rating: C

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