IRON FIST #5

”WHEN SLAYS THE SCIMITAR!”
Author: Chris Claremont | Artist: John Byrne | Inker: Frank Chiarmonte
Letterer: Joe Rosen | Colorist: Phil Rache | Editor: Marv Wolfman

Begin it on a roof-top in Central London -- in late Winter, in the night, in the cold.

Begin it in a side-street halfway between Paddington and Maida Vale, a street named Golladay Mews (made notorious by a string of unresolved vampire murders barely two years gone).

A run-down street, this -- a slum -- left to wither and die amid the hustle and bustle that is London!

Begin it on this street, and begin it with this man: Iron Fist, the Living Weapon. You.

Your quest has led you here -- all you have to do now is survive.

The Plot: Following a note from Hassan, the supposed traitor in the camp of Colleen Wing’s kidnappers, Iron Fist finds himself near the London rail yards. Changing to Danny Rand to avoid drawing attention to himself, he spots a young man being roughed up by a group of hoods. Danny helps fight them off, and their victim introduces himself as Alan Cavenaugh, formerly of the Irish Republican Army.

The duo enters the building where Iron Fist was to meet Hassan and finds him dead. His apparent murderers attack, and under cover of steam from the rail yard, Danny changes back to Iron Fist just in time to be assaulted by a mercenary named Scimitar. Iron Fist and Scimitar duel, and Alan is injured during the fight. Ultimately Iron Fist wins and escorts Alan to the hospital.

Meanwhile, in Halwan, Master Khan and Angar the Screamer have completed Colleen’s brainwashing. To test its success, Khan has Colleen kill a robotic Iron Fist dummy.

Continuity Notes: The murders referenced in the opening Narration took place in GIANT-SIZE DRACULA #3. On the second page, Iron Fist notes that, following last issue’s events, he was cleared of any involvement with Radion.

It's stated more than once that it has been “months” since Colleen was kidnapped, and in fact it's been weeks simply since last issue’s events. I've read before that Chris Claremont tried to write IRON FIST as if it took place in real time, much to John Byrne’s consternation. Personally, I tend to side with Byrne on this point.

While changing into Iron Fist, Danny makes an aside about Spider-Man, and a footnote states that the two met in MARVEL TEAM-UP #31.

Master Khan declares that he has modified Angar’s powers, though the exact nature of this modification is not described, other than that he used them to brainwash Colleen.

This issue is the first appearance of Halwan native Scimitar, who will appear very, very, very sporadically in Marvel comics over the next few decades. In a little move that I love, Chris Claremont himself, long after moving away from Iron Fist, writing the X-Men for a decade-plus, departing Marvel altogether and then returning, utilized this character of his own creation again, for the second time ever, twenty-nine years later in the pages of EXCALIBUR (vol. 3) #13.

My Thoughts: It occurs to me that Master Khan’s plan seems kind of muddled by this point. Originally he was looking to assassinate Halwan’s Princess Azir as part of his bid for the throne, but when Iron Fist thwarted the attempt, he immediately decided that the Living Weapon needed to be dealt with first, lest he save the princess again. Which led to this peculiarly drawn-out and unnecessarily complex plan:

Khan kidnaps Colleen to use as bait, luring Iron Fist into a fight with Angar. Iron Fist wins, so Khan’s plan “B” is to use one of his own men, claiming he wants to defect, to lure Iron Fist into a trap. Only for some reason, Khan waits “months” to spring this trap, which amounts to Scimitar attacking Iron Fist while his guard is up anyway. Meanwhile, he also uses those months to fly Colleen all the way to Halwan and brainwash her, apparently so that if plan “B” fails, plan “C” will be to lure Iron Fist the rest of the way to Halwan so Colleen can kill him herself.

I'm all for complex stratagems and Machiavellian maneuvers, but this just feels ill-conceived and meandering. Granted, it's the sort of thing a reader probably wouldn't notice reading these issues piecemeal over several months (IRON FIST being a bi-monthly comic), but when read all at once in a single collection, the flaws are very noticeable and the whole things seems a little sloppy, like Claremont is making it up as he goes along.

Though part of this is the “real time” business mentioned above. If all this stuff had happened over the course of a week or so, it would make much more sense to me as Khan coming up with a succession of improvised plans as Iron Fist repeatedly escapes his traps. But when you tell me it's been months since Colleen was kidnapped -- eight months if we go by cover dates -- then it just becomes absurd, and a textbook example for why superhero comics should not run in real time.