Scanning My Collection> That Time Iron Fist Cosplayed As Daredevil

If you haven’t been following the daily comic reviews from when this came out, I’ve been doing a review of the “Last Iron Fist Story” arc from the 2007 version of The Immortal Iron Fist. Series numbering has become a bigger mess than trying to follow the Golden Age comics with all the renumbering, restarts, and namesakes. It’s actually kind of annoying. Anyway, I’ve been reviewing the story through a 2011 digital trade collection from comiXology. I don’t know if it was something temporarily marked free as part of promoting the Netflix show (the one people don’t like because they changed too much, something that is now how Netflix AND Marvel operate their adaptations) or what as I wasn’t a big Iron Fist fan in general but the specifics of this story really turned me off. It’s more my tastes than bad writing or anything.

I’ve already discussed that story, obviously, there is also an eight page story that was reprinted at the end of the title story, which is odd because it came out and takes place before that series. For the uniformed, Iron Fist was created in response to the 1970s interest in Chinese kung-fu films. These came in two forms: you had the American who learned martial arts to fight a bunch of baddies, or you had a regular all-Chinese martial arts movie, which is where Shang-Chi comes from, not the wire-fu mess Marvel Studios recently put out. “The Last Iron Fist Story” came out during the events of Civil War, one of those “Marvel heroes fight each other” type stories that usually disinterest me, only without the part where they end up banding together against the real baddies. Sorry, but I don’t want to see the heroes fight each other. I want them to fight the villains. That’s supposed to be the difference between superHERO and superVILLAIN!

Wait, is this the Civil War happening in the Marvel Zombies universe?

Choosing Sides is a one-shot set during that period, cover dated December, 2006. The comic features four Marvel heroes–Iron Fist, Venom, US Agent John Walker, and for some reason Howard The Duck, who you’d think would be the least connected to these events. Venom doesn’t have a secret identity and is a villain or at best anti-hero, I don’t know if John Walker was exposed as US Agent or one of the many former Captains America, and I don’t know that Iron Fist every bothered with a secret identity. At any rate Howard wouldn’t have to register with the Superhuman Registration Act because he isn’t a human and I doubt SHIELD would want to draft him into anything. Even ICE isn’t looking for him because he technically wasn’t an immigrant to 616; he was forced here.

It doesn’t matter because the only story reprinted in THIS trade was the Iron Fist story, again at the end of the story despite taking place prior to it. So let’s finish off this trade collection and read this story.

Iron Fist: “Choosing Sides”

WRITERS: Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction

ARTIST: David Aja

COLORIST: Matt Hollingsworth

LETTERER: Dave Lanphear

EDITOR: Warren Simons

The story starts with Daredevil on patrol, doing the usual jumps and flips you’d expect from Daredevil. The first-person narration has him talking about these days following sirens or screams. It’s a decent set-up and doesn’t expose the secret of the story. He arrives at what he thinks is a mugging, with some good use of panels to show him choosing targets–but not the same way he usually does. It’s not his usual radar sense but picking up on pressure points. Turn out it’s actually a trap. I had to do a bit of research on the Marvel fan wiki to fill in some gaps. At this time Matt Murdock was helping the anti-Act forces, but the synopsis of this book doesn’t say if he was doing it as Matt legally or Daredevil as part of Captain America’s anti-Act group. Even with a whole lot of guns at his back, Daredevil manages to escape and returns home…Danny Rand’s home!

In a flashback we’re shown that Danny supports the anti-Act forces but isn’t taking part as Iron Fist. We did see in the story proper that Danny wasn’t registered and assumed that Misty Knight was part of the SHIELD’s group hunting down unregistered superhumans. Like with Howard I have some questions here. Few people know that Daredevil is blind, getting by with his “radar sense” he got when a canister of something splashed into his eyes, replacing his ability to see with this power…and somehow also turning a rat and four baby turtles into ninja masters but that’s a different continuity. (I wonder if I should switch the Marvel and Turtle reviews for branding? Monday Turtles and Tuesday Marvel doesn’t work as well as Monday Marvel and Tuesday Turtles.) So all they know is he’s a normal human in costume. What qualifies as a costume? Normal criminals wear masks or some kind of face covering to conceal their identity just to rob a convenience store. Do they have to register as well? “Give me the money in the till, the cigarettes, and a registration form…NOW! Oh, and this Baby Ruth.”

At any rate, Danny is agreeing to help Matt keep his identity safe by posting as the Man Without Fear. Matt’s had trouble with his identity in the past thanks to being temporarily exposed by the Kingpin before finding a way to clear his name. (Long story that ruined one of Matt’s love interests. I believe Frank Miller was involved, which doesn’t surprise me.) So while Matt is away Danny is pretending to be Daredevil so nobody makes a reconnection between the two. Returning home his answering machine gets a call from Jerwyn about the Wai-Go deal (and if you’ve followed the “Yesterday’s” Comic reviews you know how badly that went) with the remark of remembering who he is. It’s an odd way to put it but it’s just there so Danny can think back to his origin before noting that soon it may be time to end the Daredevil bit and become the Iron Fist again.

This is definitely a story that works better being read at the start of the collection rather than the end. And yet it doesn’t offer a lot of anything to “The Last Iron Fist Story”. At no point is Danny playing Daredevil ever so much as mentioned. We learn that he’s against the Superhuman Registration Act and isn’t registered but all that does is make him more vulnerable to Hydra and Davos and none of that is even hinted in this story. I have to wonder if they were just padding out the trade with this because it doesn’t really matter to the title story. Oh, and if you’re curious about the other three, here are some copy/pasted synopses from the Marvel wiki:

• “Switching Sides”: As he is arranging to flee the country and sell off all the media rights to his story, Mac Gargan is attacked by a S.H.I.E.L.D. SHRA enforcement squad. He makes quick work of them with the help of his symbiote. After the fight, Songbird and Radioactive Man of the Thunderbolts arrive to give Venom an option: Join them or be arrested. After minor consideration, Venom decides to join their ranks.
• “Conscientious Objector”: Having a meal on a rooftop, Ant-Man witnesses a battle between the pro and anti-SHRA forces in the middle of the street. When a little girl is caught in the middle of the battle, Ant-Man jumps to her rescue and hides her under a car until the battle subsides, and decides to bug off to find a womans shower that needs “supervision.” When the Pro-SHRA forces assess the damage done in the battle, they find a little girl. The little girl tells Iron Man and the others that she was saved by the new Ant-Man. Yellowjacket calls in the sighting to S.H.I.E.L.D., as Ant-Man finds a women’s gym he desired to find earlier.
• “Choosing Sides” (same name, different story): Tony Stark has asked US Agent to be a liaison for the Canadian government who are being swamped by super-humans crossing the border into Canada to escape the SHRA. Initially, US Agent refuses because he is trying to catch the Purple Man. Tracking down the Purple Man and fighting him on a hovercraft, Agent is easily defeated and ordered to jump off the ship. Recovering aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. carrier, Stark informs US Agent that Killgrave has fled to Canada. US Agent accepts the assignment to Canada and jumps off the ship in his casts to rendezvous with the landing team.
• “Non-Human Americans”: With the Super-Human Registration Act in full effect, Beverly Switzler talks Howard the Duck into registering themselves (with Bev as his sidekick) so that they can take advantage of the benefits of signing up (like a steady paycheck and benefits.) Initially signing up at the DMV in error, they get into the Super-Human Registration line up, however when trying to sign up, a local S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent recognizes Howard as the human duck that has been reported time and time again.Forever fed up with having to do write ups about the human-duck and furious that they have all turned out to be true, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent tells Howard that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s official policy is that he does not exist and kicks him out of the SHRA office. Disappointed that he couldn’t register, Howard looks on the bright side, since he doesn’t exist in the eyes of the government, at least he doesn’t have to worry about traffic tickets, have no worries about jury duty, doesn’t have to file his taxes, heck he doesn’t even have to vote if he doesn’t want to.
• “Guiding Light”: During a night out with her family in Springfield, Illinois, Harley Davidson-Cooper inadvertently causes a blackout. This causes Iron Man and the Avengers to get a reading on her energy signature. Spider-Man is informed as he’s webbing up members of the Sinister Six. However, after he leaves, Sandman frees the captured villains and they decide to follow the wall-crawler to Springfield in hopes of recruiting the superhuman as their sixth member. When Harley’s location is discovered be both sides a fight breaks between the Sinister Six and her and the Avengers. In the middle of the battle, Harley makes contact with Hydro-Man and the water shorts out her powers, possibly permanently. Iron Man gives her an Avengers Priority Card, so that she can contact them if she ever finds herself in danger again.

The Howard and Guiding Light stories are the only ones that sound interesting to me, but they still take place in my least favorite part of Marvel history. At least with Hydra Cap you knew it was temporary and the result of the Cosmic Cube. This was just the character assassination of the Marvel heroes and further proof that Marvel civilians are morons. I honestly hate this storyline. The end of the trade I’m working from had a few concept pictures of Iron Fist and one of the Crane sisters. It’s still not my kind of story but I can’t say any of it was bad outside of what nitpicks made it into my review. Then again, I’m not a fan of the character so maybe actual fans had more to say positive or negative? At any rate I can move on to the next Marvel comic in my ComiXology collection.