Catch more of Lackadaisy on YouTube, and read the comic it’s based on!
Also, if you want to support the show and comic here is their Backerkit listing, and if you want to know why you should check out the Saturday Night Showcase on the pilot movie and the aforementioned comic.
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
“I want to have a few words with Netflix!”
The Immortal Iron Fist #6
Marvel Comics (July, 2007; as posted in the digital trade from comiXology)
“The Last Iron Fist Story” part 6
WRITERS: Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction
ARTIST: David Aja & Russ Heath
COLORISTS: Matt Hollingsworth & Laura Martin
LETTERER: Dave Lamphear
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Alejandro Arbona
EDITOR: Warren Simons
Where do we stand after the previous chapter? Without too many spoilers for anyone just falling in, Not-Batman is chasing Bane around Gotham while Not-Sir Hemingford is running around England to find his kidnapped doctor. Only one chapter this week, a bit short by a page or two but I think it will progress the story enough and I’m short on time today.
I should note that Jean Paul is not winning due to his superiority. He’s winning because he had something Bruce didn’t. He knows Bane exists and has some idea of what he can do. You know that annoying nonsense about Bruce’s actual power (besides money) is “prep time”, that he could beat Galactus with prep time? At least in this case there’s something to be said for it. Plus Bane isn’t ready for someone just as violent as he is but more controlled and focused. Bane’s previous adversaries were people who talked a good game because he had the advantage, or someone completely unprepared for his tactics either because they dismissed him or didn’t know they existed until five minutes ago. Jean Paul isn’t impressed, is very much prepared, and now has Bane at a disadvantage. Let’s see what he does with it.
Mikey wasn’t allowed back on eBay since that day.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #4
Mirage Publishing (June, 1985)
This comic is retroactively been given the name “Rescuing Master Splinter”, the name of the story arc adaptation from the 2003 4Kids cartoon. Also of interest is that the second printing uses images later used for the first NES game’s box art, after a misprint using the then active Tales Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. A few issues of the misprint did make it into the world. This is the original cover, though.
One final bit of trivia to pad out the homepage: This the first of three issues collected into an oversized and colorized trade back in the 1980s by First Publishing for Volume 2. This was my introduction to the Ninja Turtles comics after already becoming a fan of the show.
WRITERS/ARTISTS: Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird
Back in the 1970s and 1980s Godzilla stalked the Marvel Universe, and those events are still referenced to this day, along with the robot Red Ronin still part of the Marvel Universe. Now it’s the DC Universe’s turn as the Legendary Pictures “Monsterverse” versions of Godzilla AND King Kong are set to invade Metropolis. I’m assuming Metropolis because they’re using the multiverse and Metropolis is used to the occasional giant monkey.
Funny, Godzilla could take the Avengers by himself but needs Kong to fight the Justice League. Guess we know which is the stronger team. 😀
The Clutter Reports (my other site) Atop The Fourth Wall Crisis On Earth Prime Lean Into Artcast Bully Says “Comics Oughta Be Fun” Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery
Cartoon Hero’s Lair SF Debris Four Million Years Later
![[VIDEO] The James Gunn Superman Cataclysm](https://bwspotlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/superfix-wm.jpg?w=190&h=110&crop=1 "[VIDEO] The James Gunn Superman Cataclysm")
BW Media Spotlight 
BW’s Daily Video> Why Ditching Floppies For Graphic Novels Won’t Work
Catch more from Comics By Perch on YouTube
Something I wrote in the comments when the video first came out (I really need to clean out my archive):
The “problem” with the floppies is that they don’t write comics in that style anymore. They write for the trade. Instead of making essentially a TV series they’ve opted to make a series of movies and then releases them as multipart episodes. What they should do is write a one or two issue story with a running subplot in their lives to tie them all together as a continuity.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on July 25, 2023 in Comic Spotlight and tagged comic books, Comics By Perch, commentary, Graphic novel, original graphic novel.
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