SOLO SERIES
IRON FIST
Enter John Byrne.
One Fist had been shifted over to his own title Claremont and Byrne really went to town. Previous stories had seen a varied amount of supporting characters introduced, most notably the Daughters Of The Dragon - aka private detective Misty Knight and woman martial artist Colleen Wing. They would then go onto create a detective agency called Nightwing. Knight was a former police office who'd had her arm blown off in a terrorist attack and seen the arm replaced with a bionic version, was black and eventually the girl friend of Iron Fist (in his civilian identity Danny Rand), which must surely make them one of the first interracial couples in comic books - a bold move indeed. With Claremont at the helm both women's roles were fleshed out and, in a neat move, the Iron Fist title crossed over with Claremont's X-Men by virtue of an apartment rented, and inhabited, by Knight and none other than Jean Grey (the X-Men's Phoenix). That the millionaire Danny Rand owned the entire building was revealed in the final issue of the run, a book that saw Fist hold his own against Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm.
The run had many highlights, with one of the best issues being issue 12. That issue saw Fist going up against Captain America, and in a stunning move, losing to the Avenger. That Captain America could beat one of the world's greatest martial artists - and almost criminally easily at that - showed why Claremont should have been writing the Captain America title, and John Byrne's full page image of Captain America first encountering Iron Fist remains one of the artists best ever splash pages. It didn't get much better than this issue. For the record the only way Iron Fist could come close to beating Captain America was by using his 'iron fist', but then that merely slowed Cap down - it took Iron Fist attempting suicide to get his point across. Byrne, aptly aided by his many inkers, including the highly under-rated Dan Green, has rarely done better than this.
Byrne had this to say about his run on the title. "I suppose the appeal of Iron Fist lay to a large extent in the degree to which he reminded me of me. You see, I'm actually a martial arts expert from a lost city deep in. . .
"No, wait.
"Danny, at the time I came to work with him, was the new kid on the block -- more or less permanently in Shang-Chi's shadow as Marvel's "other" Kung Fu book, very much a stranger in a strange land, finding his way thru the landmines of life in a suddenly new and very different world. Much like the 25 year old John Byrne entering into what he hoped would be a long career in comics."
Claremont, aided by Byrne, wove a web of plot lines that ran through the comic which seemed to be unresolved when it was cancelled with issue 15 (the normal way of doing things to neatly tie up any ongoing sub plots - or as neatly as possible - so the last issue of the title can have everyone living happily ever after). Instead of quickly wrapping up the dangling sub-plots Claremont simply allowed them to carry on as normal and although issue 15 was the end of the run you'd never have known it by the way it was presented. Claremont and Byrne were also working on Marvel Team-Up at the same time (to put today's artists into perspective at one stage Byrne was penciling Team-Up, X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, assorted fill ins and covers and still managing to produce exceedingly high quality work) so it was logical that Iron Fist and his crew would eventually pop up in that title. Claremont had also written stories that had been featured in the magazine Deadly Hands Of Kung Fu that featured not only Iron Fist but also the Daughters Of The Dragon (they'd also appear in Bizzare Adventures). Claremont also managed to slip in references and appearances of the Iron Fist cast into pages of the X-Men thus ensuring that they'd not be out of sight for long.
Iron Fist and his cast walked into Spider-Man's team up book with a minimum of fuss and indeed it looked more as if Spider-Man had walked into issues 16 and 17 of Iron Fist. Two important plot lines were addressed, with the Davros plot being resolved and the Misty Knight/Bushmaster spy plot being expanded. But if anyone thought that Iron Fist would be taking over Team-Up they were mistaken - after the two guest shots Iron Fist was back out in the cold.
Misty Knight was appearing in the pages of X-Men in the meantime in her continuing role as Jean Grey's room-mate. Colleen Wing would eventually appear in the same title as Scott Summer's part time girlfriend after the latter mistakenly believed that Jean Grey was dead. This brief encounter began in Uncanny X-Men #114 but was discontinued once Phoenix returned.
