Iron Fist (character)
| Iron Fist | |
|---|---|
| File:Ironfist1.jpg | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Marvel Premiere #15 (May, 1974). |
| Created by | Roy Thomas Gil Kane |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Daniel Rand |
| Team affiliations | Heroes for Hire |
| Abilities | Chi related powers to enable enhanced striking power and healing ability |
Iron Fist (real name Daniel Rand or Daniel Rand-K'ai) is a superhero in Marvel Comics. He is an expert in "kung fu" (used at the time to refer to multiple martial arts), and he could focus his chi (life force) into his fist, making it glow with energy and become "like unto a thing of iron". Needless to say, he could punch things really hard with his iron fist. If he grasped objects, he could use the power to burn them, if he grasped a living thing, he could use the power to channel healing energy into them. Iron Fist was one of the characters created by Marvel Comics to cash on the sudden popularity of martial arts in the early 1970s. When the kung fu craze declined, the struggling title was merged with another comic that had been designed to cash in on popular culture, that of the African American hero Power Man. Ironically, the merged book proved more popular than the solo comics that birthed it.
Daniel Rand was the son of wealthy American businessman Wendell Rand, an entrepeneur who had appeared out of nowhere with a large sum of money and over the course of ten years built up Rand-Meachum Incorporated with his business partner Harold Meachum. His mother Heather had been a New York society belle before she met and married Daniel's father. Wendell was obsessed with finding the mystical city of K'un L'un, high on the mountain of the same name which according to legend was the dwelling place of the immortals of China and the basis of other legendary and immortal cities like Shangri-La. When Daniel was 9, Wendell organized an expedition to Himalayas to seek K'un L'un, taking Heather and their son and with Harold Meachum also following.
During the journey up the mountain, Daniel slipped off the path, his tie-rope taking his mother and father with him. While Daniel and Heather landed safely on a ledge below, Wendell hung precariously over a gorge. It was at this point that Meachum showed his true intentions, and eliminated his business partner by causing Wendell to lose his grip and plunge to his death. Meachum, who also loved Heather, offered to resuce her and Daniel, but she rejected his help, preferring to make it on their own or die. While Meachum made his own way back to civlization, Heather and Daniel stumbled on a makeshift bridge that appeared, impossibly, in the middle of nowhere. Before they could cross it, however, a pack of wolves attacked them. To give Daniel enough time to reach the other side, Heather sacrificed herself by throwing herself onto the wolves, who killed her. The bridge did indeed lead to K'un L'un, which appeared only once every ten years. The inhabitants found Daniel and took him to see Yü-Ti, the hooded August Personage of Jade, who somehow knew his name and his parents. When Daniel expressed his desire for vengeance, Yü-Ti apprenticed him to Lei Kung, the Thunderer, who taught him the martial arts.
Daniel proved to the most gifted of Lei Kung's students, even conditioning his fists by plunging them into buckets of sand, then gravel and rock to toughen them. At 19, Daniel was given the chance to attain the power of the Iron Fist by fighting and defeating the immortal dragon known as Shou-Lao the Undying, who guarded the molten heart that had been torn from its body. During the battle, Daniel threw himself against the scar of Shou-Lao, which burned a dragon tattoo into his chest. Having killed Shou-Lao, he entered its cave and plunged his fists into a brazier which contained the creature's molten heart, emerging with the power of the Iron Fist. 10 years having passed, K'un L'un was about to connect with the outside world once more. Yü-Ti offered Daniel the fruit of the Tree of Immortality and to dwell with them forever, but Daniel's need for revenge against Meachum was too great. He decided to leave K'un L'un and find Meachum. Before he left, however, Yü-Ti made a startling revelation: he was Wendell Rand's brother, and Daniel's uncle. Wendell Rand had really been Wendell Rand-K'ai, the eldest son of the previous Yü-Ti, Tuan. Wendell had left K'un L'un for unspecified reasons, dying before he made it back to his immortal home.
Returning to New York, Rand, dressed in the ceremonial garb of the Iron Fist, sought out Harold Meachum, now head of Meachum Industries. Meachum, who had lost both his legs from frostbite on the journey back from the mountain, had been waiting for Rand, having learned of his adoption by K'un L'un from a passing traveller. Before Iron Fist could decide whether to kill him, however, Meachum was murdered by a mysterious ninja and Iron Fist was blamed for the death. Eventually, Iron Fist cleared his name and began a career as a superhero, aided by his friends Colleen Wing and Misty Knight, the latter with whom he fell in love. Notable adversaries in his early career included one of the first appearances of the villain Sabretooth (who was not yet known to be affiliated with Wolverine) and the Steel Serpent, the exiled son of Lei Kung, who coveted the Iron Fist power.
Iron Fist eventually helped Power Man prove his own innocence and became partners with him in Heroes For Hire, Inc.; the two characters' titles merging together into one series, Power Man and Iron Fist. Although they supposedly were only heroes for money, the running plot device of the series (which lasted for over sixty issues after the merger) was that they were always doing the right thing, which usually left them with less money rather than more. Iron Fist, in his secret identity of Daniel Rand, had reassumed control of his parents' fortune as half of Rand-Meachum, and was actually quite wealthy. This caused a lot of tension between him and Luke Cage, who was raised poor in the ghetto.
In the final issues of Power Man and Iron Fist, Rand was exposed to radiation and contracted cancer. He returned to K'un L'un to seek Lei Kung's help to focus his healing powers and cure himself, but discovered that the city had been destroyed as revenge by Chaintang the Black Dragon, the brother of Shou-Lao. Feeling responsible, Rand wore red instead of green for a time to reflect this dishonor. Meanwhile, the Heroes for Hire became involved with a dying young boy who could transform into the super-powered Captain Hero. Cage had tried to trick Rand into believing he had atoned for his sins, and the two had a public falling out when Rand discovered the ruse. However, they put their differences aside to stay by the boy's hospital bed, where Rand tried to use the Iron Fist to heal him, no matter how exhausting this process was. In the middle of the night, the boy awoke in excruciating pain to find Rand unconscious. Unable to wake him, the boy turned into Captain Hero, but in his fevered state punched Rand into a wall, killing him. The boy's powers then caused him to disintegrate. With the boy missing and Iron Fist dead, Luke Cage became the prime suspect because of his recent falling out with Rand, and became a fugitive from the law as the series ended.
This storyline would not be resolved until years later, in the 1990s in Namor. Rand apparently returned from the dead, and it was revealed that the "Iron Fist" who had died was actually a doppelgänger created by the H'ylthri, the sentient plant life that lived around K'un-L'un, and that Captain Hero had actually been the shapeshifting Super-Skrull. Iron Fist received a miniseries shortly afterwards, and several years later the reconciled Power Man and Iron Fist were two of the principal characters in a new Heroes for Hire series. After this series ended due to low sales, a new character, a ninja named Junzo Muto, stole the Iron Fist powers and subsequently appeared in the Iron Fist and Wolverine miniseries. Later, in the Black Panther series, Chiantang mentally controlled Daniel Rand and restored his Iron Fist powers; Chiantang was eventually defeated. Most recently, Iron Fist received a new ongoing series.
A proposed Iron Fist movie has been in development for some time, with Ray Park in talks to star, but so far the film has failed to materialize.