Asian Superheroes part 1 - Immortal Weapons

Iron Fist seems to have been getting a renaissance treatment these days. Having recently being written by Ed Brubaker, who is more known for crime stories like Gotham Central, Catwoman or other Batman titles. So taking the Chinese martial arts would seem to be a strange departure. But in some ways it's not to be totally unexpected that a top-notch writer has been hired on to write kung fu. The Asian superheroes subgenre itself is getting some momentum. DC Comics and Grant Morrison came out with the Great Ten in their Justice League titles and Crisis crossover and that got a lot of attention. (I will be covering the Great Ten in part 2)

The Iron Fist series has always been second-rate until now - Danny Rand, Marvel Comics' greatest martial artist, was paired up with an inner city urban warrior named Luke Cage in the 1970s to fight thugs and non-too threatening lowlifes. His mythical origins from the fabled city of K'un-Lun was nothing more than an exotic token to Asian martial arts and a hurried explanation as to why his kung fu was the best. But now he has been given a rich mythology, where his spiritual homeland is now known to be one of seven mythical cities, each one of which has their own champion similar to himself. And they kick ass. Seriously.

They first meet in a tournament to fight against each other to see which of the seven cities has the right to have open access to Earth. But then they discover that it is all a sham to destroy all of them and they team up. Now you would think, a supreme martial artist is usually partnered up with other super-beings in most comic books, but finally he is paired up with a superteam who are ALL supreme martial artists, each with their own set of specialty skills bordering on the supernatural.

Now accompanying Danny Rand is Fat Cobra, a sumo-looking giant who has the expected strength and endurance, but also lightning fast strikes that bely his appearance. Bride of Nine Spiders - a gothic wraithlike teenager whose upper torso launches swarms of spiders that engulf and confuse her opponents while she whirlwind kicks them into oblivion. Dog Brother #1 - an armoured assassin resembling the terra cotta warriors of Qin Shi Huang, who commands packs of wild dogs and is an expert with all swords. Tiger's Beautiful Daughter, a scantily-clad babe with two folding fans that also function as twin giant scythes and aid in limited flight, and has unexpected super strength. And lastly there is Prince of Orphans, the ultimate warrior. His real name is given as John Aman, previously known in Marvel Comics in the 1970s as Amazing Man. No one knows how he went from a lesser-known superhero to a facially-scarred ass-whupping martial artist who Rand considers to be far superior to his own skills. Aman's abilities to turn himself into a green mist storm on top of his considerable martial arts abilities makes his own teammates tremble at his potential.

There is now an Immortal Weapons limited series of 5 comics, each one giving an origin story to each of the Weapons, starting with Fat Cobra.