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.

Evil Portrayed - the Finance Industry

The global finance industry is not exactly seen in a good light right now - what with millions of people unemployed and retirement plans up in smoke. Yet Wall Street plutocrat fatcats are raking in the bonuses once again while the masses can't even afford enough food to eat. But it's curious to see how the comic industry treats them. While its no doubt that they are treated as big as bastards as criminal lawyers, there are two treatments that stick out for their ingeniousness.

ARKHAM ASYLUM: LIVING HELL

Arkham Asylum is well-known as the home for the criminally insane in Gotham City, where Batman tends to send his murderous Rogues Gallery after he's spoiled their nefarious plans. In one case, a man named Warren White (a metaphor for Alan Stanford or Bernie Madoff but preceding them by several years) thinks he's successfully manipulated the legal system but getting himself declared mentally incompetent for running the worst fraud in financial history. At first the judge is outraged at the result then he smiles. For in Gotham, a madman gets sent to Arkham, which is far far worse than any conventional prison. White was better off in a maximum security pen when compared to sharing quarters with Two-Face, Poison Ivy, the Joker and the Scarecrow. He goes from a normal guy who you almost feel sorry for (almost, until Madoff and Stanford became news) who is regarded as "the worst man I've ever met" - even by the outraged Joker! (For you can kill people. but you can't fuck with their retirement plans.) White goes through every degradation, torture, psychological horror and abuse by his fellow prisoners until his mind snaps after he suffers piecemeal crippling physical debilitations. Over a period of six issues in this limited series, we see him slowly and painfully transform into Great White Shark, a new freakish entry into Batman's Rogues Gallery. Awesome.

G.I. JOE: ORIGIN

A clever retcon story written by Larry Hama, the writer of the original Marvel series, that shows how the original team of Duke, Scarlett, Snake Eyes, Heavy Duty, Breaker, Rock and Roll and Stalker were pulled together by Hawk on a small mission in Las Vegas. Written in the post-Jason Bourne era so it's smart, technical and leaves few plot holes - as today's military comics now have readers who are as informed as most real tacticians. Breaker and Scarlett actually act and speak like real communications and intelligence operatives, Stalker speaks pure special forces lingo and professionalism is the name of the game. This particular pre-Cobra mission has them pursue a terrorist with links in the government but whose doctrine and methods are unified with the nut-case right wing militias of Montana and Idaho. So basically G.I. Joe (although technically, that codename has yet to be formulated so they are known as "The Unit") is up against red-neck yokels with machine guns but led by paramilitary hardcases. I'm going to do a big spoiler here but the end challenge for Duke and his team is a choice left by the terrorists - they have only enough time to shut off one weapon of mass destruction, either a) mass toxins that will be released into the atmosphere, killing millions of people, or b) an email that will be sent to every major bank and financial institution in the world that contains the Gaussian copula function, the mathematical formula used to model huge complex risks and widely blamed for the financial subprime crisis. (The terrorists' profit motive being based on crashing the worldwide financial markets and shorting it). The Joes understand both of the risks but as history has shown, they obviously opt to stop the toxins instead to halt an instant kill rather than a slow one. It's quite funny and interesting to see how the financial world was actually being manipulated by a terrorist action, full well knowing the end result while the fatcats themselves are just pawns for evil.