A galaxy of martial arts heroes appear in Deadly Hands of K’un-Lun #1, written by Yifan Jiang with art by Paco Medina and colors by Ceci De La Cruz, including the new Iron Fist Lin Lie, former Iron Fist Danny Rand, White Fox, Elektra, The White Tiger, etc., but the overwhelming amount of information that’s dumped throughout the book results in it being a sometimes arduous task to read. There’s a LOT of backstory involved here, and in addition to the usual full-page synopsis of what happened previously with the characters (thanks Marvel!), there’s also a lot of additional narration, including describing the Sword of Fu Xi and how the current Iron Fist broke it into shards and how Pei (who was also Iron Fist for a bit) gave up the mantle to Lin Lie.
What’s worse is that there are a ton of characters here too (including Loki!). Seeing them all interact with each other is fun but it also gets pretty crazy trying to keep up with them all. Since this is a miniseries, I feel it would’ve been better to spread the characters and information out over multiple issues rather than cramming it all here. The book’s aiming for a Paul Levitz/Walt Simonson level of subplots, switching between them at lightning speed, which isn’t always a good thing.
On the plus side, the book whisks us to many different exotic locations like K’un-Lun, Hell’s Kitchen, Monterey, California, Z’Gambo and the dreaded lightning shrouded realm of The Kingdom of Spiders. It’s like a whirlwind tour of all the mystical martial arts-related fantasy worlds in the Marvel Universe.
Marvel
The book delivers some great fight scenes, and really, what more could anyone want from a martial arts book? An especially great scene has Iron Fist, Elektra and The White Tiger battling members of villain Lin Feng’s army in a hailstorm of glowing fists, clanging sais and vicious claws. I’d never seen Elektra and The White Tiger fight side by side before but I’d love to see more of the duo together, especially since they both have Hell’s Kitchen as their stomping grounds.
I also liked how Lin Lie uses his Iron Fist power, expanding it beyond how Danny Rand used it, including even using it as a propulsion system at one point. It’s always great when a writer takes existing Marvel lore and builds on it, creating new aspects that no one had thought of before. Though it’s nice to see Loki here, it’s hard to tell what he’s up to, hanging so closely with Lin Feng. That didn’t bother me too much though because Loki’s never someone who reveals his hand until he’s ready, then watch out!
If you love martial arts books and don’t mind some super-thick narrative served with your punches and kicks, pick up this first issue and get a peek at corners of the Marvel Universe we rarely get to see.
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