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kali921 (kali921) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-06-08 11:40:00

Entry tags:

char: iron fist/daniel rand, creator: rudy nebres, series: one perfect moment week, title: deadly hands of kung fu, title: iron fist

One Perfect Moment: Iron Fist - warning for epic under the cut!
As soon as I saw that a One Perfect Moment week had been launched, I knew that I had to post this page.

Daniel Thomas Rand-K'ai has (obviously) had a plethora of One Perfect Moments over the years. This should be evident just by reading, oh, any panel with him in it. That's putting aside his extraordinarily cracky backstory with paradise pocket dimensions, mystic warrior poets, aliens, snatching the molten heart of Shou-Lao the undying in order to gain the title of Iron Fist, and all the other things that make him such a perfect distillation of everything that was and can be so good about the House of Ideas.

Thus it's exceedingly hard to pick just One Perfect Moment for obvious reasons; be it a frenzied duomachy or Danny taking on the teeming hordes of HYDRA or Danny flinging himself at a ginormous dragon and felling it with one punch*, it's so difficult to pick.

But there exists an exquisite page from Danny's early days that distills the essence of what it is to be Iron Fist. I read this issue when I was a small girl, and this page is what made me fall in love with Iron Fist as a character, because it blew my mind.

And this page? Is EPIC in both art and writing.

SHKOOOOOOOOOOW!

Yes. That is, in fact, Danny Rand delivering a curb stomp in one page to a dude fully powered up in a suit of Iron Man armour with naught but his bare hands.

And that, my friends, is why Danny Rand is the baddest motherfucker in the world.

...Not to mention that that page proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Danny has the finest posterior of any male in the Marvelverse.

Edit: Wait. I have to add one more page, because no One Perfect Moment post featuring Iron Fist is complete without showing Danny wrecking three people's faces with just one kick.

Visage-wrecking awesome from Deadly Hands of Kung Fu** #22 as drawn by the incomparable Rudy Nebres:

I'm pretty certain that this page was the direct inspiration for Matt Fraction and David Aja's Danny-and-Orson-vs.-HYDRA sequence in Immortal Iron Fist #5.

We just might need to have a Rudy Nebres week here on S_D. His work was both seminal and gorgeous.

* Oh, yes. You'd best believe that I'll also be posting those pages.
** The same issue has the distinction of also containing the very first appearance of Jack of Hearts. Who does Jack fight in his very first canonical appearance? The White Tiger. No, I am not making this up.

(Post a new comment)

	perletwo 2009-06-08 02:07 pm UTC (link)
	That is indeed a very lovely ~~posterior~~ art style. Whose is it? Neal Adams? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kali921 2009-06-08 02:14 pm UTC (link)
	I actually have to pull the issue out of my longboxes; I should actually have done that so I could post a colored version of this page (although it's equally as effective in black and white, methinks). I think it's either Adams or Byrne. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	perletwo 2009-06-08 02:24 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that first panel feels like Byrne. But the elongation of the figures made me think Adams at first. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kali921 2009-06-08 02:47 pm UTC (link)
	I just added a Rudy Nebres page of Danny to this post. Talk about elongation (but of the GOOD kind!). Also, talk about kicks to the face. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Very Awesome! proteus_lives 2009-06-08 02:41 pm UTC (link)
	Danny Rand is made for EPIC/METAL fight scenes. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Very Awesome!

kali921
2009-06-08 02:46 pm UTC (link)

He is indeed absolutely shaped for this specific purpose! I have a whole bunch of Iron Fist posts geared up and ready to go showing the best of Danny's epic no-holds-barred beatdowns over the years against all manner of foes. The great thing about Danny? He tends to, when written well, steal the show when he's guest starring in other people's books. I've got an epic example of that phenomenon that I'll be posting later today.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Very Awesome! proteus_lives 2009-06-08 03:28 pm UTC (link)
	Suggestion! If you have ton of Iron Fist stuff, how about you launch a "WEEK OF IRON"? That would bad-ass. Hmm, people might confuse that title with Iron Man, how about "I have the best Kung-Fu" week or (What did Misty call him in the DoD mini?) I think it went like this, "White boy Kung-Fu machine" week? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Very Awesome! kali921 2009-06-08 04:05 pm UTC (link)
	I could call it "My Arsenal of Kung Fu is Rich and Deep" week. Or simply "1001 Reasons Not to Fuck With the Son of K'un-Lun." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Very Awesome! proteus_lives 2009-06-08 04:32 pm UTC (link)
	Or "Danny Rand says Bring It." week. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	just_mrasaki 2009-06-08 02:50 pm UTC (link)
	Recently I did get into the Immortal Iron Fist series, and I do have to agree with you. Danny Rand is just awesome. I'd previously loved his bromance w/ Daredevil, too. :D ...Not to mention that that page proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Danny has the finest posterior of any male in the Marvelverse. grin Kinda maybe sorta YEAH. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kali921 2009-06-08 02:57 pm UTC (link)
	grin Kinda maybe sorta YEAH. That's saying something when you consider the abundance of fine male posteriors extant in the Marvel multiverse. But I will stand by my assertion and provide many, many examples if necessary. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	scottyquick 2009-06-08 06:24 pm UTC (link)
	I strike with Luke Cage! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kali921 2009-06-08 06:41 pm UTC (link)
	Is that Tan or Yu? Either way, WEAK. I'll have to bring my Danny A-Game tomorrow! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	volksjager 2009-06-08 04:45 pm UTC (link)
	I have always thought John Byrne's run on ron fist was excellent and under appreciated. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kali921 2009-06-09 10:03 am UTC (link)
	Absolutely agreed. Danny's fight with Sabretooth? GLORIOUS. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	scottyquick 2009-06-08 06:25 pm UTC (link)
	This art is absolutely incredible, especially Nubres. Do you know if Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu or the early Iron Fist stuff is traded? I know Essential Iron Fist is like 90$, but there might be something else under another name. (Reply to this) (Thread)

kali921
2009-06-08 06:36 pm UTC (link)

It's actually Rudy Nebres, not "Nubres." He, along with Ernie Chan, was one of the first Filipino creators to work in American superhero/fantasy comics. Nebres' work on the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu book was incredible. DHOKF generally had awesome art anyway (as well as no ads, tons of actual articles about martial arts, interviews, etc.), but Nebres' work was just five-star skull-cleaning stuff. (Both Tony Isabella and Don McGregor contributed editing duties to DHOKF, which should be a testament to its caliber.)

I don't think that it's been traded on its own.

Some of Danny's early pre-HFH/solo series appearances, if memory serves, are included Essential Iron Fist.

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	kagome654 2009-06-08 06:26 pm UTC (link)
	Beautiful. He's such a criminally underrated character. (Reply to this) (Thread)

kali921
2009-06-08 06:40 pm UTC (link)

I'm glad that Marvel made a concerted effort to make him A-list again. I hope that the current IF book stays the course and stays at least decent. I may not have liked everything Frac & Bru did with Danny's actual dialog, but they undoubtedly enriched the Iron Fist mythos considerably, and it'd be a shame to lose that. With Civil War/SI/Dark Reign, I don't think that Danny's had a moment to really SHINE in an ensemble book, particularly under Bendis. Under current Marvel conditions, he seems to work best off in his own corner or working with two or three other characters. I mean, did he even get his own splash page at any point during Secret Invasion where he punches the chi right out of a Skrull? He didn't, did he?

Too bad. He deserved one.

Wait'll you see the Iron Fist and Black Panther stuff that I'm posting tomorrow. Your mind = BLOWN.

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	akodo_rokku 2009-06-08 09:17 pm UTC (link)
	That is some great, classic stuff. Now someone needs to post Danny's "human bullet" routine from Immortal Iron Fist, because that was just... glorious. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kali921 2009-06-09 09:59 am UTC (link)
	I'll post it! I'll be HAPPY to post it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

billy_vagrant
2009-06-08 10:19 pm UTC (link)

Wow, that is some pure, unmitigated awesome, right there.
It's funny, my father was a big fan of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu through it's original run, which is what got him into comics in the first place (and, oddly enough, bodybuilding). And since it was his influence that got me into comics after that, I've always kind of wanted to get a look at some samples of those issues. Thank you for posting this; I always heard the art on these was fantastic, so it's cool to finally get to see it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

kali921
2009-06-09 10:01 am UTC (link)

You are most welcome, and it was my pleasure. I've got most issues of DHOKF, and I'll be happy to post more. The White Tiger stuff is just unbelievably good. I'm also kali921 over on LJ, and I'll be crossposting there, but putting more material up on my LJ than I would here because of S_D's page limits.

My father was also a bodybuilder! That's how I got into strength training at a very early age. By the time I was fourteen, I was working out with weights at least four times a week. We had a room with nothing but free weights at my house, and there I was, doing bench presses, squats, and curls!

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