Iron Fist #6, by Ed Brisson (writer), Mike Perkins (artist), Andy Troy (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Shang-Chi with a mustache seems wrong, somehow.Iron Fist won that tournament on the island, but as usual, his opponent is a sore loser and has put a price on his head. First to collect are group of people being controlled by someone called the Seer, and they get after Danny before his plane has even finished landing. He's not doing well until Shang-Chi shows up. They try to chase the last of the foes to find where Seer is, and follow directly into a trap. Shang appears to fall before the Seer and become one of his puppets.
At one point, Danny asks Shang-Chi how many of the Sight guys he took down during the fight, to which Shang responds with his usual spiel about not taking any pleasure in violence or keeping tallies, blah, blah. I don't know if Brisson is simply trying to highlight differences between the two, or that Danny's still off. Still focused on trying to find his way home through the violence. He's spamming the iron fist attack an awful lot, too. Almost constantly, when I always thought it was supposed to be more a last resort. Could be meant to mean something, or not.
Perkins' work on faces is not the greatest here. Shang's face seems to change a lot from one panel to another. Prominence of cheekbones, hair, nose. You can tell it's still meant to be Shang-Chi, but it's as much because there aren't a whole lot of guys with dark hair and a head band in this comic, you know. When the airliner goes tumbling, a disturbing number of the panicking passengers seem to be looking at us. You can draw characters looking in our direction and not have it appear that way, but it's usually when they're in conversation with someone else, and you understand you're in the other person's spot. That isn't that case here. It's like they're acting as freaking out, but can't help looking to see if it's working on the audience.
Also, there's one shot of Danny as he peers out the airplane window where I don't know what's wrong with his face. He looks like a boxer that took too many shots to face, which I wouldn't be surprised at, except he does look like it in any other panel. Or Moe from the Three Stooges right after he took seltzer in the eyes. So he's pissed,starting to glare at Larry or Curly, but his eyes are mostly narrow slits? It was a bizarre shot, really took me out of the story.
The fights are drawn with a lot of narrow panels from close-up. So you only see part of Danny or Shang, and a few of the Sight, or else a lot of vague figures in hoods. It's not the most satisfying if you're looking for a cool fight scene, but it kind of works for them being hemmed in, plus the danger that comes from being in close range to these enemies. Every time Danny makes contact with one, the Seer reaches out to his mind through them. No indication that was happening to Shang-Chi, but he's probably on a more even keel than Danny these days. Less susceptible to that sort of thing.
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