We looked at Danny Rand's first series last year during Iron Spring, but this is where he debuted. It starts with Danny's defeat of The One, the killer robot that, according to Kaare Andrews, was programmed to lose to Danny. His departure from K'un-Lun to find and kill Harold Meachum for his betrayal of Danny's mother and father. The string of killers and traps Meachum's prepared, all for a final confrontation with a man who essentially destroyed himself before Danny got the chance.
That takes four issues. Roy Thomas and Gil Kane handle the fight with The One and Danny's origin. Larry Hama takes over as penciler from there, first with Len Wein, then Doug Moench as writer. By the time Hama and Moench are replaced by Arvell Jones and Tony Isabella, Danny's being hunted on suspicion of killing Meachum (Meachum's daughter Joy making the accusation.) I think I mentioned last year Danny seems to spend a lot of time hunted by the authorities for murder, and here's the first occurrence.
(Also interesting to contrast how these writers describe Danny as obsessed in his training from the start, where Andrews depicted him as a scared, bullied child who wanted no part of fighting at first. Andrews' run really was just the entire character filtered through a funhouse mirror.)
Isabella also has Danny trying to find Colleen Wing and her father, who are under attack by a mysterious cult that wants a book the professor found. And through all that, this strange ninja keeps showing up. The ninja's the one who actually killed Harold Meachum, and they keep helping Danny, right up until they try to kill him.
It's only at this point, after 8 issues, that Danny finally removes the mask. But the way the issues were written, he really has just barreled from one crisis or battle to another ever since he defeated The One. The moment he reached New York, he was under attack, so he hasn't even had the chance to really accept that his hunt for revenge ended, bitterly, no less.
It's the last three issues, written by Claremont, that begin to have Danny trying to live in this world, very different from K'un-Lun. The first two, drawn by Pat Broderick, act as an interlude as Danny has to rescue Colleen from a nutjob soldier with metal skin called Warhawk, and then thwarts the attempted assassination of a princess of Halvan (a country I think subsequent Power Man and Iron Fist writers would use.) John Byrne joins the book for the last issue and Claremont dives into the story that would segue into the start of Iron Fist, with Angar the Screamer helping mind-warp Colleen as part of Master Khan's attempt to bring Danny to heel.
The thing I notice is every writer, in addition to giving Danny's various kicks and punches specific names - Dragon Stamp Kick, Ram's Head Blow, that sort of thing - writes in second person. It's "you" who is attempting the kick, or "you" that feel the jolt of electricity through your body. The writers still have their own quirks - Claremont writes in a recognizably Claremont style - but I was surprised they all stuck to that convention.
The artists are a mixed bag. Kane's work seems busier and heavier than normal. I'm not sure that isn't Giordano's inks, though it's not as noticeable when he inks Hama's pencils, so who knows. Arvell Jones has the loosest approach to anatomy and proportions, as arms and legs seem to stretch and joint oddly once the fights start. But his fight scenes are more often compressed into lots of small panels - they go with 16 panels for one page during his fight with Batroc in issue 20, and the fight only runs about 3 pages total.
There's been some discussion in Paul O'Brien's series of posts on Daredevil villains about Gene Colan always seeming to cram a lot in the last few pages because he was spreading the action out so much over the first 15 pages. So I don't know if it was Isabella's plotting or how Jones laid out pages, but he doesn't get a lot of room to let his art breathe. Either way, Kane, Hama, Broderick and Byrne all get (or use) a lot more space for the fight scenes when they're drawing, and it's too their advantage. If the writing is going to emphasize all these martial arts moves, give the artist room to show them off a bit.
I own one other issue of Marvel Premiere. The last one, which doubles as the last appearance of Star-Lord prior to the '90s mini-series we looked at last month (which wasn't even the same character.) But we'll be seeing plenty of Peter Quill over the next three weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment