Iron Spring rolls into April like a thing unto. . .aw, well, you know.
After a 10-issue stint in Marvel Premiere, Iron Fist got his own ongoing series, written and drawn by the Claremont/Byrne team that handled the last few issues of said Marvel Premiere run. They pick up where that story left off, with Daniel Rand trying to figure out who hired Angar the Screamer to abduct his friend Colleen Wing and put her father in a coma.
Danny does rescue Colleen, through what I'm assuming was one of Claremont's earlier uses of one character essentially merging their mind/spirit with another, so that the two know each other completely. Byrne's art is dynamic and fluid, and then colorist Karen Mantlo goes to town with lava lamp looking backgrounds to emphasize the disorientating effect of Angar's powers.
Claremont also uses that arc to take some of the shine off K'un-Lun, as we see in flashback two friends of Danny's who ventured into the wilds beyond the city because Miranda had learned to fight from Conal, and the women of K'un-Lun aren't supposed to fight. Master Khan also reveals to Danny it's the leader of K'un-Lun, Yu-Ti, who's responsible for his mother being torn apart by wolves and for driving his father from K'un-Lun in the first place.
(Fraction and Brubaker would expand on Yu-Ti being a corrupt piece of shit in Immortal Iron Fist, as well as have Lei Kung secretly override the "no women fighting" rule, but they changed why Wendell Rand left.)
After that, Danny, Colleen, and Misty Knight would return to New York, and Danny would end up in the crosshairs of a crazy gang leader who frames him for murder. One thing that seems to come up frequently in Iron Fist is Danny having to be on the move almost constantly because he's being hunted. That first arc had him moving across Europe dodging assassins, and this story spent a couple issues on him being hounded by gang members and the cops, once he's framed for murder.
I don't know if that was Claremont and Byrne trying to adapt the "wandering martial artist" style to the character, but it does seem to establish the long-honored trend of Danny paying very little attention to the money or company he inherited.
There's a team-up with Captain America against the Wrecking Crew, which also seems to help Misty and Danny realize their feelings for each other. Any progress on that front is immediately blown apart in the next story, where Misty is reluctant to help Danny's former IRA bomber friend Alan Cavanaugh, and Danny draws a line in the sand over it. Sabretooth makes his first appearance soon after, and then Danny ends up in a fight with the X-Men (where Danny wonders if there's a connection between Wolverine and Sabretooth based on how feral they act) that trashes Jean Grey and Misty's apartment.
Through the entire run, there's a mysterious man with a scar over one eye who keeps popping up, showing an interest in Iron Fist. Sometimes he's drawn with a red glow around his fist, which probably shouldn't be there, but oh well. He doesn't make an actual move until the last two issues, where's he's somehow able to drain the chi of Shou-Lao out of Danny. Since the book got canceled after the X-Men issue, that had to wait to be resolved in a two-part Marvel Team-Up story Claremont and Byrne did. That established another precedent, one also followed to this day, of people stealing the Iron Fist from Danny, when he isn't just giving it up for some reason.
At only 15 issues (or 25 if you want to count Marvel Premiere), Iron Fist didn't have nearly as much success cashing in on the kung-fu craze as Shang-Chi did with Master of Kung Fu. Danny Rand would find a second wind as part of a duo, which I will get to one of these days.
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