I loved Power Man and Iron Fist during
the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes stories. And whilst Luke Cage was hardly my
favourite character in Jessica Jones, he left a decent impression and despite
the production problems I am looking forward to Iron Fist’s series when it
eventually comes out. (I will review Daredevil season 2 eventually)
But of course, something really grabbed
my attention and if you were been hanging around my facebook page at the time of release, you know what
I think of the #1 cover which was used as a promotional poster. So, will this
series surpass my expectations? Let’s dig in.
OK, I will talk about the cover, it looks
f*cking awful. What’s with the lump on Power Man’s head, what’s with the weird
Iron Fist grin, why are there so many indentations on the right hand building,
and I don’t like Iron Fist’s costume. You’ve drained the colour green out of
it, who does that?!
We open with Luke Cage (aka Power Man) on
the phone to his wife, Jessica Jones. Danny (aka Iron Fist) asks him to say hi
for him but he doesn’t. Jessica asks if they’re back together, Luke responds
that this is just a one-time thing. Danny asks why he didn’t say hi to
Jessica on his behalf, Luke says that Jessica prefers him silent to talking,
which Danny is a little upset about.
They’re together to pick up the former
Heroes for Hire secretary Jennie Royce, who was possessed and killed someone
and was in prison for the last 5 years. She’s hungry and they head to a diner
to have some food. Turns out prison wasn’t fun for her. Not only was she the
former secretary to Power Man and Iron Fist, but also the ex-girlfriend of
Crime-Buster, who was abusive and owed money to a lot of the inmates.
Danny asks if there’s anything they can
do to help her back on her feet. Someone Crime-Buster owed money to got their
hands on a storage locker that contained her grandmother’s necklace, that
person is none other than the big man himself, L Thompson Lincoln aka
Tombstone.
After a brief driving scene where Luke
tries to avoid swearing since it was a bad influence on his and Jessica’s
daughter, they confront Tombstone, who doesn’t appreciate being called a thief.
Also, Crime-Buster never owed money to him. He has the necklace but he won it
in a fair and game against the hood.
Tombstone is angry, he’s been called a
thief, he’s had lies about him told and worse than all that, he brought a
living weapon in Danny into his house. Quick question, isn’t Power Man also a
kind of living weapon? I mean he’s super-strong and has unbreakable skin.
Anyway, Danny and Luke fight off Tombstone’s goons and eventually recover the
necklace.
Tombstone says they’re getting set up and
the necklace has magical powers. They drive away and Luke is starting to get
sceptical about all this. Danny shrugs it off as bad guy lies and they return
the necklace to Jenny.
After a couple of filler scenes we see
Jenny talking to someone in shadow, the plan worked out without a hitch. She
dismissed the ‘we’re family’ argument Danny kept bringing up because what family
would leave someone to rot in prison for 5 years (you’re lucky it wasn’t
longer, you’re a convicted killer!) The person in shadows in Maria Dillard aka
Black Mariah and with Jennie’s help they plan to take over Tombstone’s empire.
 |
| It's a better cover, Danny still has a weird grin and a cr*ppy costume but... |
Issue 2 opens with Tombstone offering a
reward for the recovery of the necklace. Several criminals are discussing this
and the concept of Power Man and Iron Fist getting back together. Black Mariah
gets a call and she promises to keep her ear to the ground. Word has got out
fast and she and Jennie need to leave before Power Man and Iron Fist work out
what’s going on.
Danny and Luke are having lunch in a
diner, Danny is wearing his mask because… it feels good. Seriously? Seriously.
Anyway, Danny brings up the idea of them teaming up again, it’s not like Luke
has anything else to do, there are plenty of Avengers teams and he’s not on any
of them. Power Man is not interested. 2 of Tombstone’s henchmen have found them
but aren’t engaging lest they be beaten up and then beaten up by Tombstone for
being beaten up.
It turns out they’re not alone however as
Danny and Luke are confronted by Gorilla Man and Black Tarantula. They fight as
the Spider-women Jessica Drew and Gwen Stacy (formerly of a parallel universe)
watch from above in a scene that’s, you guessed it
The two villains accuse them of stealing
the supersoul stone. Danny says he’s never heard of it. Tombstone’s henchmen
phone Tombstone to say they’ve been found. He saw the footage and saw them
doing nothing. They point out the supersoul stone was not with them.
They get into a small car because Jessica
refused to let Luke use the family truckster to meet up with Danny again. Luke
points out that they’ve been duped to stealing the supersoul stone for Jennie
and it has mystic powers. Danny asks how come he doesn’t know about it (good
question, care to give me a good answer? No? *sigh*) and we get stellar
dialogue like this
“I fart mystic powers”
They head to Jennie’s apartment in the
Sisters of Redemption Halfway House. The landlord, I guess says that Jennie’s
not there, and she’s violated her probation agreement. She points out that
Jennie was visited by Black Mariah. Danny thinks she might’ve been possessed
again but Luke isn’t buying it. They need to find her before things get out of
control.
Meanwhile, Jennie is freaking out over
the supersoul stone, she found out about it thanks to being celled with Nekra
Sinclar, she learned the designs for the tattoos required to use it and the
incantations to activate it. She begins to enchant and begins feeling the
power.]
 |
| This doesn't happen in the issue, also lazy backgrounds |
Issue 3 opens with Jessica chewing out
Luke for ruining the shirt she got him for father’s day, she suspects they’re
planning on teaming up again, despite Luke and Danny assuring her that Luke
does not want that. They explain the situation as she gets a less sentimentally
valuable shirt for Luke to wear. Danny still believes Jennie may be an innocent
in this.
Meanwhile Black Mariah and Supersoul
Jennie are robbing a casino for everything they can get. Danny asks why Jessica
can swear but he can’t, he replies that she’s the boss and can do whatever she
wants. Anyway, Tombstone’s goons are following and report to Tombstone that
they’ve yet to be lead to the supersoul stone. Tombstone’s angry because Jennie
and Black Mariah have been hitting his operations. He crushes his phone before
he could finish
Power Man and Iron Fist see Doctor
Strange who also hasn’t heard of the Supersoul stone. Sorry, I don’t buy that
for 2 seconds. In around the time this issue came out, Doctor Strange was
searching the globe for every scrap of magic he could find, you’re telling he’s
not heard of a magical item because it’s too cr*p to be within his notice.
Bullsh*t. Anyway, Luke takes them to someone who ‘really knows about Magic.’
Black Mariah is starting to get a little
concerned about the way Jennie is acting, overly aggressively. But they decide
to go together to make them ‘pay for what they did’
Luke and Danny visit Senor Magico, a
wannbe master of the mystic arts. I don’t care that his official bio has
accents, the comic doesn’t, so I’m not using them. I can’t even believe I’m
reading this trite. This guy knows more than Doctor Strange? NO!
Anyway, the supersoul stone was created
by Anasi, the Yoruba trickster, it provides untold power to someone who is weak
but it corrupts them and eventually takes over their body and mind. And it
could only be defeated by a power greater than its own.
Jennie continues to get angrier. Black
Mariah tries to get her to control it but it’s not working. Iron Fist asks how
he doesn’t know about a device that powerful. Good question. Here’s a dumb
answer:
“Same reason Black History Month is the
shortest month of the year”
Tombstone’s
goons get new orders and make themselves known to the duo. They say Mr Lincoln
wants to see them and to follow them. They arrive as Tombstone is thrust out of
his own house, crushing their car which wasn’t insured (good job you don’t live
in the UK where that’s actually illegal) Lincoln offers to hire them to stop
Black Mariah and Jennie. Only now does Iron Fist believe they’ve been played as
Jennie is now some kind of mutant thing.
Issue 4
opens with a prologue explaining Jennie’s story. We know the bits up until she
ended up in prison, she got a job in the Prison Library where Black Mariah was
busy studying. Jennie helped her study and in return Mariah helped keep the
prisoners off her back.
In the
present, Jennie’s gone completely off the rails and begins tossing things
around. Luke tells Danny to get Tombstone out of the area. Black Mariah is
seeing things weren’t meant to be like this. In prison we see that Jennie says
she’s been weak her entire life, Black Mariah doesn’t agree and they hear Nekra
Sinclair say she knows how to get real power.
Black Maria
tries to confront her but she’s still not herself. Iron Fists returns to save
Luke from a large piece of rock that probably wouldn’t have hurt him anyway.
Luke uses the fast- I mean fistball special but it doesn’t really work and
Danny is thrown back. Black Mariah and him talk and they agree to help each
other.
Tombstones
goons try to get him out of there but Jennie isn’t having it and grabs them all
with weird tentacle goo stuff. Black Mariah tries again to talk her down and it
does seem to have an effect as Jennie begins to get weaker. Luke and Danny
attack, pushing her to breaking point and breaking the grip of the stone. Black
Mariah and Jennie hug it out as Black Mariah hands the stone to Luke.
Lincoln
wants the stone back but there’s no way Power Man and Iron Fist are going to do
that, instead they’re going to hand it over to the amateur magician who isn’t
as good as Doctor Strange, that makes sense. Jessica tries to get Luke to say
that he and Danny are back together, that it’ll make them both feel better. After
delivering the powerful artefact to the amateur, Power Man finally comes out
and says they’re back together. Oh come on, you knew this was coming:
OK, so it’s
still a picture of Batman and Robin, sue me.
So that was
Power Man and Iron Fist #1-4, was it a fist bump moment or a massive thumbs
down? Let’s take a closer look
Let’s start
with what I like about the book. I liked the comradery between Power Man and
Iron Fist, the dialogue wasn’t great but you definitely felt like they’d known
each other a long time and were good friends. I like Jessica Jones so any appearance by her is
welcome and I actually quite liked the idea of the partnership between Black
Mariah and Jennie being a solid one that doesn’t feel like one would betray the
other in a microsecond.
I also think
Tombstone was well placed in this story. Whilst he’s never much of a legitimate
threat, he provides just enough to be second fiddle to the leading ladies.
OK, that’s
pretty much it for the positives, here come the negatives.
Let’s start
with the artwork, it’s not very good, most of it isn’t as atrocious as the
cover to the first issue but there are some real problems with backgrounds
feeling empty and lifeless and faces, particularly if they’re from a distance, looking off. The colours all look kinda muted, we really needed to see a few
greens and blues (outside of the tinted flashback scenes) so that didn’t help
the look of the book either.
I get going
for a rough, sketchy, more ‘urban’ feel to this book which is why I’m willing
to forgive the unnecessary lines sketched in but that doesn’t mean I have to
like them.
Then we have
character. Is Danny usually this naïve? He’s been around the block a few times
in his many years, this can’t be the first time he’s been duped like this. I
dunno, I feel this seems really really off for him. I’m already calling
bullsh*t on the whole Doctor Strange and the mindless padding with the
Spider-women cameos and the various villains from #2.
I also think
they needed to resolve the ‘we’re not a team’ plot earlier because it just
seemed stretched out. As readers, we know Power Man and Iron Fist are getting
back together because the title of the book is Power Man and Iron Fist. So
there was no question to how this was going to pan out.
Rating
#1 4/10
#2 3/10
#3 4/10
#4 5/10
Overall 4/10
Recommendation:
As much as I like these characters, I do not think this is a book I wish to
continue to pick up.
We have one
more ANAD Marvel title to review (I’m condensing some of the DC Rebirth because
of the hiatus and bi-weekly schedule) and we’re moving to Captain America, the
real deal. See you in September.
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