20 Years Ago, This Brilliant Marvel Series Made a ‘70s Legend Cool Again

Marvel Comics recreated the superhero in the 1960s, taking their heroes in directions that their distinguished competition didn’t. They gave readers the world outside their window, but with superheroes, and soon took over the sales charts, with books like The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Avengers, and many more becoming legends. The ’60s get a lot of credit for being the best decade in Marvel history, but the ’70s don’t get as much praise. There’s good reason for this; while some massive characters debuted in the decade of disco – like Wolverine and Punisher – they weren’t as big as the stars who came before them. Marvel was prolific in the ’70s, though, creating numerous characters that would become icons, even if it took them longer than those who came before them.

One of the interesting things about ’70s Marvel is how much the company changed their line. They gave readers the first anti-heroes and took a page from pop culture. The books started to incorporate blaxploitation and kung fu film ideas and characters, including Danny Rand, the man known as Iron Fist. The character became huge back in the day, eventually teaming up with Luke Cage for the fantastic Heroes for Hire. While he wasn’t an A-lister, he had his place in the Marvel Universe. However, as the X-Men took over the ’80s and Marvel’s old guard was drowned under a flood of new mutants (pun intended), he’d fade away. However, the ’00s saw his old friend Luke get popular again and 20 years ago, Iron Fist was given his definitive series: Immortal Iron Fist. This book took everything awesome about the character and expanded on it, all while introducing readers to two creators who would become superstars.

Immortal Iron Fist Perfected the Hero’s Mythos

The martial arts became a major part of American pop culture in the ’60s, with Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris becoming stars. Suddenly, dojos were everywhere and martial arts movies from Asia started getting dubs and coming to American theaters. Judging from the ’70s debut of characters like Shang-Chi and Iron Fist, Marvel’s creators and editors enjoyed these movies as well. While Shang-Chi was a traditional kung fu movie star, Iron Fist was much more of a superhero. Danny Rand ended up being raised in the lost city of K’un L’un, learning their martial arts and punching the heart of Shou-Lao, gaining the power of the Iron Fist, and looking for revenge against the man who killed his parents and stranded him in the hidden city.

That’s a pretty awesome origin, all things told, and Danny made for an excellent character. His solo series boasted stories from Chris Claremont and John Byrne, and his eventual team up with Luke Cage made him more popular than ever. However, much like Cage, the ’80s weren’t kind to him and the ’90s were even worse. Rand became a D-lister and would stay there until the ’00s. Cage was the first Hero for Hire to get a second chance, but Danny wasn’t long behind him. He started to appear more and eventually that led to Immortal Iron Fist.

Marvel put Ed Brubaker on the book, who was in the midst of his amazing Captain America run, but he wasn’t all. Matt Fraction became co-writer, with artist David Aja on pencils for the book. Brubaker and Fraction decided to take things in a new direction. Instead of just being kung fu superhero adventures, the two of them decided to look at the legacy of the Iron Fist. K’un L’un was a legend that attracted more than just Danny Rand’s father; over the years, numerous people have taken up the name Iron Fist. Immortal Iron Fist‘s first story arc introduced readers to Orson Welles, a WWI-era Iron Fist who ended up traumatized by the Great War and left K’un L’un.

This was a huge change from who Iron Fist had been before. While we always knew Danny Rand was part of a legacy that went back millennia, we had no idea what that looked like. Immortal Iron Fist was able to take a mantle that fans hadn’t really cared about in a long time and make it cool again. The book was a hit right from the beginning, earning praise from critics and readers alike. However, it came out in the one of biggest years for Marvel in a long time. Stories like Civil War and “Planet Hulk” were changing the face of the Marvel Universe, New Avengers was still huge, Astonishing X-Men was coming out, Spider-Man was moving towards “One More Day”, and numerous big stories and characters were hitting every month. Immortal Iron Fist was popular enough to continue, but it never hit the top of the charts.

Brubaker and Fraction never got to finish their story on the book, and Duane Swierczynski couldn’t match their work. Danny Rand would end up joining the Avengers for a short time, but since then he’s been sort of rudderless. The Netflix Iron Fist series was a huge failure and Marvel has since taken Rand out of the mantle of Iron Fist, replacing him with Asian characters. However, Immortal Iron Fist showed that he still could appeal to readers. It also showed how well Fraction and Aja could work together, which led to their fantastic Hawkeye series.

Immortal Iron Fist Deserves Its Flowers

There’s an argument to be made that Immortal Iron Fist was something of a failure. While the early days of the book turned heads, it came out in a blockbuster year for the House of Ideas and got buried under numerous major stories. Brubaker, Fraction, and Aja never got to finish their story and the book faded away. Iron Fist became marginally more popular, but couldn’t keep that popularity up. However, the fact that the book exists at all and is as beloved as it is puts the lie to this idea that it was a failure.

Immortal Iron Fist is one of those series that was the best of its era that not enough people read it. It took one of the publisher’s lower-level characters, expanded on him brilliantly, and found a way to make him exciting again in a way creators hadn’t been able to do since the ’70s. It’s a series that you could hand to anyone in 2026 and they’d love it. It helped introduce readers to Matt Fraction and David Aja, laying the groundwork for their Hawkeye series, which itself would become one of the most beloved 21st century Marvel books. Immortal Iron Fist may not have been a blockbuster, but it was a success, taking a character no one cared about in years and making him into someone again.

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