Essential Power Man and Iron Fist Vol. 1
Chris Claremont, Jo Duffy, Trevor Von Eeden, Kerry Gammill and friends
Reprints: Power Man and Iron Fist #50-75 (April 1978 – November 1981)
Get this for: a series that should not work, but does — four stars
Right. Back in 1972 Marvel launched a series called Hero for Hire, starring Luke Cage, Marvel’s third Black superhero after Black Panther and the Falcon and the first African-American superhero to get his own title. Depending on your outlook this was either a noble experiment to broaden diversity in comics or a cynical attempt to cashin on the blacksploitation craze of the early seventies. In any case it never was a great series — white writers trying to write a “gritty” Black hero within the confines of the Comics Code– but popular enough to be kept going for a few years. Now there was also another seventies Marvel title born out of a craze, the Kung Fu craze in this case: Iron Fist, starring white boy Danny Rand who had learned the secret of the iron fist from the mystical city K’un-Lun. And when both titles got into problems in 1977, some bright spark got the idea to combine them. Iron Fist was cancelled, he and his creative team joined Power Man and with issue fifty it became Power Man and Iron Fist.
Essential Power Man and Iron Fist Vol. 1 starts with that issue by Chris Claremont and John Byrne: the first would stay on for a few more issues, the latter left after this one. After Claremont left as well Ed Hannigan took over writing duties for two issues, but with #56 Power Man and Iron Fist had the writer who would guide the title the longest: Mary Jo Duffy. She would make the series work, establishing the formula that would guide the later writers on the title while building on the work Claremont and Hannigan had already done. They had created the bare bones, Duffy would flesh it out.
Because really, this is not a title that should work. Power Man and Iron Fist had nothing in common until they were shoved together. The gritty inner city Luke Cage, born and bred in Harlem, never quite comfortable leaving his neigbourhood and the white multimillionaire boy who grew up in an extradimensional city and learned to fight there, somewhat naive about the Big City. It was pure commercial motives that mashed them together, but it worked. They might have been an odd couple but they complemented each other and also had the advantage of a strong supporting cast, including fellow heroes Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, Bob Diamond of another old kung fu series sons of the Tiger and others. The series also benefited from a strong sense of place: it’s recognisably New York and Harlem, but not the New York of e.g. Spider-Man or Daredevil. It does make use though of non-series specific supporting cast like D. A. Towers, somebody who could pop up in any late seventies/early eighties Marvel superhero title set in New York and often did. I miss this sort of thing.
Mary Jo Duffy (just plain Jo Duffy later on) is a writer who’s been somewhat overlooked. She has never quite has had the break to become as well known as say Kurt Busiek (to name another PM/IF alumnus), never quite had a hit series that was uniquely hers. Power Man and Iron Fist came closest. She does very well establishing a good mixture of soap opera and superheroic action that was the hallmark of late Bronze Age Marvel and there wasn’t any issue in this collection that was a chore to read. She has a good blend of supervillains and more mundane threats, sometimes overclassing our heroes completely, as with the Living Monolith in #56-57. No real classic villains, but no duds either.
The art throughout the volume is good. It starts on a high point with that one Byrne issue, moves through Mike Zeck, Sal Buscema and Lee Elias before settling in for a more extended run by Trevor von Eeden (who still has some Byrne influences visible here), which is followed by a fill-in issue by Marie Severin until finally Kerry Gammill sets in for the long haul. Gammill is an artist who like Duffy never quite made it into the big time, never an “exciting” artist, but certainly a good artist here. His realistic, no nonsense style, ably inked by Ricardo Villamonte, suits the series well. It’s completely in service to the story, never flashy but always good, decent work.
Essential Power Man and Iron Fist Vol. 1 is typical of the Marvel I grew up with: well crafted superheroics embedded in soap opera, set as much as possible in the world outside our window, no matter the amount of weird stuff going on in the foreground. It’s the sort of storytelling that’s hugely old fashioned now and no longer practised at Marvel. A pity.