Iron Fist potential
Something I often find interesting is looking at what the non traditional comics fans are reading. Thankfully lately it is easier to get an idea of what interests the general public. Things like the New York Times best sellers list for Graphic Books help show what is popular among the traditional booksellers. Librarian Robin Brenner recently wrote an interesting column on the circulation numbers of graphic novels among children at her library. Manga, not surprisingly, dominated the lists as it is clearly easier to get kids and women to read manga then it is American style comics. One surprise among the lists showed that the Immortal Iron Fist is quite popular with the kids. I’m glad to see that since I’m a big fan of that book. Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction did a amazing job of fleshing out the history of Iron Fist.It struck on something I was hoping to see after hearing of the Disney buyout of Marvel, that being a Iron Fist movie franchise based around what Brubaker and Fraction have done. Because so many of Marvel’s characters are tied up with different production companies Disney noted one of the goals was to develop other Marvel characters in the hope they would become as popular as Iron Man.
The potential of Iron Fist is more then just the current Iron Fist Danny Rand, but also a long history of others that have held the Iron Fist mantel. My personal favorite being Dany’s predecessor Orson Randall, who is basically the pulp era Iron Fist. There are also the Immortal Weapon characters, each interesting in their own way. The series of one shots covering each Immortal Weapon just wrapped up this week. I hope Marvel Disney does something with all these characters as I think they have strong potential and at the very least it would encourage Marvel to develop the Iron Fist family of characters even further on the comics side of things.
I could go for some Iron Fist movies, with the usually caveat that they be well-done. Question: how would you want them to incorporate the legacy of the Iron Fists into the films?
Do we start with Danny Rand, and have the first film be him becoming Iron Fist, maybe facing down Davos, maybe meeting up with Luke Cage, then introducion Orson Randall, the history of the Iron Fist in a 2nd flick, then the other Immortal Weapons in the third (maybe at least mention their existence in the 2nd movie, but we actually see them in the third)?
Or start with the very first Iron Fist, and set-up some kind of story, a threat that could run across centuries, where each Iron Fist would have some small role to play in fighting it, eventually leading to Danny? And would he know about the legacy in that case, or would it mirror Fraction and Brubaker’s work, where he’s kind of in the dark thanks to Orson Randall?
It could be really cool, but it might also be hard to pull off.