Iron Fisting: The New Avengers #27 Review

Editor’s Note: With great spoilers, comes great douchebaggery. I learned that lesson from my Uncle James. Yup. Good old Uncle James Beam. Died sticking up some old fart at gunpoint.

The final four pages of New Avengers #27 are amongst the most affecting and most emotional of the entirety of the Avengers Vs. X-Men event to date. It humanizes Hope in a way that has been missing in the event in favor of showing her alternate between a willful little whining brat and a cocky willful little whining brat, and it gives Spider-Man not only a logical and effective (if small) role in a cosmic apocalypse that should be completely out of his league, but it distills, in just a few short panels, the essence of the character and what he’s about better than six hours of Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies did. And it is Goddamned gorgeous to look at, besides.

Unfortunately, this is a 20-page story. Which further unfortunately means that what we got here is sixteen pages of decompressed life support for those spectacular closing four pages, that spins out a story conceit based purely on what was probably a simple lack of costume and coloring design communication between John Byrne and Gil Kane back in the mid-70s. On the fortunate end of the equation, those are sixteen pages of decompressed life support written by Brian Michael Bendis, meaning that they are filled with entertaining dialogue and some decent character beats… even while the best part of the book could have been presented as an interlude in the main event’s title.

This issue continues spinning out the backstory as to why Iron Fist seems to have the immunity to the Phoenix Force he’s shown in a few places in the Avengers Vs. X-Men event. Apparently during the Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci made his way to the Orient to help train a young woman in the ways of the Iron Fist, which makes complete and total sense so long as you don’t stop and think about it even for a minute. Bendis has explained how Da Vinci got himself into this position in earlier issues, but to me, it’s a nonsensical celebrity cameo for the sake of having one. It’s like having Stephen Hawking show up on Moscow to help train Rocky to fight Ivan Drago; you can spend hours spinning out why the appearance makes complete and total sense, but there isn’t a force on Earth that’s gonna make me think it’s not just gimmick stuntcasting.

We further learn that someone with the power of Iron Fist has historically been able to contain and control the Phoenix Force, so Iron Fist’s sensei endeavors to use magic to determine the best way to prepare Hope to meet the Phoenix Force… as opposed to turning 30 degrees to his left and talking to Danny Rand – y’know, an already fucking fully trained Iron Fist.

Look, on one hand, this is all fucking ridiculous on its face. I think we all know that the reason Iron Fist is shown as having a relationship with the Phoenix Force is because, due to limited 1970s color separation technology and the vague similarities between a monochrome phoenix and a monochrome dragon. Iron Fist’s and the original Jean Grey Phoenix’s costumes look kinda alike. And for good or ill, Bendis has been chosen to put together the story rationale behind what was probably one of the Marvel Architects standing up at the last story retreat and shrieking, “Hey! Iron Fist’s costume looks like Phoenix! We should make the Avengers fight the X-Men and have the climax be Iron Fist fisting Jean Gray! Get it? Fisting! Now which one of you fellow architects managed to get your weed through airport security?”

But on the other, Bendis makes this actionless exposition damned entertaining to read. Between depicting Hope as a frustrated child forced to sit through, well, the same exposition as we are, and sensei Yu Ti’s relentless and entertaining sarcasm…

The Book of The Iron Fist said the girl who became the Iron Fist that merged with the Phoenix was mute. How I envy the master Yu Ti who had her instead of you.

…make the backstory entertaining enough to read that you can ignore, if not totally forget, that the first three-quarters of this book exists to give a master of kung fu with a history of wearing a costume a shade of green shared only by Jean Grey’s Phoenix and sinus infection sneeze residue something to do during a cosmic apocalypse.

But that’s the first sixteen pages. The final four pages make this book worth the price of admission. Spider-Man being thrust into trying to teach Hope something, anything that can help her deal with the Phoenix Force give a lot of unforced humor, some well-written headbutting between the two characters, and uses the old saw, “With great power, comes great responsibility,” not only to great effect within the context of what Hope is going through, but clearly shows the emotions and motivations that drive Spider-Man better than the entire run of The Amazing Spider-Man between 1993 and 2000.

In this issue, we see Hope exposed to Iron Fist and Yu Ti to almost no effect… and in four quick panels, Bendis gives us a Spider-Man speech so Goddamned pitch perfect and affecting it not only shows that he should be given Spider-Man books to write for as long as he feels like it, but turns Hope from a sniveling brat into a disciple… as it should. It is powerful, and it utterly and completely works.

And I will say again for the record: how Mike Deodato isn’t considered amongst the true A-List art talents working for either of the Big Two and assigned to the main Big Event books is beyond me. The dude has a fine-lined style that one could easily be equated to any 1990s overblown “superstar” that is, say, fucking up Deathstroke all over the place… but the people making those comparisons wouldn’t be looking at the actual art. Deodato’s superheroes are all jacked and physically perfect, but they are realistic, and look like actual people. People who eat nothing by skinless chicken breasts, broccoli and human growth hormone, but actual people nonetheless. Throw in detailed backgrounds, highly expressive faces, and engaging yet clear panel placement, and what we have here is a guy who has become one of my favorite artists in comics, period. This is one Goddamned good looking comic book.

In a lot of ways, this is a disappointing comic book. I’m not buying the Iron Fist / Phoenix connection in any way, and the lengths to which Bendis is going to make it make any sense at all feel forced. However, the character work and the dialogue in the early parts of the book, combines with some truly impressive art, will carry you to one of the best Spider-Man scenes in any comic book in recent memory. It ain’t perfect, but the strengths here carry the book through the weaknesses. Check it out.