Iron Fist: The Return Of K'un Lun

Iron Fist: The Return Of K'un Lun is one of those collections that brings together a lot of mini-series that Iron Fist starred in during the 90's.

Best to remember it was the 90s and later eh?

Lots of lines. Lots of detail. Lots of word dialog boxes. This is taken from the initial story arc where things had to be dark! Dark I say!

It features the first return of Davos, the Steel Serpent. It's a fairly standard no-brainer but it could also be looked at as a herald for future plot lines.

See, last time we saw the Steel Serpent, he was consumed by the Iron Fist, dissipated into the ether. But not so! Instead, he was pulled into "the anomaly," a gem found in K'un Lun. In that Gem, he learned various martial art moves from numerous Iron Fists that were already in the gem. So Danny is apparently not the only Iron Fist there ever was...

After those two issues, we get a three issue limited series that features the return of Danny's 'sister' and some action with the plant men. This is probably the best of the books in here in that the story, written by Dan Jurgen, is fair and the art is solid.  We even get to see Scimitar make an appearance and while it's not spectacular or anything, the fact that the writer even knew enough about Iron Fist to drag him out of retirement is impressive.

After that, we get the title story, it's Iron Fist and Wolverine, which spreads out to the Avengers, various X-Men, and more in The Return of K'un Lun.

The story is decent.

The art? Man, terrible. I'm not an artist. I could draw better than some of the work featured in these issues.

This isn't even the worst of the offenders. Just one I picked at random. Marvel and DC need to start their liberal arts college so that they have a great pool of talent to draw from. Either that of pay more. Something. Ugh.

The story revolves around Iron Fist being captured and his power, the Iron Fist, stripped away from him (again). This time by a youth known as Junzo Muto. In this storyline, he's the leader of the Hand. He's a phenomenal martial artist who easily bests Iron Fist, and apparently took on Night Thrasher and the New Warriors back in the day.

The weird thing is, on the side, I'm thinking, Junzo? Who is this? The Hand has made numerous appearances since this series came out but the kid was nowhere to be seen. It's like Marvel forgot how bad the storyline was and let it go.

Anyway, Junzo was going to merge K'un Lun right atop of Japan's capital city, and use it to take over the world! He gets stopped and manages to escape and even does so with the Iron Fist. From what I've read in other sources, Iron Fist managed to get his abilities back in an issue of the Black Panther, not included in this collection.

Ugh.

The book wraps up with Breathless, another limited series with an okay storyline and even worse art.

Ugh.

I got nothing. Iron Fist runs through many bad guys until he winds up murdering the head of a cult because he can't let him get away to kill again. During the battles, his biggest fight up to that point is probably against "Karen" who fights Iron Fist in a custom that is almost exactly identical to Psylocke's.

All in all, a rather poor collection. Great for completist and those who want to catch up on all things Iron Fist. Story wise better than art wise.

Am I missing something in my assessment? Have others read this and been blown away by its quality and I'm missing some key elements? Have there been some other apperances by the leader of the Hand that qualifies his abscence since these issues? Hit me up with some comments.