the long, disappointing experience has now come to an end. why did you do this to me, iron fist?

i started reading the title with this arc, and instantly fell in love with it. the art was off-the-charts great. the story promised exciting kung-fu action. what could go wrong?

and when the story shifted, and it turned out that kung-fu action wasn’t the main story – that instead, it was a tale of political intrigue in k’un-l’un – i defended the story. some were disappointed, but not i. the book still looked great, and the intrigue was a nice change of pace. and heck, there was still SOME great-looking kung-fu.

but with this, the story ends on a low point. the story became muddled, and too complex – we lost the joy inherent in mystic kung-fu fighting, and the politics of the city and hydra and davos were just a bit too muddled to create a real impact on this reader. there was too much going on here, and either the story needed more issues to properly lay out all the threads or to be simplified somewhat. neither happened, and we got something that was unworkable.

the art is the second failure – though this issue looked the best of the non-aja work, it suffers in that it’s a pale imitation of aja. the kung-fu was so wonderful BECAUSE of aja – he drew such dynamic, beautiful battles. the non-aja issue here lacked the depth of aja’s art, and the action scenes were not dynamic. on the page where the iron fist prepares to punch out a train, i could only imagine how great it would look if aja had done it. instead, i got an imitator giving me a very bland, unexciting image of danny rand. blech.

i wanted to like it. the story swung for the fences. with all the weapons standing together on the final page, i felt a touch of the joy i should have felt…but that was the only time. the team swung and missed, and now we’re just left with the thoughts of how good this could have been.