I suppose it must be tough trying to (re-)establish a continuity that nobody really knows.  There was a lot of noise made from both Brubaker and Fraction about how they were going to really build on the legacy aspect of the Iron Fist and Danny Rand, and it sounded exciting and unique for the Marvel Universe.  Kung Fu billionaire?  Brilliant idea for a comic book, and even better with legacy mystical powers.

The trouble was as soon as the story moved from New York to the world of mysticalness, it lost its footing.  Fraction and Brubaker clearly have a great love for the pulpy origins of Iron Fist, but their revamping of the legacy concept never really was clear and it adding six other cities and six other mystical champions did not help to make things.  A huge McGuffin the kung fu tournament could have been fun, but instead we’ve returned to the plot that started fourteen issues ago with Hydra and the train.  Yeah, remember the train from last year that Hydra wanted Rand to build, it finally shows up.

Which I think is a problem I’m having with Brubaker overall.  While long arcs can work really well, Captain America is one of the best comics in years, they’re not always appropriate.  Establishing Iron Fist as a pulp action character should have begun with a series of short action packed arcs before building into a year long arc.  Instead we just kept building until this which ends as a rather unsatisfying climax to the entire proceedings.

At the end of the day whether Iron Fist returns as a major Marvel character will depend on the new team following Brubaker and Fraction.  There’s a ton of unexplored potential, and a lot of great ideas generated by the writing pair but it seems like it needs someone else to bring it all home.