Broken Frontier

The back story of Fat Cobra provides some much needed freshness to the Immortal Saga.

Iron Fist has become a weird book for me. The first arc by Fraction and Brubaker ranks with my most favorite comics of all time, while "The Seven Cities of Heaven" story felt needlessly long. When Swierczynski took over the title, he immediately restored my faith in the concept. However, even his solid stories started to bore.

Now, Jason Aaron tackles the characters of the broader Iron Fist world and he manages to take years of great ideas and cram them into one regular-sized story. There are enough solid moments here for a few Fat Cobra mini-series. What could be better than a Kung-Fu hero fighting Nazis? What about a story featuring the story of the rotund fighter facing hordes of his own bastards? These would be legendary stories, but are merely background material here.

Aaron has shown himself as one of the rising stars in the medium. He has already once shown readers that he can handle the tongue-in-cheek humor and over-the-top action of the best chop-socky films. That book was called Wolverine: Manifest Destiny, even though it felt more like Sons of the Dragons. All of those skills in the genre are on display here.

To add insult to injury for lesser writers, the scribe adds enough emotional depth to the character to make an overweight and egotistical guy into a sympathetic character. His story is haunting and tragic. There is a sense of loss at the end that is inescapable. Certainly, with the majority of his career ahead of him, Aaron will be considered one of the greats of his field.

The myriad of artists who lend their pencils to the project help things along. There is a demarcation to the different eras that makes it easy to know what is happening and when. This is important in a book that jumps through time like a season of Doctor Who. Suayan’s style is perfectly matched to the contemporary sequences, giving the story an epic feel. However, the real star here is Lark. He taps into Aja’s bag of tricks and creates a nice tapestry in the romantic story he illustrates.

The Caretaker introduction is less successful, but in no means a bad start. Swierczynski seems to want to broaden the cast a bit. Here, he almost writes a Heroes for Hire story, which would most certainly be welcome. However, with Black Lightning: Year One so fresh in readers' memories, it is a bit soon for another super-powered Dangerous Minds.

Foreman is a huge problem for the back up feature. He is a decent enough storyteller and he and the colorist do a fantastic job creating a mood for the piece, but his style leaves something to be desired. Design-wise, it is top notch: strong in its dynamics and unique in the field of meta books, but his line is inconsistent. Sometimes characters are nigh unrecognizable. He is fine for producing two to three page period scenes, but hard to stomach in a longer format.

Immortal Weapons is off to an auspicious start. Hopefully, the creative teams involved can tap into the mythology of each character as displayed here. If so, I might be checking out Marvel’s Immortal characters for a bit longer.