Kaare Andrews just relaunched Danny Rand into a brand new solo series: Iron Fist: The Living Weapon. This weekend at Fan Expo Vancouver the celebrated artist (Spider-Man: Reign, Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate Comics X-Men) talked about his return to comics after directing films.
Andrews is writing, drawing, inking, and creating covers for the new series. In a one-on-one with Andrews I asked the creator what drew him to chose Iron Fist for a major comic book comeback:
“To be honest I didn’t really know the character that well. I wanted to write and draw a new book at Marvel and he was like one of four or five things they had planned for. I had a gut level reaction. I think I might like him. I had drawn some covers of him. They were fun. I didn’t know the character enough. I had read Immortal Iron Fist and Avengers vs. X-Men but I didn’t know the character like I know Spider-Man…like I know Batman.
So what I did was let me take a look at Iron Fist. I went back and read the very first story arc, the first run- Marvel Premiere #15 and it was like immediately “oh this guy is amazing” he’s a cool character. I totally instantly understood the core of the character, core of the concept, knew what I wanted to do – it just came in a big rush like I love this. I’m going to bring him back. That origin is one of the darkest tale I’ve ever heard of a superhero. Like he watches his father thrown off a cliff. Watches his mother eaten by wolves. Trains ten years – not to fight crime, to make the world a better place, not to help people but trains ten years to kill someone. Like as a child he trains ten years to kill one guy. And then at the end of the ten years the Immortals basically offered him immortality (saying) giving up your quest for vengeance,live with us in Shangi-La basically. And he’s like no, I’m gonna kill that guy. That is the craziest, darkest origin. He’s kind of become a jokey character and it was like how does that work?
Then if you say, ok, I’m gonna believe he’s both. If he is this jokey character and he has this darkest origin of all time – that’s interesting, that’s what I grabbed on to. ”
Iron Fist: The Living Weapon #1 is at comic book shops now. Andrews competed against legendary Spider-Man artist in a sketch duel yesterday and is appearing on the final day of Fan Expo Vancouver then back to work on Iron Fist.
By Editor