Iron Fist has always embraced both the martial arts and the mystical since his debut in Marvel Premiere #15. A new Iron Fist series was released on October 3 via Marvel’s Digital Original line of comics which leans more heavily into the mystical side of the character. Iron Fist: Phantom Limb #1 includes chapters 1 and 2 written by Clay McLeod Chapman with art by Guillermo Sanna, colors by Lee Roughride, and letters by Travis Lanham. The beautiful cover to the first issue was illustrated by Khoi Pham.

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains spoilers for the first two chapters of Iron Fist: Phantom Limb.

Summary

Phantom Limb shows Iron Fist facing a demonic new villain who seeks his body as its new host because of its chi. The demon known as Mo Wang houses himself inside the body of a child that the Living Weapon failed to save during a rescue attempt when the Wrecker was terrorizing New York. Mo Wang has been deforming bodies of fortune tellers and anyone who comes into contact with them, making each one a grotesque version of themselves under the demon’s control.

Image courtesy of Marvel ComicsLater, Iron Fist confronts the demon but his right hand comes into contact with Mo Wang, making it his plaything. Yes, you understood it correctly. Danny’s hand has fallen under the control of an outside force and is now using his own fighting skills against him. What happens next is as weird as it gets with Iron Fist punching, scratching and chopping himself. It’s kung fu at its weirdest, I know.

But that’s not all. Mo Wang soon decides that he has to cut off Danny’s right hand and absorb it. He uses the chi in the severed hand against its own master, leaving Iron Fist with less chi than he would normally have. Luke Cage comes to Danny’s rescue and carries him to safety in the cliffhanger ending.

As you may have already surmised, Luke Cage could join Danny in an attempt to regain his hand from his demonic foe. With his best friend in tow, there’s also a chance that we’ll see the Daughters of the Dragon, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, join the fray in the next issue, too.

A Halloween Horror Story

Maybe it’s because Halloween is just around the corner so Chapman decided to go with a story on body deformation with a demon at the center of all the troubles that is plaguing New York this time. He ditches the martial arts-centered narrative that writer Ed Brisson went with when he helmed the recently discontinued Iron Fist (2017) regular series, and goes full on mystical this time.

It’s similar to one of the stories that can be found in Iron Fist: The Book of Changes which is a compilation of the Living Weapon’s adventures in the late 80’s from Marvel Comics Presents and Spider-Man #’s 41-43. In one MCP story, he teamed-up with Ghost Rider to battle against beings called the Legion of Vengeance. These were ordinary stories that didn’t add much to Iron Fist as a character but gives him bad guys to take down.

In a similar fashion in Phantom Limb, Chapman doesn’t spend any time developing characters especially the villain itself which is pure evil and detests humanity and its ways. There’s the setup and then the action takes place a few pages later. Nothing fancy or deep about the story and so it feels too kiddie for me. If you consider, deformations, demons and hand cutting, too kiddie, that is.

The Art

Sanna captured the mood of the story quite well and does his best to show how maniacally evil the villain truly is.

Personally, his art isn’t one that I find appealing and doesn’t quite fit Iron Fist. It’s similar to the illustrations by artists from the Marvel Comics Presents stories, many of whom were probably newbies to Marvel at the time. It’s a far cry from David Aja’s work on The Immortal Iron Fist, Kaare Andrews on Iron Fist The Living Weapon and Mike Perkins from the recently concluded Iron Fist series with Brisson.

As gorgeous as the cover art by Pham is, sadly, the interior art leaves a lot to be desired. I’m sure there’s something good about his work that Marvel commissioned him to draw the series, but Sanna’s art didn’t wow me at all.

Conclusion

Chapman’s Phantom Limb might get more interesting in the next issue or two but unless there’s more to the story than what we’ve seen so far, Iron Fist’s limb loss might be the only intriguing part of this series. Thus far, I’m giving it a 4 out of 10 rating.

But as an Iron Fist fan and collector, I will continue to follow the series and pick it up when it gets released in printed form in January if only because I’m a lifelong fan of the character and would like to keep up with his latest adventures.