Iron Fist

The popularity of martial-arts that swept America in the 1970's was the inspiration for creating a costumed superhero that was a master practitioner - with a little extra!

Co-created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, Iron Fist made his debut in Marvel Premier #15, in 1974. IF made 11 appearances in that book, with Chris Claremont taking over the writing with issue #23, and #25 featuring the artist John Byrne (this would be a legendary teaming later in the decade, on X-Men, in particular).

This would be the creative team on all of Iron Fist's 15 issue run of his own book, which ultimately merged with Luke Cage, Power Man to become Power Man and Iron Fist.

Danny Rand was a westerner whose parents were killed mercilessly by a business rival while trying to find the mystical city of K'un L'un. Still a young boy, Danny was taken in and essentially adopted by the people of K'un L'un, who gave him a most disciplined upbringing, training him as a martial arts master, and eventually allowing him to battle a legendary serpent - whomever defeated the serpent got the power if the "Iron Fist," which allowed the victor the ability to summon all of his "chi" into his fist, thus making said fist "like unto a thing of iron!" Makes sense, right?

Well, at this point, the all-grown-up Danny with his new powers decides to leave the mystical city and go back to New York and find out what really happened to his parents.

Entering a world that he was too young to really remember, Rand goes through the turmoil of negotiating his way through the modern world and feeling displaced while trying to investigate his past.

An entertaining series that introduced The Daughters of The Dragon, and, in Iron Fist's most valuable, collectible issue (#14), gave us the first look at Sabretooth! Eventually, lagging sales necessitated that Marvel try to merge another of it's fading books, Power Man, with Iron Fist, hoping that maybe that would keep the two characters on the shelves; it worked. The book, and the characters stuck around - and each eventually landed his own very entertaining Netflix series...