Iron Fist is capable of summoning his chi (sum total of his body’s natural energy) to reinforce his natural abilities. He is capable of focusing that energy into his hand and draw upon the super-human energy derived from the mystic serpent Shou-Lao and make his fist inhumanly powerful and resistant to injury. Early in his career Danny could only use his “iron fist” a limited amount of times because of the drain on his system, but has shown recently that he can use it much more frequently.

He can also use his chi to heal himself and by focusing that energy into another person, healing them. This ability has proved able to cure almost any injury or disease, although it is quite taxing on Iron Fist. Danny can also use his superhuman power to fuse his consciousness with that of another person, albeit temporarily, forming a “mind meld.” Daniel cam routinely channel his chi to ignore cold or enter a deep meditative state (Suspension).

Iron Fist is a master of martial arts of K‘un-Lun - which seems to include every Asian martial art ever devised, including many lost ones. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest martial artists alive, although not on the level of Shang-Chi or Captain America. He is also extremely adept at gymnastics and acrobatics, and is an experienced detective. His sight is remarkably acute.

Iron Fist has very Hero Points-intensive capabilities, and needs a constant flow of HPs to function currently. Thus, his performance is a tad erratic - sometimes he’s nearly the greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the Marvel Universe, sometimes he’s a aimless, whining space cadet and a third-stringer. Another aspect of this is that Iron Fist will launch himself into half-baked Subplots because he needs HPs (especially his Signature Subplot, which he launches over and over again), and/or take the decisions not to spend more than 10-15 HPs during some adventures so as to build up a war chest. These appearances are the ones where he looks the most ineffective.

History

Daniel Rand-K’ai the son of businessman Wendell Rand, who had once lived in the fabled city of K‘un-Lun, which exists in an otherdimensional realm and materialized in the Himalaya once a decade. Wendell Rand-K’ai, as he was know there, was the eldest son and heir of Lord Tuan, who ruled K‘un-Lun, in the guise of the August Personage in Jade. However, Wendell was driven from K‘un-Lun by his brother who not only wanted to rule K‘un-Lun himself, but who was Wendell’s rival for the love of a woman named Shakari. Wendell found refuge on Earth and became a successful businessman in the United States. In his absence, Tuan died and Wendell’s brother succeeded him as the August Personage in Jade. Within a year of coming back to Earth Wendell married a woman named Heather, who bore him a son, Daniel.

When Daniel was nine, his family and his father’s business partner, Harold Meachum, went on a mountaineering expedition in search of K‘un-Lun - which was scheduled to interface with the Earthly plane soon. When a storm arose and Daniel and Heather fell of a cliff, Wendell was dragged along. While Heather and Daniel landed safely on a ledge, Wendell dangled above the chasm. Meachum, hoping to gain control of the business, and harboring a secret love for Heather, refused to assist Wendell and instead crushed his hands so that Wendell fell to his death. Meachum offered to help mother and son but both refused him and forced him away.

Heather led her young son in search for a way home but became lost in the storm until she found a suspension bridge. However, a pack of hungry wolves were stalking the two, and sensing their prey would escape attacked. Heather urged her son on while she sacrificed her life to save him. Her heroic death in close proximity to K‘un-Lun, however, meant her spirit ascended to K‘un-Lun’s lands of the dead : Feng-Tu. Meachum also survived, through crippled with severe frostbite. Having learned of Daniel’s survival, he spent the next decade heavily fortifying his home, waiting for the inevitable attempt at vengeance.

Daniel was found by the citizens of K‘un-Lun and trained in their martial arts by Lei Kung, the Thunderer. Daniel was naturally adept at the martial arts and by age sixteen had accomplished many advanced levels. He toughened his hand by thrusting them into dust, then sand, then gravel and finally, rock. His closest friends where Miranda, whom he didn’t know was his half-sister, and a lad named Conal D‘hu-Tsien. Rand secretly taught martial arts to Miranda, in defiance of K‘un-Lun sexist laws.

When Rand turned nineteen, he was given the opportunity to claim the mantle of “Iron Fist” by battling the serpent, Shou-Lao the Undying. During the battle, Daniel grabbed on the serpent and was permanently scarred by its chest marking, so that he now has a flying dragon tattooed on his chest. Rand not only defeated the creature, but actually slew it, a fit never matched by any of the K‘un-Lun warriors before. He plunged his hand into its molten heart and gained superhuman powers to reinforce his blows.

His exploit has consequences. The death of Shou-Lao angered the Dragon King Chiantang, his creator, who attempted to destroy K‘un-Lun in retaliation. While his enormous power would have made that quite possible, he was banished by Master Khan before he could do so. Also, some of the warriors of K‘un-Lun grew jealous of the incredibly talented foreigner, which triggered a brawl against Daniel, Miranda and Conal. After the fray, Conal and Miranda had to flee but were captured by the enemies of K‘un-Lun, the plant-like beings called the H’lythri, living outside of the city in the non-Earth dimension.

Rand opted to return to the America rather than stay in K‘un-Lun for another ten years. When he returned, he confronted Meachum, only to discover that he was now an invalid from frostbite. Rand took pity on him, but Meachum was later assassinated by the ghostly Ninja. Rand had to clear his name of the murder, an endeavour in which he associated with two female private detectives he befriended, samurai-trained Colleen Wing and cyborg ex-cop Misty Knight. While adjusting to America, he also started adventuring as iron Fist, fighting such menaces as a cult of Kali or Warhawk.

Although Rand’s business relationship with Meachum’s brother, Ward, and daughter, Joy, were not the best, they eventually reached an agreement in which Rand he became a full partner in Rand-Meachum (and thus a rich man) while Joy actually ran the company. This allowed Rand to concentrate on his good deeds as Iron Fist, and on his relationship with Misty Knight. Iron Fist fought such foes as the Steel Serpent (a martial artist specialized in dim-mak who had tried several times to conquer K‘un-Lun) or Dhasha Khan, a sorcerer-warrior who had conquered Feng-Tu. During that adventure, Iron Fist met Jade, a woman who was embodiment of all that was good with humanity due to being the receptacle of the cosmic Firebird ; and was defeated by a warrior from Feng-Tu serving Dhasha Khan, the Silver Dragon. After he defeated the Silver Dragon ina rematch, he discovered “he” was actually the spirit of Heather Rand. Vanquishing Dhasha Khan, he returned his mother to her quiet afterlife and, although he loved Jade and wished for her to remain human, accepted to let her become the Firebird more fully as humanity needed her in that role.

After some more adventures (involving Master Khan, Scimitar, the Wrecking Crew, Sabertooth or Davos, now also calling himself the Steel Serpent) Rand eventually became acquainted with Luke Cage and the two soon became partners in Heroes For Hire Inc. It was not his first partnership, as Iron fist had often worked along with other martial artists such as Shang-Chi, the Sons of the Tiger or the White Tiger, but it was to be his most lasting.

At one point, Fist and Cage went back to K‘un-Lun, only to discover the H’lythri had struck and decimated the eternal city. The heroes led the remnants of the K‘un-Lun warriors against their foes, but Iron Fist had been changed by his time on Earth and was now disillusioned with the regimented culture of his hometown. Yu-Ti betrayed him in an attempt to appease Master Khan, but even Khan feared the iron fist and the heroes walked way free. Iron Fist then damaged the crystal controlling the interface cycle between K‘un-Lun and Earth, making it erratic instead of predictable. Khan himself was trapped on Earth, allowing Chiantang to escape and nearly destroy K‘un-Lun. Khan enlisted villains to strike back against Cage and Fist, stealing the iron fist power and nearly killing him. However Iron Fist managed to strike back, recover his power and banish Khan.

Then Iron Fist apparently died in a twisted plot where nothing was what it seemed. Teenage Bobby Wright alias Captain Hero, whom Iron Fist was trying to save via healing chi, was actually the Super-Skrull, who had been mesmerized by Master Khan. Iron Fist wasn’t Iron Fist - but a H’lythri duplicate who had come to believe himself to be Iron Fist. Thus, when Wright turned to Captain Hero while Iron Fist was healing him and beat him to death in a rage, it seemed Khan’s plan had worked - however, Fist was still a prisoner of the H’lythri. Khan, in his triumph, seduced Misty Knight to steal her from Rand (in his guise as NYPD policeman Tyrone King, the one-man SWAT team), killed Chiantang (who had made it to Earth after a recent banishment from Iron Fist) and framed Cage for the murder of “Iron Fist”.

However, months later, the Super-Skrull, no longer the pawn of Khan, used his power to imitate Iron Fist as a ploy against Namor. Colleen Wing and Misty Knight, now doubting the death of Iron Fist, exhumed his remains to reveal plant-like tissue, making it clear that it had been an impostor who had been killed. Namor and the two women made it to K‘un-Lun and freed Rand from the clutches of the H’lythri. Khan turned Namor into am amnesiac as a revenge, but Rand, Knight and Wing restored him and the Submariner apparently slew Master Khan. Cage’s named was cleared, although by that point he wasn’t interested in actively reforming his adventuring duo with Rand. Iron Fist also discovered that while he was gone Oracle Inc., Namor’s company, had bought Rand-Meachum ; allying himself with Namor, Rand took a position at Oracle.

Iron Fist continued his career as a relatively minor hero ; at one point he started losing his faith in himself, which due to his link with Shou-Lao threatened to have mystical consequences. The alien Contemplator gave him new purpose ; during that quest the Steel Serpent was resurrected and tried yet again to conquer K‘un-Lun. The two men fought and Iron Fist recovered his power, even renewing his relationship with Misty Knight.

Thus, when most of the world’s most prominent heroes disappeared after the Onslaught crisis, Iron Fist was willing to carry on their heritage. Using Oracle money, he launched a new, bigger version of the Heroes for Hire (with the brief help of Cage) to serve as a new major hero group, and launched a scheme to bind K‘un-Lun to himself so he would bring it to Earth and trigger a new golden age by fusing both cultures and realities. . It all went sour, however. Namor sold Oracle to Stark-Fujikawa, who thus became the new masters of the Heroes for Hire and fired Cage and ant-Man due to their criminal records ; the rest left in disgust. The heroes lost in the Onslaught crisis came back, anyway, making the whole point moot. Iron Fist also came to the conclusion that a merger of Earth and K‘un-Lun would never work, and started working on stopping what he had put into motion.

That didn’t go well, either. Iron Fist found himself fighting against Conal and Miranda, the later now known as Death Sting. His childhood friends weren’t dead, but were now H’lythri agents. As for his plan to bring K‘un-Lun to Earth, it was hijacked by the Hand, led in this endeavour by teenage assassin Junzo Muto. Muto became a member of the club of people who stole the iron fist power, then kidnapped Misty Knight and brought her to Tokyo - he had realized that K‘un-Lun now couldn’t manifest on Earth with the presence of Iron Fist since they were bound, and wanted Fist to come to him so he could summon K‘un-Lun over Tokyo. The ghost of his mother informed Rand that he just had to wait - unable to manifest on Earth without him, K‘un-Lun would just bounce off to a random dimension. Unwilling to risk the destruction of K‘un-Lun and the torture and death of Misty Knight, Iron Fist went to Tokyo.

His presence allowed the Hand to complete the process, and K‘un-Lun started to appear in and merge with Tokyo, with catastrophic results. Iron Fist teamed up with Wolverine, Yu-Ti, Cage and some other heroes (including Sunfire, Captain America, Iron Man and Psylocke) to defeat the Hand and stop the merger. While they succeeded in beating back Muto, the ninja horde and the hypnotized dragons of K‘un-Lun, the merger seemed to be permanent until Yu-Ti, reasoning it couldn’t exist without Iron Fist, fatally stabbed him from behind. He succeeded and K‘un-Lun mostly recessed from Earth, although it left some elements behind, such as some of the dragons.

Iron Fist was resurrected on the spot by the spirits of Feng-Tu, led by his mother, and decided to stay for a while, helping the Japanese deal with the left-overs from K‘un-Lun and helping the dragons adapt to their new home. However, some time later, old Heroes for Hire enemy Nightshade resurrected Chiantang in order to use him as an unstoppable weapon against the Black Panther. She blackmailed him via a genetic bomb introduced in his DNA, but Chiantang begun to spin an elaborate web of deception, disguising himself as the demon Mephisto and eventually switching bodies with Ross Everett, the US liaison of the Black Panther. He also used mystical means to give the iron fist power back to iron Fist, then unbalanced his chi and hypnotized him to serve as his weapon against the Black Panther.

Both martial arts masters fought fiercely, though T‘challa only survived the hits he took through the vibranium impact-dampening mesh he was wearing. Even with this formidable protection, the cumulative damage from fighting an unhinged Iron Fist resulted in a brain aneurysm that would have dire repercussions in the near-future. Still, with the help of the Black Panther, Iron Fist broke his conditioning. Chiantang then manifested in his full dragon form in New York city, but was attacked by Black Panther, Iron Fist, a powerful Wakandan military task force and nearby US armed forces. The fight eventually drifted to Wakanda, where Chiantang was defeated.

Going back to the US, Iron Fist resumed his career as a minor hero. However, during an altercation with armed thugs, Iron Fist dodged a bullet that flew on to kill a young mother at a nearby window, leaving an orphaned baby behind her. This terrible event made Iron Fist doubt the good he was doing, especially since he had broken up with Misty Knight again in the past weeks. He decided to retire to Colorado, buying a big, isolated house. However, he was tracked down by Mary Blue Cloud, a teenage American Indian with precognitive powers. Mary had foreseen the return of the exiled K‘un-Lun wizard Chi, whose agents the shadow-thieves waled the Earth to sustain his immortality. Chi had become aware of Iron Fist’s bond with K‘un-Lun, and was trying to capture him so as to exploit that that link and come back to k‘un-Lun for vengeance. His agents stepped up their activities, killing hundreds to fully power him so he could execute his plan. A reluctant Iron Fist eventually defeated Chi in K‘un-Lun with Mary’s help, and returned back to the path of the hero.

Description

See illustrations. Nowadays, Iron Fist tends to be drawn manga-style, giving him a youthful air. He wears his hair somewhat short, in an anime hero cut.

Personality

Early in his career, Iron Fist was quite unfamiliar with the normal world, and was obsessed with avenging his parents. This very intense, very focused worldview collapsed when he couldn’t take Meachum’s life, leaving empty from then on.

Due to this life-consuming buildup and anti-climax, Danny is somewhat aimless despite his incredible training and mental and spiritual integrity. He tends to doubt his abilities, his actions and his role as a hero because he wasn’t born to be one - he keeps being dragged into being Iron Fist as a textbook Responsibility for Power motivation. He is overtly analytical and quite skeptical about what he does ; if an innocent is killed due to what he perceives to be his own fault (and he will easily decide things are his own fault), he may retired until fate drags him yet again into the life of a fighter.

However, despite those doubts, Danny almost never descends into self-pitying and whining. He lacks a clear path, but this is more of a philosophical dilemma than any kind of angst. His questions are much, much closer to “am I doing the bright thing ? Should I be wearing a costume a kicking arse ?” than “woe is me !”.

In fact, he’s overall a very amiable, likeable guy. He’s usually social and jovial, although his humour is a normal kind of joking around, not killed one-liners and dialogue like a Peter David-written Spider-Man. He’s not really funny or a talented comedian, but he’s obviously laid-back and rarely incites violence of it can be avoided. He’s open toward others, but will drop his light wit and banter if he’s made too aware that, due to the violent nature of his life, people around him tend to suffer. When he’s not pondering his role, his goals are pretty simple - a good life, which means he’s after money and is generally nice so he can enjoy positive situations.

Iron Fist alternates between group work (where he will soon feel he relies too much on others, and that it dulls him) and solo work (where he will soon feel he could achieve more as part of a dedicated force for good). He finds his best equilibrium as part of a duo - and is of course at his best operating along with Cage, though they haven’t really been venturing together for a while. The friendship between Cage and Danny is rock-solid despite their vast differences - they both know the other is truly a good man, dedicated to justice and having overcome formidable obstacles to become what he is.

Part of Iron Fist’s doubts and feelings of inadequacy come from his K‘un-Lun upbringing - he’s supposed to be the champion of an otherdimensional civilization with Oriental trappings that is a million years old. K‘un-Lun has vast, formidable traditions and a very rigid sense of honour and duty that is nigh-unbearable for a normal human being. Danny view this fantastic legacy as an incredible, shining Camelot, and considers that his K‘un-Lun heritage and culture have much to bring to humanity. However, being a one-man agent of cultural change toward something incomprehensible to most of his contemporaries is likewise too big, and doomed to doubt and failure.

Thus, while Danny may seems to some like an hesitant, superficial slacker, his ability to live his life without being crushed by who he is and where he comes from, and in fact remain a nice and amiable person, is quite remarkable.

Iron Fist has been around for years and his on friendly terms with a large number of heroes - such as Spider-Man, Wolverine, the X-Men, the Black Panther, Namor, etc. He pretty much never calls on their help so they aren’t Connections, but he will easily work with them during chance encounters.

DC Universe History

Obvious parallels exist in DC during the high flying Kung Fu action days of the 70s. Iron Fist would have met Richard Dragon, Ben Turner (Bronze Tiger), and Lady Shiva (Collectively known as the Kung Fu Fighters). Also story arcs involving the League of Assassins come to mind.

In fact, Fist could conceivably *replace* Richard Dragon, as the two can be amalgamated without too many problems. His friendship with Cage would of course be replaced with his friendship with Turner, and there are definitely similarities between K‘un-Lun and Nanda Parbat.