Comics I Bought: July 3, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 7 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Rasl - 1 & 2 (Jeff Smith's new series that I didn't even know was out)

Echo - 3 & 4 (Ditto for Terry Moore's new series)

Buffy Season Eight - 15

Savage Dragon - 136

Walking Dead - 50

Conan Volume 5 - "Rogues in the House and Other Stories"

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

The Immortal Iron Fist Vol 2 - "The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven" by Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker, David Aja, and others

I liked volume one of Iron Fist enough to pick up volume two. There were actually a few hardcover collections I wanted that came out the same week as this one. I'll have to pick up the others in future weeks because this is the one I decided on first.

Once again we have the adventures of martial arts master Iron Fist (Danny Rand) in the mystical city of K'un-Lun (think Shangri-La). This time there is a martial arts tournament (think Mortal Combat) going on between K'un-Lun and seven other mystical cities. Oh, and a bunch of Hydra guys (think Spectre from James Bond) want to blow up K'un-Lun for revenge or some such. That's the basics of what's going on.

Once again, as in volume one, the art is terrific. The main artist is David Aja but others are used to. I think this current Iron Fist series uses multiple artists with multiple styles better than any other I've seen. Besides the Danny Rand Iron Fist story there are flashbacks to Danny's father (Wendell Rand) as a young man training in K'un-Lun and another Iron Fist (Orson Randall) who adopted Wendell Rand when he was a boy. The overlapping sets of flashbacks are all drawn by someone other than David Aja.

Usually when there is a change of artists in the middle of a story it's jarring and it takes a while to get back into the story. That's why, sometimes, the second artist will try to match the style of the first. Here there is none of that. Each artist is working in his own distinct style. But rather than being jarring it's engrossing. Being that it's only the flashbacks being done but different artists it is a great way to make the distinction and present a whole different time and place. Whoever came up with this it's a good idea and well executed.

I think I liked volume two even better than volume one. I like the sense of history it has with all the flashbacks, the curiousness of the current Iron Fist, and the goofy video game like tournament that was the backdrop to the story. The ending kind of let me down a little. Not because it was bad but because it was just a big fight. I enjoyed the journey to the fight more than the fight itself. But that might just be my quirk. Either way check out The Immortal Iron Fist Volume 2 or Volume 1 for some cool martial arts superhero action and adventure.