Immortal Weapons (2009) #5

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You know who David Lapham can’t write? Danny Rand. You know who he has as his de facto protagonist? Danny Rand.

John Aman—the Prince of Orphans—is secondary to his own issue. Lapham even writes an adventure for Danny and Luke with a wacky miniature villain. I guess Aman gets the opening scene but….

Worse, it’s like Lapham never even read Brubaker and Fraction’s Immortal Iron Fist issues with Aman and Danny to get the relationship down. He just makes Danny a pest—it’s like he’s writing Spider-Man as Danny Rand.

I guess it’s an okay story for not being any good and Lozzi’s art is lovely.

This whole Immortal Weapons series is a waste of time.

And the Swierczynski Iron Fist backup, which started so nice, is a waste. Swierczynski lost hold of the narrative—it’s obvious. And Diaz’s artwork is even worse than before. He’s awful.

Immortal Weapons (2009) #4

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There’s the Swierczynski I was expecting… turning in a completely useless issue.

Tiger’s Beautiful Daughter gets the feature. Swierczynski’s so wrapped up in his Amazon warrior women story he neglects to mention a) the name of the Heavenly City and b) how they could possibly have an Immortal Weapon. It’s nonsensical, but also bad.

Swierczynski tries real hard not to be sexist, but fails miserably. I also like how he borrows the reasoning for some Muslim women taking the veil (so their features aren’t their defining factor) as the warrior women putting on face guards. However, these warrior women are running around in bikinis so I’m not sure what difference the face guard makes.

Also… if Tiger’s Beautiful Daughter is supposed to be beautiful, did someone forget to tell Evans? The character’s funny looking.

The Iron Fist backup is, again, too short and too unbearably ugly (thanks to Diaz’s art).

Immortal Weapons (2009) #3

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Who’s this Rick Spears guy and why have I never heard of him before? His origin of Dog Brother #1 is fantastic.

He opens it in late nineteenth century Hong Kong, where Dog Brother is something of a myth. Spears’s protagonists are these two orphans, trying to navigate the gangs, the British and the poverty. It’s sort of incredible how subtle Spears’s writing manages to be, given everything going on in the story.

Eventually, whether or not Dog Brother #1 has anything to do with the story doesn’t matter anymore. Spears gives his protagonists this tragic arc. He never pushes it or makes it melodramatic. He just lets all the awfulness play out.

Some fine art from Green… just a great piece of work.

The Iron Fist backup is messy. It’s too short, confusingly follows the previous installment and Diaz’s artwork is terrible. Swierczynski tries, but he can’t do much.

Immortal Weapons (2009) #2

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What a stinker.

The whole thing plays like a bad Marvel horror comic from the seventies, with a team of mercenaries (they have matching outfits, of course) out to retrieve a spider. It’s not any spider, it’s one of the Bride of Nine Spiders’s spiders. There’s a bit of a continuity break, showing the Bride to always be beautiful, when in Immortal Iron Fist flashbacks she wasn’t shown as such.

So, it’s an action horror comic instead of a kung fu horror comic.

Bunn’s writing is occasionally okay—his dialogue is fine—but he’s establishing all these characters in a single issue. The Bride he never gets around to establishing though. She’s barely in her own comic.

Also, Brereton’s problematic—his proportions are off.

It’s just a forced horror comic. Big mistake.

However, great Iron Fist backup. Gaudiano’s inks make Foreman’s pencils fantastic. Still, doesn’t make up for the feature.

Immortal Weapons (2009) #1

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Could this story be more depressing?

Aaron does a decent job on Fat Cobra’s backstory—though he doesn’t go enough into defining Fat Cobra’s Heavenly City. He buys his way back into it at one point and buying one’s way back into a Heavenly City seems a little common.

Then there’s all the retconning of Fat Cobra into Marvel Comics history. He was almost an Invader, he was Ulysses Bloodstone’s sidekick and so on and so forth. Aaron’s trying to hard to be cute. When we get to the end of the story and find out the salient feature of Fat Cobra’s (forgotten) past… all the other stuff becomes silly.

That feature—Fat Cobra has no memory of his past—is similarly problematic. Aaron needed to explain it.

Good art from a variety of artists. It’s a fine package.

Swierczynski’s Iron Fist backup is the best Iron Fist he’s written.