BHOC: POWER MAN AND IRON FIST #57

This was the first issue of POWER MAN AND IRON FIST that I bought new off of the stands. I had sampled a random issue or two of both POWER MAN and Iron Fist’s appearances in MARVEL PREMIERE, but neither of them had especially hooked me. But the big added factor here was the guest-appearance of the X-Men. This was at a time before the mutants had become the most popular characters in comics, but already their appeal was growing. This cover was enough to get me to lay down my four dimes to see what was going to happen. In part, this was perhaps a defensive act: already, the back issue prices for copies of UNCANNY X-MEN featuring the new team had been creeping up proportionate to any other contemporary series. So the thought was that if I didn’t buy this issue now and wound up wanting it later, it was likely to cost me a premium price.

POWER MAN AND IRON FIST was a bit of a last-ditch effort to save a pair of failing Marvel strips by combining them into a single buddy series. The combination didn’t make a whole lot of sense on the face of it, as Luke Cage and Danny Rand had almost nothing in common apart from both being products of different 1970s fads. Yet somehow, the combination worked, and gave the series extended vitality. By this point, PMIF had passed into the hands of writer Jo Duffy, who continued to develop things in the general direction that her predecessor Chris Claremont had set up, while adding her own spin to the series. Duffy’s PMIF was less deadly series, more concerned with the interplay between the two leads and contained a certain wry sensibility.

The art in this issue was done by Trevor Von Eeden, a relative youngster to the medium who would go on to produce some very fine, very personal and expressive work. But at this stage in his career, he was still scrambling to hang on. His work is really done no favors here by inker Frank Springer, who shaves away any of the more interesting edges in the service of making this fit the typical Marvel house style of the period. Von Eeden does seem like he’s a bit in over his head here, and there are whole pages where there isn’t a background to be seen, and in which relatively small head shots occupy completely open space. It also looks a bit like the pages may have been drawn at closer to print size, and so weren’t aided by the typical print reduction. The linework feels thick and blotchy as well.

So what’s going on here? I hadn’t bought the preceding chapter, so I needed to work it out on the fly myself. But the gist is that Luke and Danny had been hired to guard some Egyptian treasures that were going on display–treasures that wound up getting stolen. The culprit turned out to be one of the men who had hired Heroes for Hire: Professor Abdol. Turns out that Abdol was an old X-Men antagonist called the Living Monolith, and somehow used the power contained in them to return to his former stature as the Living Monolith, without needing to deal with the X-Man Havok. As this issue opens, there’s a bit of monologuing on both sides to bring the audience up to speed.

Wasting no time, the Monolith brings down the entire building atop Luke and Danny while extricating himself from it. It’s at this point that Colleen Wing and Misty Knight show up, accompanied by three of the X-Men whom they’d recently interfaced with in Japan. Storm is sent to keep an eye on the Monolith’s movements while the rest attempt to dig Danny and Luke out of the destroyed building. This proves easier than expected when Iron Fist uses his namesake power to punch a path to freedom while Cage holds up the rubble bearing down on them. Introductions are made and assignments given: the X-Men will attempt to waylay the Living Monolith physically while Luke and Danny attempt to sort out the source of his transformation.

Power Man and Iron Fist track things back to the Halwani Embassy, which is being manned by goons attired in the colors of the Monolith’s agents. Fist and Cage make quick work of them, then discover a strange crystal pyramid in Abdol’s office. Leaving the place, they spot a truck being driven by more of the Monolith’s men and waylay it, discovering Professor Merridew, the man who hired them, trapped in the back. He provides an additional infodump indicating that Abdol had joined his group in order to gain possession of the Crystal Pyramid which it had unearthed the previous summer. Using the Pyramid, Abdol was able to channel the energy necessary to transform him into the Living Monolith once again.

Merridew indicates that he and the other two members of the party were a key component of this process–they were trapped within sarcophagi positioned like a triangle. Danny contacts the authorities to locate and liberate the other two trapped men. Meanwhile, the X-Men have been making no progress on halting the Monolith–but with Merridew freed, his power waned. Cage and Fist arrive, and Cage topples the Monolith just as he begins to transform back to his regular human incarnation. And once the situation is resolved, Danny prevents it from ever happening again by destroying the Crystal Pyramid with his iron fist. The X-Men don’t really do much of anything in this story apart from maybe suckering some readers such as myself into picking up the issue.