Source: Newsarama

Newsarama: Kaare, what can you tell us about this new Iron Fistseries?

Kaare Andrews: Iron Fist: The Living Weapon is an investigation into a character that has a lot of potential. This new series taking this character with so much raw potential and giving him a new story that calls back to his first story – his origin – in a tale of bloody revenge. It’s a classic martial arts-style story that is about a man who has to right things that have been wronged. It’s a bloody tale of vengeance and action set in the martial arts genre.

Nrama: A lot of people fondly remember the earlier Immortal Iron Fist series in the mid-2000s. Are you picking up on any of those story threads, or starting from scratch?

Andrews: Here’s what’s interesting… I was a little bit involved in that run. I did covers for several issues of Immortal Iron Fist. When David Aja was starting to fall behind on the interior work, they asked me to do covers so he could focus on pages. My buddy Warren Simons was editing the book, and it was really cool stuff.

But getting to your question, that story has already been done – no one needs me to do it again. That was their version – of the multi-generational Iron Fist mantle with an epic, sprawling story with secondary characters and stuff. When I took on Iron Fist: The Living Weapon, my goal is to rejuvenate him and reinvent the character itself. It would be a big mistake to simply take the last iteration and pick up from there.

My aim in Iron Fist: The Living Weapon was to do research on the character and find out his core. How do you sum up Iron Fist? It’s easy for someone like Spider-Man … “with great power comes great responsibility.” It’s easy with Superman – an alien son coming up in America. But with Iron Fist, it’s tricky; I wasn’t really aware of his original stories at first, but after I agreed to do the book I researched everything from the recentImmortal Iron Fist series back to the beginnings with Marvel Premiere #15. That early stuff is amazing, and after discovering it I found the core.

His origin from the 1970s is a pretty adult story. It’s about a little kid named Danny whose parents were murdered – ripped apart, actually – by wolves after a bad business betrayal in the Himalayas. Danny gets taken in by monks who train him to become a living weapon so one day he can go back and kill the people who murdered his parents. Years pass and after his training to be a living weapon is complete, they send him out into the world but at the last minute offer an alternative; stay in K’un Lun – Shangri-La, basically – and become an immortal god and live in peace and harmony. But Danny gave all that away – turned down immortality --- to return to Earth and kill the men responsible for his parents’ death.

That’s the coolest thing I ever read about Iron Fist – and I didn’t see that in Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker’s run. So that’s what I decided would be my way in; to re-investigate that choice Danny made, and show the consequences of that choice. Basically a kid being fueled by hatred, revenge, and bloody samurai vengeance for 10 years from childhood to adulthood, so he can avenge his parents’ death; I just found that so interesting. I can’t think of another Marvel hero fueled by that great a sense of revenge. By turning down godhood and immortality to avenge his parents, Danny chose death over life and that’s the key to Iron Fist: The Living Weapon: to re-investigate that story in a new way, and make it more accessible. For people who haven’t read his origin it’ll be a new way to enjoy it and understand the character, and for Iron Fist fans it offers new layers and insight to Rand.

Nrama: That brings me to my next question – how do you view Danny Rand himself, Iron Fist?

Andrews: I’ve always known about Iron Fist, and John Byrne’s work on him was memorable. But I didn’t know much about him on the inside. And that was a question I sought out an answer to for Iron Fist: The Living Weapon.

Danny Rand is this rich guy who comes back from K’un Lun as a living weapon, but what’s his deal? That’s why I was so drawn to his origin story. At first blush Danny Rand is a rich billionaire who has all these charities, trains kids in kung fu, and seems content and happy… but who is he? I didn’t know any guy like this in real life.

Only in re-investigating his origins did I find the key; he’s this guy whose first encounter with death was at such a young age – and with his parents no less – that he’s forced to find replacement parental figures, who train him to become a god, and he gives that up to come back to Earth for revenge and to be a man. So he comes back to this fortune and gets revenge, but there’s this layer that hasn’t been investigated since… and I found that interesting. What is it like for a ten year old boy to watch his mother torn apart by wolves? That’s crazy stuff, and it must stick with you – even after you get revenge. After seeing that Danny spent 10 years training to kill the person who did that to you, you realize that vengeance isn’t going to bring Danny back to normal. But from the outside, Danny hasn’t really dealt with those unresolved issues in a long time. He pushes it away by doing charity stuff, but it can still bubble up.

I’m the son of two therapists; if you don’t deal with things from your past, they come back for you. That’s what happens to Danny here in Iron Fist: The Living Weapon. He’s going to be dragged back into the circumstances of his first storyline; K’un Lun, death, his parents, and the choices he made including turning down immortality.

Nrama: You’re writing and drawing this, so I have to ask about Iron Fist’s look – and specifically the costume. What’s Iron Fist going to look like here?

Andrews: I think every time you reinvent a character, you also want to reinvent this visuals. For me, I try to key into the core elements of the costume. For Spider-Man, it’s the eyes, webbing, his emblem and the color of his suit – you can mix them up and come up with variations while still tying back to the classic version. That’s why Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man is so identifiable – it’s the classic costume, but he chooses what elements to do a little different and which ones to leave alone.

For Iron Fist, it’s important for me to be loyal to what his core is in my mind. For me, it’s his mask and his tattoo. So I don’t think you’re going to see him in his green tights per se, but the key elements I found viable were the mask and the tattoo. That’s his character.

I love martial arts and action movies, whether it’s Eastern of Western; I grew up with them, and I still love them to this day. And so visually you’ll see something a little more cinematic than the tights. The version you see on my pages for Iron Fist: The Living Weapon will make you think “Oh, that’s how you’d see him on the screen.” It’s a grounded, reality-based version that tries to stay true to the key visual components of who he is.

Nrama: Who will Iron Fist be up against here in his new solo series?

Andrews: Well, let me say this first – in many of his previous stories Danny’s come to have this host of partners, companions, team-mates and friends, but for Iron Fist: The Living Weapon that’s not how it’s going to go. I’m more interested in the idea of a lonely man – a man on his own against everything; one man overwhelmed by events around him. This new series isn’t about him and his friends coming together; it’s about one man stuck in a corner with blood on his hands, and he’s got to find out who he is on his own… on his own terms.

It’s a more traditional approach to a martial arts story. And as a visual artist, I find many parallels between the art of martial arts and doing art and illustration. You take an incredible history of technique and artists searching for their own techniques, and you imbue yourself with history and your own ideas. And it’s a very singular sport, and both art and martial art comes through your body. It’s not a team sport – you don’t play team kung fu. Its one man in a tournament, trying to find enlightenment by becoming the best there is. Sure you can collaborate in groups, but in the end it’s just one person drawing, one person typing, or one person fighting.

In terms of villains, my favorite kind of martial arts story is the idea of the lonely man put up against not just one character but hundreds, in overwhelming odds. There comes a point where he’s overwhelmed by his adversaries; you have to break him down to see how he rises up. It’s going to be classic – hordes of people are after Danny, and he has no escape. It’s a mix of his history, along with his future and his present. Everyone’s coming after Danny.

Nrama: With Iron Fist there has to be the near-mythical world in which he became a man: K’un Lun. Will it play a role here inIron Fist: The Living Weapon?

Andrews: It’s going to be a major part of the story. Basically I’m taking man of the touchstones from his origin and applying it in new ways and showing new things; introducing parts of the early story maybe you didn’t know. What does K’un Lun mean to Danny? And then change that, and change what it did to him.

K’un Lun is a big part of who he is. Iron Fist was created by the death of his parents and the ten year quest to avenge that act by training and ultimately killing the man who did it. That’s crazy, but that’s who he is. But there’s another part – the K’un Lun part – that Danny was an orphan taken in by monks to K’un Lun. He was the ultimate outsider, but he got a point where he became Iron Fist and returned to Earth. But he returned to find himself an outsider again. So he’s an outsider at K’un Lun and an outsider on Earth. He’s caught between two worlds, and that’s worth investigating.

Kaare Andrews Harnesses Marvel’s Living Weapon, IRON FIST | Newsarama.com

Sounds sweet. I'll be ready to pick this up in April.

@wolverine08: yea, I'm loving everything I'v heard so far. More martial arts revenge flick than capes and superheroes.

@jonny_anonymous: It sounds like they're putting a lot of effort into this. Hoping it'll be as good as Immortal Iron Fist. A man can dream, right?

@jonny_anonymous: they probably at least deserve a link to their article if you're going to cut-and-paste the whole interview.

@fodigg: it says right there who it is tho

So far this sounds like a good promising story which I will probably like.

@saren: I cry your pardon gunslinger, I'll edit it tomorrow when I'm on my laptop.

this is excelkent