Iron Fist #12 (1977)
By Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Dan Adkins
Background: With Misty Knight taken hostage by the Wrecking Crew, Iron Fist is ordered to break into Avengers' Mansion and kill anyone he finds.
So, What Happens? Captain America is on monitor duty at the mansion, where he is investigating Iron Fist after his battle with the Wrecking Crew, unaware that the martial artist has just managed to break into the house. From newspaper scans, Cap reads about two deaths initially blamed on Iron Fist, and then leaves the monitors before noticing a later retraction clearing the hero. Meanwhile, Jarvis surprises Iron Fist, panics an falls down the stairs. Danny manages to save him from serious harm but the butler is unconscious, and right at that moment Cap arrives and jumps to conclusions, ignoring Danny's attempts at explaining the situation. A fight begins, but good as Danny is, Cap is much better and even the power of the Iron Fist can't break through the Avenger's shield. Realizing he can't win, Danny puts himself at risk under a collapsing generator, forcing Captain America to save him and to pause long enough to listen to Iron Fist's explanation. Finally believing his story, Cap agrees to help. Sometime later, Iron Fist lets the Wrecking Crew into the mansion and guides them to the still body of Captain America, but it's a trap and the villains are locked in the Avengers training room together with the heroes. Joining forces, and helped by the room's machinery set for Thor's training sequence, Iron Fist and Cap finally triumph. After the Wrecking Crew are taken away by the police Misty and Iron Fist depart from Avengers Mansion, parting from Captain America as friends.
Notes: Captain America mentions Mantis, the erstwhile Avenger who was an expert in martial arts. According to him, Danny is about as good as her.
Something Silly This Way Comes: The active Avengers at the time were Cap, Iron Man, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Wonder Man, Wasp, Yellowjacket and the Beast. How could the Wrecking Crew expect Iron Fist to be able to kill them?
Review: Silly as they are, the so called "Marvel Misunderstanding" fights are a classic, and this one is no exception. The premise is as weak as usual, with Captain America - who is usually one of the more collected and level-headed heroes - suddenly ignoring Danny's attempts at explaining and rushing head-on in a fight, but the result are several pages of simple, mindless fun. For this kind of tales to be enjoyable it's important that both heroes are well-handled, since it would be easy to hype up one at the expense of the other, but there can be no complaints here. Iron Fist is the one who ends the battle (it's his book after all), but Captain America is clearly the superior fighter and it's quite amusing to see it all through Danny's eyes, especially given the slightly hilarious speech pattern he had at the time ("Bones of the Dragon!"). Like last issue's battle against the Wrecking Crew, this is a reality check for Danny about his position in the fighting standing of the Marvel Universe.
The second part of the story is just as good. Using the Avengers' training room is a clever solution (I suppose just giving the rest of the team a phone call was out of the question) and makes the defeat of the Crew believable. I've never been overly convinced by these Danger Room kind of things, mainly because they would need to be repaired daily at an impossible pace, but here it serves its purpose. It's interesting that Thor is constantly used as a reference point for strength and power. He still is today, but not quite in such an overt way.
The art is just as good as last issue, if not a little better. The training room battle in particular is very inventive and nicely choreographed, with dynamic poses and unusual panel layouts. Byrne manages to make each panel look immediately clear, no matter the angle or how small it is, so that the machines don't clout the page and impair the storytelling at all.
Final Verdict: A worthy conclusion to last issue's story. 4/5
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