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bookoftheironfist · 2 months

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Hi! I was thinking offhand about the IF Netflix show this morning and figured I ought to get the opinion of an expert — the fanon Danny characterization that I’ve seen in people’s fics (basically a goofy and oblivious golden retriever) seems a bit different from what I saw in the show, but I also know next to nothing about the personality of the character in the comics. Are the three of them distinct (comics, show, fanon) or would you say there’s similarities between them? Is there anywhere in particular that the fanon characterization seems to come from, in your opinion?

Hi, it's great to hear from you! I love this question.

First of all, I am contractually obligated to gesture in the direction of my big ol' Iron Fist reading guide, if you do happen to have an interest in checking out some comics...

I don't read fan fiction myself, so I can't really comment in an informed or specific way on how he tends to be written or conceptualized by the MCU fan community at large, but I have heard MCU Danny described as a "golden retriever" before and I think I have the general gist. I don't have any problems with that-- Danny is very sweet and endearing and kind, and this is true in the comics as well. There is also a whole lot more going on with him, though, at the heart of which is the fact that he has been shouldering massive amounts of trauma in most of his MCU appearances so far, some of it (if we look, for instance, at Danny in The Defenders) very recent. (In this regard, the treatment of his character in The Defenders drove me a bit nuts. Yeah, okay, let's repeatedly tease and belittle the guy who's just had his home destroyed and his people massacred by the villains and then physically prevent him from getting any closure. Aren't team-ups fun?)

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't see much of a difference in personality between comics Danny and MCU Danny. This is a situation in which context is key, and one of the things I've always found so compelling about Danny as a character is the fact that while he is capable of great kindness, positivity, generosity, and affection-- and is, to me, one of the least emotionally constipated male superheroes out there-- he is also capable of immense darkness, hatred, and violence. Danny has an exceptionally horrific origin story in the comics: at the age of nine, he gets dragged high into the mountains on his father's desperate bid to return to K'un-Lun, where his father is then murdered and his mother eaten alive by wolves. Having barely escaped with his own life, Danny finds a new home and family in K'un-Lun, but he has been transformed by his experiences and becomes razor-focused on the one goal that matters most to him now: killing Harold Meachum, the man responsible for his parents' deaths. When ten years pass and the portal to Earth reopens, Danny is faced with a painful choice: to remain in his beloved K'un-Lun and put aside his desire for vengeance, or to leave in pursuit of Meachum and be locked out of the city for a decade. As much as he wants to stay, and as much as his mentors insist that this revenge quest will destroy him, the rage and trauma that have been festering in him all this time are too much for him to ignore. Nineteen-year-old Danny storms back to New York City, haunted and out for blood.

His personality in these first issues is rigidly serious, emotionally locked off, driven, bitter, and quick to anger. Even when his revenge quest fails and he decides to let his parents' killer live, he comes out of it lost and broken, homesick for K'un-Lun and unsure of who he even is on Earth and what kind of life he could possibly build there. His answer comes through the friends he makes-- Colleen Wing and her father, Misty Knight, Rafael Scarfe, Luke Cage, the Sons of the Tiger, and so on-- who extend kindness and love to him and give him a place to belong. As this happens, Danny's personality softens. There's a key moment that I think beautifully illustrates the beginning of this shift. Danny gets invited to play some casual softball with Rafael Scarfe and his team, and ends up getting knocked on his butt. His first reaction is to feel angry and humiliated. But then he does something nobody expects. He laughs:

"You hear laughter as you hit the ground, and for a moment, it angers you...after all, you have been made to look the fool... So what? It won't kill a man to look foolish among friends. And you do look...funny." Scarfe: "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. The great stone face finally cracks up. I dunno, Daniel Rand. After all Lee* told me about you, I didn't think you had a giggle in you. Nice to see I was wrong." Marvel Premiere #24 by Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick, Phil Rache, Vinnie Colletta, and Karen Mantlo *(Lee is Colleen Wing's father, who was employing and keeping an eye on Danny at this point.)

The reason I've been focusing specifically on early 616 Danny here is because this is largely the context in which we have seen MCU Danny so far. He is, relatively speaking, barely out of his origin story, and while many of the details differ, MCU Danny and 616 Danny still have similar origins and similar emotional responses to them. (In the years since the show first aired, I've seen people try to claim that MCU Danny was out-of-character in the first season, and while out-of-character-ness is, of course, up to interpretation, I tend to take this opinion as an indication that someone has only read modern Iron Fist comics. To me, season 1 was very obviously drawing from the original Marvel Premiere issues in its tone, themes, and approach to Danny's personality.) What's very neat to me about MCU Danny is that due to the changing of one small detail, the structure of his origin story was completely flipped. In the comics, he watches Harold Meachum kick his dad off a cliff and abandon him and his mother in the mountains. He knows exactly what happened to his parents, and he knows exactly who is responsible, and so his trauma response has drive and a target. For this reason, the very first version of Danny we meet in the comics is angry and serious, battle-hardened and focused on his mission to the exclusion of all else. It's only afterward that his character, over time, morphs into the lighter, more relaxed Danny with whom modern readers are most familiar. He still has that darkness and rage inside of him-- the 2014 Living Weapon series, for instance, was all about revisiting that aspect of his character-- but modern Danny is, on the whole, in a place that reflects the tremendous character arc he has traveled over the past 50 years.

The show, though, changes a key detail of the story: Danny's parents die in a plane crash, murdered by Harold from a distance. I wasn't too disappointed or even really surprised by this change (when that first teaser trailer dropped, my co-blogger and I went, "yeah, makes sense"). Live action tends to highlight concept weaknesses that are more readily allowed suspension of disbelief in the comics, and a plane crash feels a bit more rational than Wendell Rand taking his young child for a fun jaunt through some of the harshest terrain on the planet. Of course, all of the Netflix shows made all kinds of origin story changes, some of them for no apparent reason and to what I'd consider to be the detriment of the stories (here's my co-blogger and I griping about some of the strangest changes made to MCU Matt Murdock's origin, for instance, if you're interested). But what impressed me so much about this change to Danny's backstory is that they didn't then just carry on as if the change hadn't been made. The showrunner/writing team actually thought through what it would mean for the rest of the story, and what it meant was this: With Harold not obviously involved, Danny does not know that his parents were murdered. He is burdened with the same degree of grief and trauma, but without anyone to blame, with no outlet for his emotions, no goal to strive toward for closure. It means that he initially has no revenge quest. When we first meet MCU Danny, he is suppressing a lot of harmful emotions (I mean, a lot a lot), but he is also hopeful, because he comes to Earth not to murder a guy, but looking for healing and seeking to reconnect with the Meachums: beloved extended family that he has not seen in fifteen years, welcome remnants of a life he can barely remember. He is in an optimistic frame of mind, thus allowing us to see that trademark happy, dorky Danny who we don't meet until much later in the comics (that first link offers a direct contrast between Danny walking into the Meachum building in the comics versus the MCU, so it's worth checking out).

And then! Things immediately go horribly wrong. Danny is naive, out of his element, and easily manipulated. He gets psychologically brutalized by the Meachums, by Madame Gao and the Hand, eventually by Davos, he discovers more and more of the details surrounding the crash, he begins to spiral, his suppressed emotions break free, that darkness and rage come forth, and the story of Iron Fist season 1 climaxes with the realization of the revenge quest that was always bubbling beneath the surface. That glimpse of happy, well-adjusted Danny is gone, consumed by the grim, dangerous, extremely unhealthy Danny more familiar to Marvel Premiere readers. One major difference to note is that there's something uncontrolled, almost feral about MCU Danny at his absolute worst, symptomatic of the fact that he has been actively repressing these emotions, while 616 Danny spent ten years honing and focusing them. I find that distinction really interesting.

Having defeated Harold Meachum and found closure for his parents' deaths and peace for his identity struggles (I haven't talked much about those, but I've written a lot about them in my coverage of Iron Fist season 1, so feel free to go check that out), we see that default happier, hopeful, peaceful Danny return. This moment always brings me immense joy:

(I can't overstate my love for this tiny scene. Here's Danny at his most carefree, finally returning home, ready to plunge back into his training, accompanied by someone he loves. That's my guy: distilled.)

However, Danny barely has time to heal before he is shattered again by the...whatever the heck happened to K'un-Lun (this plot point was never, ever clarified, and I'm sad about it! Augh! Marvel!!). In the post about The Defenders that I linked waaay back at the beginning of this post, I point out that Danny's traumatic flashbacks to his parents' deaths get replaced by nightmares of K'un-Lun's destruction, a new source of trauma overlaying the old. In The Defenders, Danny's personality is perhaps closer to that of his Marvel Premiere counterpart. He is no longer out-of-control berserker raging; now, his grief and anger are focused. He knows his enemy. He knows what they did (maybe? Augh...). He knows what he must do to them to avenge his people and correct his perceived mistakes. But at the same time, he is still open to building friendships and connections, even longs for it (he has lost so many of the people in his life, he has been betrayed so many times...He and Colleen are alone at this point). He forms a bond with Luke (of course), once they are able to put aside their own demons enough to listen to each other. His interactions with Luke are very reminiscent of his first interactions with Colleen in IF season 1, in which he sees someone he thinks is cool and interesting and goes "Friend. Friend, yes? Friend?" (This isn't really a thing in the comics, but it's a cute feature of MCU Danny that also underlines how desperately he needs human connection. In the comics, his Found Family(ies) just kind of happens organically. In the MCU, Danny seeks out those bonds.) Something else that pops out strongly in Danny's personality in The Defenders is an admiration for his teammates, carrying on from his open admiration for Colleen's skills in his solo show. Danny in the comics is a kung fu mega nerd. He's a perfectionist when it comes to combat and will openly criticize his enemies for sloppiness or lack of skill, but the flip side of this is that he also has tremendous respect for and interest in the skills of others and is just as quick to offer complements. I love this about him and was delighted to see it show up in the MCU.

Luke Cage season 2 and Iron Fist season 2 see MCU Danny move toward that more modern sensibility for his character; they feel very much like the Iron Fist/Power Man and Iron Fist volume 1 era in the comics, in terms of both his personality and the direction of his life (apart from the end of IF season 2, which I don't feel I can cover properly here because it still just makes me go "???!?!"). With more stability, we get to see more sides of Danny that we haven't seen since the very beginning of his solo show, before his life went to hell-- the side that is open and friendly, that gifts Misty Knight her bionic arm, that is eager to spar with Luke, the side that is settled enough in himself to offer advice to others. We see Danny enjoying having a job-- not as a Hero for Hire in this universe, sadly, but working for a moving company, earning an honest living. We get to revel more in one of my favorite things about early Danny: his naïveté and unfamiliarity with Earth. This Danny is smiley, a little bit mischievous, open and caring to a fault. We see him reveling in what he does best: using his skills, kicking some butt, being the best there is at what he does (sorry, Wolverine). In Iron Fist season 2, we also see Danny connecting with his Iron Fist identity, really connecting with the chi of Shou-Lao for the first time in a way that makes him feel empowered. Danny's relationship with his role as Iron Fist, and with the city of K'un-Lun, is rocky and tumultuous in the show and even moreso in the comics, but it also means everything to him and brings him comfort and pride and a sense of grounding. With Iron Fist season 2 existing alongside the Luke Cage team-up episode, we also get a great example of something that is notable in the comics as well, which is a distinction between the way Danny is written in his solo series versus in team books, particularly in the modern era. In team-ups and cameo appearances, he tends to be comic relief, a bit more lighthearted, a bit goofier, while in his solo stories, faced with problems that are personal and strike deep, and where we are closer to his POV, he tends toward being more introspective, serious, troubled. This is to be expected, but is still worth noting in all discussions of Danny's personality. He exists on a spectrum, just like any other character.

This post is so long, and it feels like there are still a million more things to say. But I will, I think, end it by emphasizing that one of my favorite things about Danny is the breadth and depth of his personality, and one of my greatest joys regarding the Netflix shows was seeing a character I adore explored further, in a new medium and a different context, while still aligning with the same basic set of recognizable personality traits. Danny Rand is a hardcore, deadly martial artist who wields immense power and a soft, kind sweetheart who loves his friends and would do anything for them, or for anyone else for that matter. He killed a dragon with his bare hands, and he's so, so bad at business. He's straightforward and confident-- he's one of the best fighters in the entire Marvel Universe and he knows it, not as a boast but simply as a fact. He's a tangled, self-questioning mess, trying to find his way as an Immortal Weapon in the Capital Cities of Heaven and as a superhero on Earth and frequently failing. He's honest and sincere. He's a bit awkward. He's curious, a lifelong student (as all the best martial artists are). He's fearless. He's a huge dork. He transformed a skyscraper into a giant chi-powered mech to punch a god one time. He got his identity stolen by a sentient plant one time. He teaches little kids kung fu, and is an eager mentor to his protégé Pei and a kickass uncle to Luke and Jessica's daughter, who they named after him. He's a philanthropist and a Hero for Hire, and Rolling Stone named him the 77th Hottest Avenger. And while we were unfairly robbed of the time to explore every facet of MCU Danny's character, we were nevertheless gifted a wonderful range of stories and a powerful character arc (Shou-Lao willing, someday the MCU decision-makers will take their eyes off Charlie Cox long enough to remember that the other Netflix Marvel shows also exist and we'll get to see more of this version of Danny). And my hope for people writing Danny into their fan fics is just to remember his complexity, to keep in mind the forces that shaped him, and to have fun with how multifaceted and strange and unique a character he is. And if you or anyone else is ever looking for an Iron Fist nut to chat with, I'm always up for, um...writing extremely long posts about my guy.

Thank you for the question!

#Long post #pomegranate-belle #This post is a complete mess but I hope I answered your question!#Just....DANNY RAND *gestures emphatically*#MCU #Iron Fist #Danny Rand #Messages #Commentary #Adventures in Continuity

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