Whilst perusing CalvinPitt’s weekly comics reviews - a must-read for anyone interested in the less sucky aspects of the Q Continuum - we learned that Fortress faves Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker and a host of artists (including Russ Heath!) have produced yet another rip-roaring adventure starring Orson Randall, the Golden Age Iron Fist.
Cool beans, eh?
The Keeper considers Randall one of the greatest Golden Age ret-cons ever, but we’re more intrigued by the identity of the villain Bru-Fraction placed before the Iron Fist of Earth-2: John Aman, The Green Mist Of Death.
What’s so interesting about a pulp villain pastiche, you ask? Simply that he is based upon one of the most obscure Golden Age heroes of all - Centaur Comics’ Amazing-Man.
Centaur was the publisher that unleashed The Eye to an unsuspecting public, so a guy who can turn himself into green mist isn’t all that remarkable in the anything-goes atmosphere of those early comics.
However, the original John Aman did have two advantages over other short-lived Golden Age characters:
- He was created by the great Bill Everett, who later thought up a certain Sub-Mariner for Timely Comics.
- Roy Thomas thought the character was cool enough to incorporate parts of Amazing-Man’s origin into the back-story of a kung-fu fighter known as … Iron Fist!
Yes, the all-new John Aman is a tribute to the humble beginnings of Danny Rand himself.
Amazing-Man debuted in the fifth issue of, naturally enough, Amazing-Man Comics.
(No, we don’t know what was featured in the first through fourth issues, or if there even were four previous issues of the magazine. The Golden Age wasn’t exactly known for its four-square business practices …)
Your eyes don’t deceive you, friends. The cover does, indeed, depict the nearly naked Amazing-Man bound hand and foot while killing a snake with his teeth. Hardcore wrestling has nothing on this guy.
The story itself is no less bizarre.
A caption on the splash page tells the story of an orphan named John Aman who is raised by a secret society located somewhere in the Tibetan wilderness. Through rigorous training, the lad achieves his maximum physical and mental potential.
Before returning to the Western world, however, the now-grown Aman must survive four brutal tests to prove his worthiness.
First, he plays tug-of-war with an elephant.
Then, he battles a deadly cobra while his hands and legs are bound by chains. (Hey, a Golden Age cover that actually reflected the magazine’s contents!!!)
Then, he must survive multiple knife wounds.
And, finally, take the mother of all SAT tests. Hope Aman brought a No. 2 pencil.
So, although our hero didn’t defeat a mystical kung-fu dragon like Danny Rand, nobody could really accuse the guy of slacking …
The remainder of the adventure was devoted to a rather pedestrian criminal plot involving a crooked railroad executive. However, the denouement provided yet another nice summation of Golden Age justice …
Aman did stick around long enough to have his own arch-villain, a rogue monk from the Tibetan society known as The Great Question.
Any resemblance between the Great Question and this Iron Fist character …
… is, in all likelihood, purely intentional.
At any rate, we salute Brubaker and Fraction’s sly tribute to Iron Fist’s predecessor. Now that a “John Aman” is also officially part of the Marvel Universe, Amazing-Man also joins the ranks of Golden Age characters revived by the modern comics industry.
This is truly the Public Domain Age of Comics!!
