When Marvel Claimed They Didn't Release a Magazine Because It Was Terrible by Brian Cronin

When Marvel Claimed They Didn’t Release a Magazine Because It Was Terrible –

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventy-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

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Marvel claimed that they didn’t release a much-hyped Iron Fist magazine because the version they would have released was “terrible.”

True

In early 1974, Marvel debuted a brand-new character called Iron Fist, created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane. The character soon guest starred in Marvel’s Kung-Fu Special, part of Marvel’s then fairly new black and white magazine line…

In the fourth issue of Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #4, the title announced that Iron Fist would soon have his own black and white magazine…

There was an ad at the back of the magazine explaining that the new black and white Iron Fist magazine would be out in September 1974…

In the next issue, they announced that it would be pushed back to November to give them time to perfect the story…

In the next issue, Iron Fist Magazine #1 was even listed in the books coming out…

And there was another big ad for it…

However, it never came out. David Kraft explained to Daniel DeAngelo in TwoMorrows’ Back Issue #105 that the Iron Fist was pushed on editorial by Marvel’s business offices on the ninth floor, “Ninth would…add new titles without forewarning us. During that run of Deadly Hands, when the Marvel magazines were at their apex, they would send down memos from Ninth and just suddenly add stuff. One time, they added an Iron Fist B&W magazine, and it was already late before it was put on the schedule. Tony Isabella did a plot for it and I had to script it over a weekend, and then they canceled it before it came out! “

Yep, in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #9, suddenly it revealed that what WOULD have been released as Iron Fist #1 would instead come out as Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu #10…

It was a cool issue, with a nice three-part story by Tony Isabella, Kraft and Doug Moench and art by Frank McLaughlin, Don Perlin and Rudy Nebres.

Iron Fist would return to Deadly Hands of Kung Fu…

and eventually get his own feature (by Chris Claeremont) in the series…

Well, some Marvel fans complained that Marvel’s expanding to the black and white magazine line of comics spread the company thin. A fan made that argument in the letter column to 1975’s Ka-Zar #9 and the response (presumably by Len Wein, then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel’s color comics, with his friend Marv Wolfman Editor-in-Chief of the black and white magazine comics – in 1975, Wein resigned to concentrate on writing and Wolfman took over both jobs) claimed that Marvel was still very intent on quality control, with the example being that they did not release Iron Fist Magazine #1 because the first issue would have been “terrible”…

I’m sure Wein (or whoever wrote it) was exaggerating (although, as Kraft noted, the book was behind schedule as it was announced, so maybe there were issues putting it together), but it’s still shocking to see a comment like that appear in a Marvel letter column about a Marvel comic!

Thanks to David Kraft and the late Daniel DeAngelo for the information!

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This story was originally featured at https://www.cbr.com/marvel-claimed-magazine-terrible-iron-fist/