Kaare Andrews Iron Fist and Collaborating with Us as Readers

Ever since I first picked up trade versions of Kaare Andrews’ 2014 Iron Fist: The Living Weapon run, I’ve been enthralled. Initially, the artwork and Andrews’ commentary, throughout, on whiteness and capitalism really stood out. The latter is a theme that runs through his equally amazing RenatoJones: The One% (2016). Recently, I started rereading Iron Fist, and what really grabbed me this time was the opening page, a simple opening page that just shows Danny Rand in a shirt and tie, eyes and facial features shadowed in, and snow at the bottom flashing back to him, his mother, his father, and Harold Meachum walking through the mountains in search of K’un-Lun. The background looks like faded paper that has been folded multiple times. This a technique that Andrews’ uses in the series to indicate flashbacks. Today, I want to look at this page, dissecting it and thinking about what it does rhetorically.

When we read, we engage with the text, no matter the genre. We take part, as Lillian Smith puts it, in the “collaboration of the dream,” creating the experience alongside the author. Discussing the ways that she and her childhood friend Marjorie tell and listen to stories, Smith writes about the interactions between the author and the reader. She writes, “I think I rather remembered her as collaborating, and I would say, more actively than just…