Boy, that cover coloring is unfortunate. Misty looks like a hate crime. Twice! You can see in Colleen’s hair & shading that something’s just gone very wrong with brown here, in general, but what a time. Inside, she looks fine, as we’re told it’s 20 minutes later in the apartment of Colleen Wing (Last on the blog in MTU Annual 4 which happens later), where a doctor is shooing Colleen & Spider-Man out of the room to let Danny rest with his lady (We last saw Misty in that annual, also).
If we’re supposed to know Alice, I do not. Back in the room, Misty is narrating to herself about how she’s all torn up inside over a guy she thought she’d cut out of her life forever. I guess they’re on bad terms right now. I suddenly just remembered a cliffhanger ending from 2012 or something where Misty was pregnant, I think, but she never had a kid, to my knowledge? Is that true? It doesn’t matter. She recaps their history up to them breaking up only for Danny to wake up and reaffirm his love for her. Good timing, buddy. Outside, Colleen wants Spider-Man to recap last issue for her. There’s a pretty wacky bit where Colleen insists Spider-Man take his shoes off, and he instead sticks to the ceiling, and then he recaps for awhile. Misty and Colleen gear up to go looking for Steel Serpent to reverse the process and fix Danny, but Spider-Man realizes SS will be looking for Danny to finish him off. And we cut to him, doing that, while explaining his backstory for 2 pages. How he was destined to be The Iron Fist, but Danny’s dad beat him for it fair and square, so he challenged the dragon illegally and was found wanting. Then he was banished from K’un-Lun, time passed, Wendell Rand’s son became Iron Fist, etc. Not sure we really need all this. But he’s still mad at Danny’s now-dead father.
Spidey recovers and whomps SS in the face, and in his confusion, the Serpent is grabbed by Misty coming around a corner and thrown into a wall so Colleen and beat on him with her sheathed sword (Because they need him alive). Spidey worries Colleen will kill him, anyway, and jumps in, webbing the sword at the worst possible moment and messing up everything, getting Colleen punched in the face and letting Steel Serpent run for it. Good one, pal! But our hero catches up quicking, and they’re soon fighting in a nearby park.
Spidey keeps calling him “Twinkle-Teeth,” which is weird, and also “Scar-face,” though I have yet to see a scar on Davos’s face. And with a mask on, how would we?
Maybe some of that detail on the right side is a scar? Colleen gives them the usual about how Danny has to fight this fight for his honor and such. Meanwhile, the power of the Iron Fist begins to envelope The Steel Serpent, and Danny realizes it’s feeding off him due ot his lack of control.
Guess what, he’s not dead! Rrrrrrather incredibly, Claremont is telling us Misty Knight is the girl Spidey and the Torch helped way back in MTU #1. Oh, sure! Random. I wonder how much of these issues were just Iron Fist 16 & 17, retooled to become MTUs? Spider-Man’s in them a fair amount, but he mostly feels like he’s wandered into someone else’s deal. And it’s pretty wild that Davos was first really fleshed out here. It’s funny what comes out of this series. It’s largely inconsequential, but sometimes it has real impacts… say, the introduction of Karma, or Aunt May opening a boarding house. Or giving what would wind up being one of Iron Fist’s long-time foes his first adventure. Pretty cool.