6. And Then Iron Fist At Some Point
During his early days as a freelance superhero Luke Cage often found himself teamed with Iron Fist, who is kind of the exception to the whole street level thing. Daniel "Danny" Rand was another Hero For Hire for a time, despite having a far more out-there and wacky MO, origin story and costume. Plus it wasn't really his destiny to go chasing after Doctor Doom because his cheque bounced. As Cage was created to cash in on the blaxploitation craze, Iron Fist was dreamed up because of the same era in the seventies when Bruce Lee was the world's biggest movie star, kids were buying nunchucks to play with and David Carradine was walking the Earth as Caine in Kung Fu. Iron Fist is chop-socky in the traditional, slightly problematic sense. Rand was a white dude who grew up in New York, discovered the mystical city of K'un-L'un as a young boy, and was taught a bunch of mystical martial arts. Then he came back to New York and beat everyone up.
Tom Baker
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
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