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Plunging his fists into the molten heart of Shou-Lao the Undying gave Rand the power of the Iron Fist, allowing him to focus his chi and enhance his natural abilities to extraordinary levels. Through concentration, Iron Fist can harness his spiritual energy, or chi, to augment his physical and mental capabilities to peak human levels. The Iron Fist grants Danny with many abilities that he has possibly not yet learned.

Typically, Iron Fist possesses the normal physical strength of a man of his particular age, height, and build that engages in intense regular exercise. Ordinarily, he can lift about 300 lbs. While not superhuman, he can be almost as strong as it is possible for a human to be without being classified as superhuman. He can lift about 750 lbs with supreme effort.

Iron Fist is capable of running and moving at speeds greater than even the finest Olympic sprinter. He can reach a top speed of about 35 miles per hour. His musculature is enhanced to generate less fatigue toxins than the musculature of most human beings. He can exert himself physically at peak capacity for about one hour before fatigue begins to impair him. His natural agility, balance, reaction time, and bodily coordination are superior to those of any Olympic athlete that has ever competed.

The tissues of Iron Fist's body are harder than those of most humans. While he is still vulnerable to physical injury, his ability to withstand physical trauma is superior to that of most other humans. If he sustains injury or illness, Iron Fist can focus his chi for the purposes of healing the damage more efficiently than most humans are capable of. He is also capable of channeling this energy into other people, allowing them to heal with more efficiency as well.

By summoning his chi and focusing it into his hand, he can draw upon the superhuman energy derived from the heart of the mystic serpent Shou-Lao and make his fist inhumanly powerful and superhumanly resistant to injury and pain. This "iron fist" technique does not involve a physical transformation of any kind, simply a psychic channeling of concentrated natural energy. With his fist in this state, Iron Fist can shatter wood and brick, deform steel, and punch his opponents with extraordinary concussive force without sustaining injury to himself. The act of summoning and using his chi for the iron fist technique mentally drains him afterward, and it can take him any period up to an entire day to recover before he can use it again.

Iron Fist can use his power temporarily fuse his consciousness with another person, resulting in a sharing of knowledge, emotions, and memories. At times, he has absorbed energy directed at himself and channeled it to augment his own power. Under certain circumstances, he can even focus his chi to create nexus points between dimensions. He has unusually keen eyesight, but it is unclear if it extends to superhuman level.

His entire body is oriented to combat, enabling him to adapt to any environment with minimal exposure. Iron Fist is an exceptional athlete, acrobat, and hand-to-hand combatant. He is a master of all of K'un-Lun's martial arts and many of Earth's, trained in the use of virtually all martial arts weapons. He has near-complete control over his nervous system, enabling him to deaden himself to pain.

Comic History

Daniel Rand was the son of businessman Wendell Rand, who had once lived in the fabled city of K'un-L'un, which exists in an other dimensional realm. Wendell Rand-K'ai, as he was known there was the eldest son and heir of Lord Tuan, who ruled K'un-L'un, in the guise of the August Personage in Jade. However, Wendell was driven from K'un-L'un by his brother, who not only wanted to rule K'un-L'un himself, but who was Wendell's rival for the love of a woman named Shakirah. It was Wendell that Shakirah chose, and she bore him a daughter, Miranda. Wendell found refuge on Earth and became a successful businessman in the United States. In his absence, Tuan died and Wendell's brother succeeded him as Yu-Ti, the August Personage in Jade. Wendell married a woman named Heather, who bore him a son, Daniel.

Wendell sought to return to K'un-L'un, which ordinarily was only accessible from Earth through an interdimensional nexus that opened once every ten years. When Daniel was nine, his father traveled to Tibet along with Heather and his business partner Harold Meachum in search of the nexus to K'un-L'un. Toppling off a treacherous mountain passage, Daniel dragged his mother and father over the ice shelf with him. While he and his mother landed on a ledge below, his father dangled over the sheer drop of the mountainside and called to his partner for help. Hoping to take over Rand's share of the business, Meachum instead caused him to lose his grip and plunge to his death. Though Meachum offered to help Heather Rand and her son, they spurned him. Attempting to make it back to camp on their own, Heather and her son spied a long suspension bridge as a pack of wolves attacked. Heather tried to hold them off long enough for her son to get to safety and was killed in the effort.

Soon thereafter, denizens of K'un-L'un found the boy and took him to their city. There Daniel was brought before Yu-Ti, who had secretly plotted the murder of both Wendell and Heather. Yu-Ti apprenticed Daniel to the martial arts master Lei Kung the Thunderer.

Rand's training under Lei Kung was rigorous. At age sixteen Rand earned the Crown of Fu-Hsi, king of the vipers, vanquished four foes in the ritualistic Challenge of the Many, and defeated Shu-Hu, a mechanical being whose name means "Lightning." Rand diligently conditioned his hands by thrusting them into tubs of hot sand, then gravel, and finally rock.

At age nineteen Rand was given the opportunity to gain the power of the Iron Fist. He was sent to battle the enormous fire-breathing serpent called Shou-Lao the Undying which lived in a cave outside the city and which ferociously guarded a brazier containing its heart, which had mystically been removed from its body. In their battle Rand grabbed the serpent's body, which bore a scar which imprinted itself upon Rand's chest. Killing the serpent, Rand plunged his hands into the now unguarded brazier containing Shou-Lao's molten heart when he was through his hands shone with a quasi-mystical force and he earned the title "Iron Fist," for he could now summon superhuman energy to reinforce the power of blows struck by his hands.

Declining to stay in K'un-L'un eternally, Rand returned to America when the nexus reopened in order to take vengeance on Meachum for his father’s death. While recovering from severe frostbite in the Himalayas, Meachum learned of Rand's training at K'un-L'un, and returned to America as an invalid to await Rand. Clad in the ceremonial garb of Iron Fist, Rand finally confronted Meachum but took pity on the invalid and spared him. Minutes later, however, a mysterious ninja murdered Meachum. Blamed for the murder, Iron Fist undertook the mission of finding the ninja and clearing his own name. Eventually Iron Fist succeeded in both tasks.

Iron Fist was befriended by Professor Lee Wing and his daughter Colleen, a private investigator. Eventually Daniel Rand became the lover of her partner; Misty Knight. Although Harold Meachum's daughter Joy and brother Ward long mistakenly sought vengeance on Iron Fist for Harold's death, Daniel finally made peace with Joy Meachum. Daniel claimed his inheritance as a full partner in Rand-Meachum, Inc., thus becoming a millionaire.

However, Rand allowed Joy Meachum to manage the business. His activities as Iron Fist had led him to become a crimefighter, and eventually he chose to devote his time to acting as the partner of Luke Cage, alias Power Man, in their firm Heroes for Hire, Inc. Through this firm Cage and Rand accepted jobs as special bodyguards or detectives.

One day Iron Fist used his superhuman healing power to try to cure a young boy named Bobby Wright of his terminal disease. The disease was a side effect of the exposure to radiation that enabled Wright to transform himself into an adult superhuman being who called himself Captain Hero. Iron Fist went into a trance outside Wright's hospital room in an attempt to rest after the effort of trying to heal him. In another attempt to help Wright, duplicates of Kree "nega-bands" were placed on his wrists. As a result Wright suffered intense pain. Transforming into Captain Hero, he struck Iron Fist repeatedly, desperately trying to bring him out of his trance. Misjudging his superhuman strength, Captain Hero instead seemingly killed Iron Fist before disappearing himself.

That had not been Danny Rand, however. During an earlier return visit to K'un-L'un, however, Rand was exposed to deadly radiation and was diagnosed with cancer. Almost immediately after, he was kidnapped by the H'ylthri, ancient alien enemies of K'un-L'un who planned an invasion of Earth. A plant-matter clone of Rand briefly took his place in the real world, unknown to his friends. When the clone was killed by Captain Hero, Luke Cage was blamed for the murder. Cage was soon exonerated, but their hero-for-hire business was effectively dismantled.

Some time after this, the alien Super-Skrull (who was actually Bobby Wright and Captain Hero, brainwashed into the role by one of Danny enemies) duplicated Rand's likeness, fully assuming his identity in order to use the Rand Corporation and gain economic control of the Antarctic paradise known as the Savage Land. This conflicted with the plans of another company, Oracle Inc., owned by Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner. Namor, Namorita, and Misty Knight confronted Super-Skrull, who, his plans ruined, abandoned Rand's identity and fled. The assembled heroes set out on a search for the real Danny Rand, eventually freeing him from the H'ylthri with the help of Namor and the sorcerer Dr. Strange. Rand had found himself cured of his cancer due to his chi meditations when in stasis with the H'ylthri.

Following the seeming deaths of most of Earth's heroes at the hands of the sentient psionic menace known as Onslaught, the duo decided to expand the membership of Heroes for Hire. The agency merged with Oracle Inc. - the corporation owned by Prince Namor, the Atlantean Sub-Mariner - to protect the world from danger, for a price. The original Human Torch, Jim Hammond, lined up the jobs; Iron Fist acted as field commander.

Mansion Canon

This incarnation of Heroes For Hire eventually disbanded, but Iron Fist remains a part-time hero, aiding other heroes when needed.

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