This week sees the release of IMMORTAL IRON FIST: ORSON RANDALL AND THE GREEN MIST OF DEATH. In four chapters, it has art by Mitch Breitweiser, Chris Brunner, Lewis Larosa, Nick Dragotta and Mike Allred, and Russ Heath, the living legend.

The book is an Iron Fist stand-alone oneshot that fills the publishing gap in the main book's schedule, and a minor narrative gap that explains how one character became a secret good guy. It's a cul-de-sac story, it's a one-off opportunity to have some fun outside of the main book as it goes rocketing to its finish; best of all, it stars Orson Randall, the Golden Age Iron Fist.

The book is very much an homage/tribute/celebration of golden age adventure books. While writing it, I tried to get it to 40 pages, so that the first page of each chapter could be a golden age-style splash. Alas, it didn't come to be, but I had written those over-the-top splash pages anyway.

I thought I'd reprint them here since, hell, they're already written and they make *ME* laugh...

COVER ONE

SHADU: MAGICAL TALES OF MYSTERY #26

ORSON RANDALL and SHADU THE SHADY run TOWARDS CAMERA, joined by the rest of the CONFEDERATES OF THE CURIOUS, down a city block filled with abandoned, shuttered tenement slums. From out of every broken window and from under every boarded-up door creeps a sentient GREEN MIST. It reaches up from the sewers, it spills down from the rooftops. Clearly they ware being pursued by this mist. In the night sky, overhead, we see the metaphorical visage of THE PRINCE OF ORPHANS, glowering triumphantly. The panel should look like a movie poster.

LETTERING NOTE: LAY IN this text as a machine-font the way they used to in Golden Age books. Caption boxes, title design, all that.

TEXT
The Doom Prophesy of the Seven Cities comes back to haunt Orson Randall-- The Iron Fist of the Golden Age!!-- and his Confederates of the Curious! These hard time heroes are in trouble and out of luck as The Prince of Orphans hunts them all for sport!

TEXT
There is no escaping fate when...

CHAPTER TITLE
The Green Mist Murders at Midnight!

TEXT
Another pulp penny-dreadful starring:

Shadu the Shady, magical mystic!
Wendell, the Fighting Orphan!
Contessa Vidal, the Femme Fatale!
Ernst “L.P.” Erskine, the Righteous Reporter!
Barko the Dog!
And Orson Randall-- The Immortal Iron Fist!

COVER TWO

COWGIRLS AT WAR #111

Here we have a shot of ORSON RANDALL on a horse, fist ignited, leading the rest of the CONFEDERATES OF THE CURIOUS on a rush TO CAMERA. It’s a triumphant image straight out of a western comic. Sagebrush and dust get kicked up beneath the mighty hooves of all the horses. BARKO, the dog, runs ahead of the herd, as it were. In the FOREGROUND, mounted on horseback, are TWO of the COWGIRLS FROM HELL, ready for the Confederates.

The only one of the Confederates missing is CHORES.

TEXT
The Confederates of the Curious ride for one of their own! Deep in the heart of the Mexican Desert, where the only law that protects you is the law of the gun, everyone’s favorite pug-nosed plug-shaped Irishman Chores MacGillicuddy has been taken prisoner by the Cowgirls from Hell!

TEXT
But do these doyennes of the Doll Racket hide a sinister secret? Read:

CHAPTER TITLE
When the Cowgirls Captured the Confederate...!

TEXT
Starring this cavalcade of the courageous:

The Iron Fist!
Wendell, the two-fisted teenager!
Shadu the Shady, Sorcerer and Seer!
Contessa Vidal, the Blitzin’ Vixen!
Ernst “L.P.” Erskine, the Scribe of the Sensational!
And Barko the Dog!

COVER THREE

GOTHIC TERROR #244

We’re in an OLD WORLD CASTLE: stone walls, vaulted windows, lit by torches, all of it. In fact, it’s the LABORATORY of DR. FRANKENSTEIN, as imagined by Kirby. We’re angling on an OPERATING TABLE, upon which a sprawled out and bleeding WENDELL RAND lies with a stick clutched in his teeth, eyes steeled and furious, prepared for the pain to come. Above him, wearing the bloody smock of a butcher and holding a scalpel with a shaking hand that glows bright with the chi of Shou-Lao, is ORSON RANDALL, acting as ersatz surgeon.

Observing is THE YOUNG DOCTOR, a small boy with jet-black hair flopped over his forehead (make sure we DON’T SEE his forehead), sitting on the shoulder of FRANKENSTEIN, or FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER, or whatever you want to call that big neck bolt motherfucker. However you want to design the monster, go nuts, but make sure there are neck bolts, and visible stitches that hold him together. And he should look-- y’know-- Frankensteiny. The YOUNG DOCTOR is YELLING.

Through the windows outside, we see EXPLOSIONS.

ORSON
I’m having flashbacks! How can I operate on Wendell with these constant explosions?!?

YOUNG DOC
Man up, Iron Fist-- The Son of Frankenstein commands you!

YOUNG DOC
You’ll need to be in top form to save all our souls from slaughter!

TEXT
A lifetime full of tough situations has never seen one so tough as this! As Wendell clings to life by his fingernails, Orson Randall-- the Golden Age Iron Fist-- tries to keep it together in the lurid laboratory of...

TITLE
Frankenstein and Son!

COVER FOUR

HEAVY JUNGLE ACTION #1,731

We’re angling on a VERY OLD MAN laying in a hospital sickbed, a fantastic array of Steampunk Kirby machines hooked up to him. The room the bed sits in is a kind of jungle hut-- the walls and floor made of bamboo. It is a fantastic sight, to say the least. Rushing through a nearby door, heading towards the bed, is ORSON RANDALL, ERNST ERSKINE, and VIDA VIDALE. From under the bed, strange tendrils of green mist curl upwards, as though someone set off a tear-gas bomb under the bed itself.

CAP
Over the distant beating of jungle drums, the bell tolls for Phineas Randall, the father of Adventure Personified!

CAP
Even The Iron Fist is powerless to stop the tick-tock clock of Father Time’s ceaseless march to the grave-- but is The Green Mist?

CAP
Is it a mysterious medical miracle that awaits Poppa Phineas in the dark jungle of Z’Gambo, or a trap for his son? Dare you read...

TITLE
The Final Fate of Phineas Randall!