Did Typhoid Mary Ever Fight Iron Fist Before the Iron Fist TV Series?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Mar 12, 2019

You have questions, CSBG has answers! Did Typhoid Mary ever fight Iron Fist before she appeared on his TV series?

Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

My buddy Jeff R. wrote in to ask, "Has Typhoid Mary ever fought Iron Fist in the comics? I can't recall it, and it's weird to pick an opponents who your lead had literally never faced off against."

Simply put, Jeff, you're right, they never faced off against each other until the Netflix series came out.

Some of that is logical enough, as Typhoid Mary did not even get introduced until the late 1980s, during a period in Marvel history where Iron Fist was believed to be dead (killed by his own partner, Luke Cage, no less!). That period in Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr's Daredevil run was really the heyday for Typhoid Mary and Iron Fist was "dead" through all of it.

When Mary made a comeback in the late 1990s, it was mostly in the pages of Joe Kelly's Deadpool (when Kelly was also writing Daredevil, which led to a really awesome Deadpool/Daredevil crossover).

The real place where Iron Fist and Typhoid Mary really could have overlapped was in the pages of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev's Daredevil. Iron Fist played a major role in that series in the plotline where Daredevil has suffered a nervous breakdown and his hero friends (including Iron Fist) have to step in and help him get the help that he needs. During that same run, Typhoid Mary attacks Daredevil when Matt is out with his then-new girlfriend, Milla Donovan. Matt has superheroes working as his bodyguards, but the problem is that the superheroes are Luke Cage and Jessica Jones WITHOUT Iron Fist, so Fist and Mary did not cross paths at this point...

Things got even crazier during the Shadowland crossover!

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Shadowland was a crossover where Daredevil takes over the Hand and then takes control of New York City and transforms it into, well, the Shadowlands. What people don't know is that Matt has actually been possessed by the Great Beast of the Hand, a demonic force, but at the time, they all think that Daredevil has just crossed the line into villainy. So naturally, his super friends all band together to stop him (at least the ones in New York City). That included Iron Fist. In Shadowlands #3 (by Andy Diggle, Billy Tan and Victor Olazaba), Iron Fist attacks Daredevil and finds Daredevil shockingly difficult to defeat...

Luckily, Spider-Man swoops in and saves Iron Fist's life...

Then Spider-Man is attacked by Typhoid Mary, who has been recruited by the evil Daredevil to serve Daredevil...

So that's pretty darn close to Iron Fist fighting Typhoid Mary, right?

However, she never actually fights him. Later in the series, she attacks the Punisher and then Spider-Man takes her out of commission, but no Iron Fist fight.

So nope, it would not be until Typhoid Fever: Iron Fist #1 (by Clay McLeod Chapman, Sefano Landini and Rachelle Rosenberg), released after the Iron Fist Netflix series Season 2, that the two fought each other for the first time...