what do you think of an asian danny (comics) ? i know we have pei (whom i adore) but how do you think danny as a character would change? (personally i feel like danny would feel less isolated in kun lun, maybe only dimensional differences, but would face more racism back in america. i think white danny is a better concept, to be torn in half between your nature(america) vs nurture(kun lun) yknow)
Hihi! Thank you for asking!
A few key points, just to start off:
I am not Asian myself, therefore I feel like my opinion on this topic doesn't really matter. (I also don't work for Marvel, so my opinion really doesn't matter.)
At the end of the day, this conversation comes down to the desire for more and better Asian representation across the Marvel Universe, which is obviously something we should all want.
Okay, now, on to the in-universe, Danny-specific stuff:
I would be perfectly happy with an Asian Danny, and I understand the arguments for making that change. I don't personally feel like it's a necessary change in this case, but I do get it, and I do think that the introduction of the Iron Fist legacy was very important; back when he was the first and only person to have defeated Shou-Lao, it was certainly much more uncomfortable that he was an outsider. (I will also point out that the feeling of being pulled in two directions--America and K'un-Lun--is something that he would still experience if he were Asian. Probably even moreso due, as you mentioned, to anti-Asian racism and anti-immigrant sentiments in the US.)
For me, the question is more about whether Danny should be of K'un-Lun descent specifically. Just making him Asian wouldn't make him not an outsider there, and that was the main cause of his alienation as a child. The thing that baffled me about Lin Lie being chosen as the next Iron Fist to presumably "fix" the "problem" of Danny's non-native status was that Lin isn't from K'un-Lun either. He's just as much of an outworlder as Danny, and at least Danny grew up in the city and had family there. (And obviously, that's not even touching on the fact that we already had Pei, who was born K'un-Lun.)
Tucos: "You dare aspire to join the ranks of the immortals of K'un-Lun--!?!"
Danny: "I dare nothing, Tucos--I merely am. If I am Iron Fist, it is because the gods--thru Yu-Ti--will it so...and if I become an immortal--it is because they will that as well!"
Merrin: "Is that so, outworlder--? How pleasant to see an Earther mortal adopt our ways so...fervently."
Iron Fist vol. 1 #2 by Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Michele W., F. Chiarmonte, and Joe Rosen
Kheng: "Stupid orphan couldn't stop a bunch of dogs from turning his mother into breakfast...how were you ever going to face an immortal?"
Iron Fist: The Living Weapon #3 by Kaare Kyle Andrews and Joe Caramagna
Yang Yi: "The next Iron Fist should have been one of us. Any of us--even Mei Min. It should have been me."
Lin: "I--I didn't call Shou-Lao to me on purpose."
Yang Yi: "That's even worse! You stole something that belongs to K'un-Lun and you don't even know its worth. The last Iron Fist was an outsider. So was the one before him. Special enough that the dragon chose them...or callous enough to rip its heart out without respect."
Iron Fist vol. 6 #2 by Alyssa Wong, Michael Yg, Sean Chen, Victor Olazaba, and Jay David Ramos
If Danny had been Asian but not from K'un-Lun, the bullying might have focused less on his appearance (he gets called "Snow Pea" and "Snowflake" in Living Weapon), but he still would have been an outsider, an Earther mortal freak, and his bullies would still have been angry that he became the Iron Fist instead of them. If Danny had been of K'un-Lun descent...honestly, I still think he would have struggled to fit in, since he wasn't raised in the culture. Wendell as we know him didn't teach Danny anything about K'un-Lun, and unless we considered the idea of changing Wendell's personality or past experiences, I can imagine that would still be the case if he had blood ties to the city. It would still have been something Wendell spent most of Danny's life trying to put behind him, and Danny would still have been arriving massively traumatized, and even with the knowledge that his ancestors had been from K'un-Lun, I'm not sure how much that would have fixed for him, or for his peers' perception of him. This is a dimension that is extremely difficult to access, and thus a very insular society. They don't get a lot of outworlders, regardless of their race or ancestry.
For the record, it would be easy to give Danny blood ties to K'un-Lun without changing a single thing about his backstory, due to the simple fact that we have no idea where Wendell came from. He was just some random orphan Orson stumbled upon in the Himalayas. It would be very easy for a writer to do a story arc in which Danny found out that his father (possibly even unbeknownst to Wendell) was born in K'un-Lun. Rather than retconning Danny's backstory to make him aware of this from the beginning, I feel like it would be a more interesting approach to have Danny discover a blood connection later on, in the present day. I am always a big fan of explorations of Danny's relationship to K'un-Lun, and this would certainly present new territory in that regard.
Ultimately, though, I agree with you in that I don't feel like this change is needed, or even that it would change much about Danny's character or journey (which I suppose could be an argument either for or against). He would still be that same guy caught between two worlds and not fully at home in either. My personal feeling is that I would rather see characters like Colleen Wing, Pei, Sparrow, Miranda...heck, even Steel Serpent...given more of a spotlight. As I mentioned at the top, what's most important is having strong Asian representation throughout the Marvel Universe, and there are a ton of fantastic, under-used Asian characters within the Iron Fist sphere who I hate to see buried under ongoing debates about this one guy's ethnicity, especially when those debates too often seem to contain incorrect information from people who haven't actually read many of the comics.
Again, thanks for the question! Obviously, this is a very layered and sensitive topic, and having lived through the heated conversations surrounding the Netflix show, it's something that is always on my mind.
