Luke Cage – Badass

Luke Cage. Power Man. Hero for Hire. He has a long history and some major baggage, but damn it all if he isn’t the single most fearsome, badass super-hero ever. I can prove it.

First off, for those of you who don’t know Cage, let me give you some quick background info – the inside scoop, as it were. Here is a man, a black man, who was wrongly imprisoned for murder. He underwent a special scientific technique to cut his jail time, and that same shit gave him super powers.

What powers, you ask? Why, Luke Cage’s skin was suddenly so hard it couldn’t be broken, and he could lift hundreds of pounds. Plus his mass seemed to grow; he suddenly weighed about 300 pounds, making him difficult to throw. Truly, he was… Power Man!

So he did what any one of us would’ve done: he put on a bright yellow shirt open to the waist and tucked into skin-tight blue pants, added a chain belt and some silver bracelets very much like Wonder Woman’s, completed the outfit with a silver tiara, and he fought crime.

…. All right, maybe it’s what someone else would’ve done. Really, Cage, a tiara? Well. It was the 70s.

Cage became the “hero for hire,” a super-hero who would help you out… for a price. While it wasn’t exactly selfless, he did have to eat, and it’s hard for a brother to get some food while wearing a tiara and three-inch-wide silver bracelets.

Cage, as everyone really calls him, doesn’t sound too badass yet, I know. In fact, he sounds rather… well… Broadway musical right now. Hold on, though, and I’ll explain!

In Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #8, Cage finds himself fighting some bad guys who turn out to be robots. Happens all the time – really, you’d be surprised. Anyway, he fights the robots that were pretending to be black men and then finds out he was hired to do this by none other than Doctor Doom. No, seriously.

I’ll let Doom’s dialogue explain: “You are here because you have discovered that my enemies are robots. But Doctor Doom has long used robots! What seems fantastic to you is commonplace to me… and since becoming a hero for hire was your choice, your surprise at the bizarre is truly comedic!”

Cage asks him “Just why did you hire me, Doom?” It’s a question everyone wanted to know, but the answer… well, that’s where it gets good.

“Because my robots, when they turned upon me and fled to America, disguised themselves as black men. Latveria is European, Mr. Cage – I have no black subjects, and sad to say – no one ever immigrates to my land. Thus, in order to pursue them unobtrusively – for I am not welcome in the United States – I needed a black, and I needed to hire him. Enter, Luke Cage.”

Does Doom sound a little bit squirrelly to anyone else right about then? The over explaining, the whole black angle – Doom has issues. Still, Luke Cage is for hire, and so he does as Doom asks. But when he goes to get his money, Doom stiffs him!

So in the next issue (#9, keep up), Cage invades the headquarters of the Fantastic Four. He wants to borrow a rocket, you see, because – I can only assume – Delta doesn’t fly to Latveria. Mr. Fantastic gives him the use of a rocket – wait a second. He what?

No, really, he lets Cage, a stranger, borrow a damned rocket to fly off and get his $200 from Doom. Was Mr. Fantastic fucking with Cage, or was he fucking with Doom? I assume there is a lost scene somewhere that shows the Fantastic Four after Cage leaves, all doubled over in laughter and holding their sides as they picture Cage crashing a rocket into a mountain and whining about his $200. I can see it now….

Mr. Fantastic: So then I let him take the rocket!

Thing: You WHAT?

Mr. F: No, think about it, he has a tiara on for God’s sake. How much trouble could he cause? Still, the look on Doom’s face…

Thing: Oh, shit! That’s great!

Human Torch: I have a tiara and open yellow tucked-in shirt! Fear me! Bwah-Ha-Ha!

Invisible Girl: …. (She wasn’t allowed to talk much in the 70s.)

Where were we? Right, right! Cage. Rocket ship. Latveria. $200.

Cage crashes into Doom’s castle and fights his way to the man himself, whereupon he demands his money as only Luke Cage would.

Then we get an epic fight scene, the length of which is staggering considering that no one cared. There’s another bad guy, and Cage saves Doom and the other guy leaves, and… I don’t care. You don’t care. Cage only kinda cares. Mr. Fantastic is still giggling.

Regardless, when the dust settles (or clears, or whatever it is that comic book writers had dust do in the 70s), Doom is impressed. He respects that Cage is… uhhh… batshit nuts?

So he gives Cage the $200, and Cage just leaves.

That’s it! Luke Cage, badass to the stars, invades a country ruled by a supervillan just to get $200, and he gets it! He doesn’t bring Doom in for his crimes, he doesn’t rough him up for the hell of it, he just gets his cash and goes home.

You have to be pretty fucking badass to pull that shit off.