Black Hero Appreciation Month: Luke Cage
When the editors at Nerd Caliber asked me to pick a hero to write about for Black History Month, my eyes immediately turned to what perhaps is the greatest street level hero in Marvel’s history. Many heroes have back stories that stem from a level of personal misfortune that often were flukes or shaped in such an extraordinary way that it helped sculpt and guide the future hero. Carl Lucas (Luke Cage’s real name before he legally changed it) grew up in Harlem, NY and his greatest dream in life was to become a well known racketeer. He ran with a gang called the Rivals and constantly battled another gang called The Diablos.
Constantly being shuffled between juvenile homes while watching his best friend Willis Stryker make his way up the criminal ladder, Luke Cage realized that if he wanted more out of life, he needed to stop being a criminal and start focusing on his future. In the end, his friend Stryker caught the tail end of a beating that almost killed him until Luke Cage’s intervention prevented it. Meanwhile, Stryker’s girlfriend had enough and left him to take solace with Luke Cage. His best friend believed that Luke Cage had been the cause of the breakup and planted heroin on Lucas, framing him and causing him to end up in prison. Believing his absentee father had died and his life in shambles, Luke Cage engaged in numerous fights and a failed prison escape until he was recruited into an experimental procedure by Dr. Burstein who used a variant of the Super Soldier serum on him.
The truth is that this was the point where Luke Cage could have been made into an angry stereotype villain who wanted to take his anger out on the man. Instead he was written as a jive talking black man who eventually teamed up with his ‘hip’ martial artist by the name of Danny Rand (Iron Fist). For the most part it was the almost typical portrayal of a black hero of the time and Marvel’s response to blacksploitation films like Shaft.
The character eventually fell into the hands of celebrated comic writer Brian Michael Bendis who opted to write the modern interpretation of Luke Cage as a strong black man whose greatest strength wasn’t his super strength but a strong core of intelligence. He became a no-nonsense, positive role model for those within his community and as a Marvel character, he was the first African American character to headline his own series. His interracial marriage to Jessica Jones followed by the birth of their bi-racial daughter led to more breaking of the traditional yet outdated sensibilities of old, and helped to usher in an era where minorities weren’t just filler for character plots or simply a side character meant to introduce that main character to the culture of the location he/she had entered (I’m looking at you Steve Rogers and the Battling Bantam).
In many of the major story events, Luke Cage often played a pivotal role in the outcome. During Civil War, he represented the side of Steve Rogers and had been directly targeted by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony Stark as one of the first meta humans to be placed under arrest for refusing to register under the Superhuman Registration Act. Putting his family first, Luke sent his wife and daughter to Canada while he remained to fight back against the increasingly fascist ideals. His commitment to being a father led him to return to his home to fetch his daughter’s ‘binky’ while knowing that he would be ambushed. His entire community supported him in his actions and often ran interference during his varied escapes which reflected how much work he had put into that community.
Throughout his entire storied history, Luke Cage has broken numerous tropes and stereotypes of what a black man is perceived to be. He is a great father, a strong pillar of the black community and often used his intelligence to defeat his opponents. His introspective and deep opinions often helped to guide and direct his peers but his honest and “matter of fact” opinions kept many of the people around him honest. I definitely look forward to the new Power Man and Iron Fist series that Marvel will be releasing in the coming months.
