Luke Cage, Hero for Hire

The Greatest Black Superhero of the '70s

Perhaps not the first, but for my money the greatest black superhero of them all was LUKE CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE.

Begun by Marvel Comics in 1972, the intention was to create a “hip”, black superhero based on the popular “Shaft” movies of the time. (It was cheaper to create their own carbon copy character than to try and license the original property… just as they did when they created the character of “The Punisher”, ripping off the popular “Executioner” paperbacks.) Luke Cage had the same tough guy persona as Shaft. He worked as a sort of private investigator (albeit one with superpowers). He didn’t take any crap from anybody. He lived in a seedy downtown office/apartment upstairs from a second-rate movie theater. He didn’t generally cross paths with the regular Marvel heroes and villains (at least not at first) but instead seemed to battle a lot of gangsters and drug pushers. The writers created new villains for Cage to fight… generally African-American or Latino villains. Comics, up to this point, had barely featured people of color as anything but the most cartoonish of caricatures and the serious portrayal of darker-hued heroes and villains was a big step for comics to take.

Our hero, Lucas was a streetwise young tough guy who got framed and thrown in prison. He volunteered for a scientific experiment that could get him released sooner. A jealous and sadistic guard sabotages the experiment and Cage suddenly gains super strength and steel-hard skin. Cage slaps the guard, not realizing the extent of his new powers, and almost kills him. Knowing that this does not bode well for his early release, Cage uses his fists to knock a hole in the prison wall and escapes. He heads for New York and adopts the name “Luke Cage, Hero For Hire”, deciding that he can make a living doing superheroic deeds for cash. Still, more often than not Cage would wind up doing his superdeeds for free… he had too much of a conscience to be a total mercenary.