Luke Cage, Hero for Hire

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Cage has a steel-hard skin, backed by inhumanly dense and powerful muscle and surface tissues. He’s also real big and athletic, sporting an impressive musculature.

Luke Cage can punch through concrete walls, or take pistol bullets at close range without more than a vague bruise. He is generally immune to street weaponry, being run over by cars, and the like.

Even a grenade in his immediate vicinity is unlikely to achieve much. Still, the blast, flash, dirt, etc. may dazzle him for a few seconds.

An ordinary blowtorch isn’t likely to burn him, unless it’s high-powered and firmly applied to the same spot for a while. Cage can stand in the harshest New York winter in just his disco shirt without discomfort.

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Bulletproof love

It is quite frequent for clubs, knives, fists, etc. to shatter when they hit Cage. See the “Steel-hard skin” section in the game stats for a technical discussion of this.

Early Cage is a very athletic hero and an adequate acrobat. His main drawback in that regard is his weight — a solid 300 lbs. This limits the surfaces he can land on, and mid-air trajectory corrections are difficult.

Luke Cage occasionally does things like jumping from rooftop to rooftop if said rooftops are tough enough. Perhaps this is because the standard for urban heroes back then had been defined by acrobats such as Daredevil or Spider-Man. He repeatedly perform impressive jumps, and at one point jumps across an entire avenue.

Cage appears to have some basic training in first aid, possesses an excellent deductive intelligence (though he’s not a trained detective), and thinks on his feet. He knows a lot of people throughout New York City, provided they have something of a street background and/or are from Harlem. They generally respect him enough to help.

As he gains experience with his “hero for hire” business, he acquires genuine detection skills. This is especially true when it comes to legwork.

History

The man who would later be known as Luke Cage grew up in the streets of Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s. That was before the great Civil Rights victories. It also was well before the gentrification, when the neighbourhood was another planet compared to the White areas. And not a nice one, either – those were out-and-out slums.

To survive, and without apparent support from relatives, the kid teamed up with one Willis Stryker. The two boys grew up committing numerous petty crimes and thefts to subsist. As teenagers they graduated into heavier crime, including mugging and racket.

They spent almost every moment of their life running from something, but their friendship seemed indestructible despite the hardships.

The Harlem Rivals set

Though as brats they were just a duo, they eventually joined a major street gang. Back then those still ran the turf. Later depictions of Cage state that they joined the Bloods , though historically the Bloods didn’t exist back then, even in L.A..

A possible explanation is that Lucas and Stryker joined a street gang that would much later join the United Bloods Nation. The UBN appeared in New York City as a prison gang in 1993. As another hypothesis, the gang Cage and Stryker joined early on may have been coincidentally called the Bloods before the UBN was founded.

As they became young men, they also became gang leaders. Stryker and Lucas were renowned for their street-fightning skills. Stryker was a master knife fighter. And Lucas, built like a Mack truck, being a formidable bare knuckles fighter.

Cage was also depicted as a member of a four-man elite set called the Rivals or the Harlem Rivals. The Rivals were Cage, Stryker, Shades and Comanche, though this is a 2010 retcon .

A possible hypothesis is that this quartet left their old street gang to start working for more established mobs. Perhaps they were attempting to prove their worth as contractors to major Harlem mobsters such as Stoneface.

End of a friendship

In his late teens, Lucas became fed up with the Harlem street gangs. He mostly stepped out of the scene. Stryker, on the other hand, rose fast. He did succeed in getting attention from established mobsters.

Things got worse when they noticed the foxy Reva Connors walking by. Both Lucas and Stryker vied for her attention, but Stryker had more bread to take her out. As a result, Lucas eventually bowed out.

One evening, made men ambushed Stryker while he was on a date with Connors. Willis wasn’t packing one of his blades, and they mauled him.

Reva managed to run and call on young Mr. Lucas for help. Lucas charged in to defend the man who had been closer than a brother for most of his life. He soundly beat up the wise guys.

Stryker was enraged, venomously accusing Lucas of being behind the assault so as to pry Connors away from him. Staggered by Stryker’s hateful rant, both Lucas and Connors left.

Reva, who had grown disenchanted over Stryker’s increasingly edgy and violent behaviour, grew closer to Lucas. They eventually started considering marriage.

Conspiracy of one

Fuming with bitterness and anger over this perceived treason, Stryker framed Lucas. He planted a large stash of narcotics in Lucas’ apartment and calling the police. Lucas swiftly went up the river.

Stryker then strung Connors along, falsely claiming that he knew guys who could get Lucas free.

Stryker had continued to degenerate into a mad dog. By then was stealing and reselling batches of narcotics, including dope belonging to Cornell Cottonmouth’s horse-selling ring.

As a result, contracts were launched over Stryker’s head. While Connors was riding in Stryker’s car, they came under heavy gunfire. Reva was killed and the car crashed in the river. But Willis managed to get out of the wreck without a wound on his body.

Jailhouse rock

Meanwhile Lucas had ended up in Seagate (aka “Little Alcatraz”), in the South-Eastern US. This was the first time he ever left New York City. The place was hellish, and doubly so for Black prisoners given the fervid racism of the corrections officers.

Lucas never backed down as a matter of principle. And he was uninterested in joining any gang or clique. Predictably, he got into an awful lot of trouble. That included attempted escapes and too many brawls to count – the later generally not ending well for the opposing parties.

In early 1972, though, two good things happened.

The first was the arrival of a new warden, a liberal named Stuart. He put a screeching halt to the rampant corruption, prisoner abuse, racism and unbridled violence that was the norm at Seagate. As a result the head guard, Captain Rackham, got into hot water.

Then, Stuart caught two guards beating Lucas in his cell on Rackham’s orders. He stripped Rackham of his rank on the spot. Since he could do little against Stuart, Rackham blamed Lucas for his misfortune.

The experiment

Shortly after Stuart’s arrival, Dr. Noah Burstein received authorisation to recruit prisoners for medical experiments. Volunteers would receive extra consideration from the parole board. Burstein carefully reviewed the prisoners, since he was looking for men in exceptionally good health to minimise risks.

Lucas definitely fit that description. The two men became unlikely friends – even though Lucas initially refused to participate in Burstein’s procedures. But Rackham soon came to threaten Lucas in his cell. The con realised that his situation was untenable. Thus, Lucas volunteered for the experiment after all, since that was his only way out.

Burstein was working off a research grant from Stark Industries. He had developed an electro-biochemical bath that greatly stimulated human cell regeneration. Potentially, his invention could counter the damage from almost any disease and perhaps even ageing. But it was untested.

Cage stepped into the bath. Meanwhile, Burstein explained his program of short, low-powered exposures with extensive medical monitoring. However, as soon as Burstein left the room to check the sensors, Rackham came in. The guard monkeyed with the control, setting everything to maximum intensity.

Now plunged into an inferno, Lucas had to burst out of the machine. In the confusion, no one noticed he had shredded heavy machinery with his bare hands.

Qui ne s’est jamais laissé enchaîner

Lucas soon discovered that he could punch through solid stone and not even skin his knuckles. Fearing that he had killed Rackham when he burst free from the machine, he decided to breach the prison’s wall and run.

The guards opened fire. They assumed he was dead when they found Lucas’s bullet-riddled shirt. Lucas, on his end, discovered that he was bulletproof and left discreetly.

Lucas spent months walking back to the Big Apple, doing odd jobs and dodging cops. He eventually made it back there. And if he can make it there …

Within hours of being back in NYC a fateful incident took place.

Asphalt jungle

Some thug sprinted out of the dinner he had just held up, and ran straight into Lucas. The thug shot the fugitive point blank, which only resulted into being backhanded unconscious. The owner of the dinner and the patrons were enthusiastic, calling Lucas a super-hero. They spontaneously gave him a cash reward.

The flattering incident inspired Lucas, as well as providing him with some much-needed bread. By that point he already had decided to change his name, to leave his past behind. He started calling himself “Luke Cage” as a nod toward his time in prison.

He also had decided to get payback against Stryker in order to honour Reva Connors’s memory. Since he was going to mix it up with the gangs anyway and had just discovered there might be money in that, Cage came up with the “hero for hire” concept.

The costume came from a pawn shop. A stage magician with an escape artist performance had had to sell all of his stuff, which Cage bought for pennies to the dollar. Since the man had sold everything, Cage even bought a length of heavy chain that was part of the act, and turned it into an unusual belt as a symbol of his former captivity (and possibly as a political statement , given the times).

Spending the rest of his reward, Cage got a room in a fleabag hotel and printed out business cards. He then hit the street in Harlem, violently clashing with collection men and other mob types. He would then distribute his business cards (“Luke Cage, Hero for Hire”) to onlookers.

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire

His plan worked even better than he had hoped. The men he was beating up answered to the new top dog in Harlem, a man who had struggled for years to get there – Willis “Diamondback” Stryker.

Our young entrepreneur won several contracts from the locals. Many areas of New York City were back then reputed for their violence, poverty, high crime rate, urban decay and poor relationship with the NYPD, especially in the Marvel Universe. An affordable enforcer like Cage was thus a godsend.

Since he couldn’t conduct business from his squalid hotel room, Cage got himself an office.

He found something near Times Square, then the worldwide symbol of urban sleaziness and concrete jungle squalor. These were an office plus living facilities above a small theatre, the Gem, mostly showing Wild West movies. After moving in Cage became a friend of the owner’s nephew, Dave “D.W.” Griffith, a student and cinema enthusiast.

Willis down, Claire up

Cage confronted Stryker, who was waiting for him with specially tricked-out blades. Stryker was accidentally killed in the detonation of one of his weapons.

During that conflict, Cage met with an attractive sister who turned out to be a MD. As it turned out, Dr. Claire Temple was operating a storefront clinic in Harlem. And her associate was none other than Dr. Noah Burstein.

Cage feared that Burstein would expose him as escaped convict Lucas. But Burstein instead turned to him for help when Claire was kidnapped by Diamondback’s men, who had been harassing the clinic.

Burstein explained that the apparent death of Lucas during the prison experiment had convinced him to stop with his grand project. Now he just wanted to save people one by one in Harlem.

The doctor agreed not to denounce Cage to the police, as long as he did not commit criminal acts. Cage resented this compromise, as he felt that it made Burstein a sort of parole officer.

Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about ?

Having at least gained revenge for Reva Connor and himself, Cage concentrated on his hero for hire business. His friend D.W. likened Cage to a private dick in old noir movies.

After Diamondback, Cage went on to fight :

• Gideon Mace.
• The Phantom of the 42^nd Street.
• Black Mariah.
• The “Christmas Madman”.
• The Faceless One.
• Señor Suerte.
• Lionfang.
• Big Ben Donovan.
• Shades and Comanche.
• Stiletto.

In 1973, Cage worked for Doctor Doom. An undercover Latverian military officer had recruited the Hero for Hire to destroy four rogue robots that had fled Latveria.

Doom inexplicably refused to pay Cage, who went to Latveria to claim his $200. During that case Cage met the Fantastic Four for the first time. He had contacted the foursome to borrow some intercontinental transportation.

Luke Cage’s early career was followed by journalist Phil Fox. Fox wrote the Broadway beat column for the Daily Bugle and had a local TV show. Of course, Cage considered Fox a clear danger of having his past exposed. As a result, he was generally hostile toward him.

Right on

Dr. Temple also soon demonstrated an interest in Cage, though with different objectives. Early on, she was often thwarted by Cage’s busy schedule and brusque manners. Temple and Cage nevertheless started a relationship off-panel , around issue #05.

Fox ended up discovering Burstein’s prison experiment notes in a drawer that had been accidentally left unlocked. He stole those records – learning most everything about Burstein and Cage’s shady past.

That was but one of the reminders from Cage’s past that suddenly manifested. Nigh-simultaneously, Seagate convicts Shades and Comanche escaped from prison. Only Lucas had ever managed to do so before them. The pair started tracking down C.O. Rackham, the nemesis of Black prisoners at Seagate.

Rackham had been fired by the new warden after the sabotage of the Burstein experiment, and had come to New York City to look for work. Shades and Comanche hoped to find him, but as it turned out Phil Fox found Rackham first.

Revenge flick

From Fox, Rackham learned that Lucas was alive, superhuman and operating as Luke Cage. Powered by bitterness and racism, Rackham swore to destroy Cage. He started by targeting Claire Temple.

Fox and Rackham got into a fight when Rackham kidnapped Dr. Temple. Rackham semi-accidentally shot Fox dead, and the shocked Claire was accused of the murder.

Working to free Claire, Cage agreed to ally himself with Shades and Comanche. They were his only lead toward Rackham. At the end of the day Rackham was dead. A friend of Cage, Mrs. Jenks, falsely accused herself of Fox’s death as she lay dying. With her last words, she got Dr. Temple exonerated.

With both Rackham and Fox dead, Lucas’s secret was safe. For now.

Description

Cage is not drawn as huge at that point. He’s definitely a tall, big guy – but depictions of him as a towering wall of muscle will come later.

Personality

Luke Cage is a (successful) attempt at adapting silver screen blaxploitation heroes to the comic book page, within the constraints of the Comics Code Authority. Those heroes were wish-fulfilment characters for a mostly Black, mostly male, mostly young and urban, mostly working class audience. As such, they reflected their values.

Thus, Cage is a stubborn man who makes his own rules, bows to no-one and faces The Man without flinching. He’s super-manly, powerfully built, wears flashy threads and is a hit with the ladies. But at the same time he’s a class act and cool cat, and no one understands him but his woman – shut yo mouth.

This is, as usual for the genre, the story of a rough-and-tumble but good man looking for violent revenge against evil gangsters. He ain’t afraid of no man, but a part of his big heart will always belong to his tragically murdered lady love Reva.

He’s a good friend to have and a man of his word. But his trust is not easily given. He’s first and foremost a streetwise brother who don’t take crap from nobody and might let his fists do the talkin’ at any point. And, of course, he won’t ever be chained again.

Other traits

Cage is far from hip with authority figures, rich people and other fat cats. He openly resents them, and will be curt and even verbally hostile toward them. Privileged folks have to earn it if they want to hire Cage.

Appeals to his loudly-proclaimed mercenary nature are unlikely to work, even though he objectively needs the bread. On the other hand, Cage will probably end up taking a pro bono case if there is a human interest angle and he feels he’s doing the Right Thing.

He may affect a material outlook, but of course Cage secretly has a heart of gold. He thus often ends working for very little money as he discreetly gives a good part of his compensation to the victims, or just works for free.

His sense of morality is very strong, often stronger than his rational self-interest. But in DC Heroes RPG terms, there’s no point where it’s an out-of-control Irrational Attraction.

Oh stewardess ! I speak jive

The Hero for hire comic book features attempts at approximating the street lingo of the early 1970s. These… do not necessarily hit the mark. That’s in good part due to the Comics Code Authority stamp. Most of the made-up or odd slang is there in order not to print four-letter words.

(They also reflect the fact that, IIRC, everybody on the book but artist Billy Graham  was White. Mr. Englehart reported that Mr. Graham also helped with the scripts, though.)

Be sure to use the word “jive” a lot in its multiple senses. Of course you also want to say stuff like “dig”, “rapping”, “brother/sister”, “baby”, “the Man”, “the syndicate”, “jive mouth” and so on. Cage will often mockingly call his foes “darling” or “baby”.

Cage tends to get the cool, manly, witty dialogue. But these are not contemporary Spider-Man style one-liners. They’re more like good repartee and taunts, demonstrating obvious intelligence and mental agility and – again – virile but controlled renegade coolness.

Quotes

“Shades, baby, you don’t handle this demonstration any better‘n you pick sidemen… you’re gonna need more than fancy sunglasses to hide behind. Now step aside, jive-mouth !”

“Boxer I knew used to say, long as you’re standin’, you ain’t hurtin’ ! [An’] I can stand.”

(On Reva Connors’ grave, as he comes back to New York City) “I’m back, honey… after all these years. An’ I’m ready. For what happened to you, to me… there’s gonna be a vengeance. And it’s gonna be mine !”

Patrol officer: “Freeze, big man — police !”
Cage: “Yeah. Somethin’ ’bout the badges, uniforms an’ guns kinda clued me.”

“In case you didn’t hear… the name’s Cage. An’ I’m a little better at survivin’ than most cats.”

“Now we get serious, man. Tonight you made a woman a widow… robbed a child of her father. You owe, baby… owe big !”

“Baby, I ain’t never been long on understandin’… an’ any I had for you just ran out ! Time you got a little grief.”

“Mrs. Jenks, I’ll get to the bottom of this — no charge.”

Thug: “Cage you scum — you was playin’ possum !”
Cage: “Check, man. Now you get *your* chance !” (THOOM !)

“Motherless freakin’ scum ! Don’t nobody try offin’ Luke Cage and smile about it after !”

Hit man: “Blast you, Cage — we’ll be back !”
Cage: “Anytime, jivemouth — it don’t make any difference ! Luke Cage is number one !” (immediately turns toward two young women heading for his office, without a beat) “Mornin’ ladies. Can I help you ?”

“Sweet sister !”

Bad guy: “Unhand me ! I have every right—”
Cage: “You ain’t had mine yet, man !” (POW !)

(Facing Chemistro) “Who you tryin’ to jive, circles ? I heard you rappin’ — so climb off the super-villain dialogue !”

And of course : “Christmas !” and “Sweet Christmas !”, which are presumably euphemisms-for-publication for a curse about having intercourse with one’s progenitrix.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel comics.

Helper(s): Alan Wilkinson, William Chamberlin. M&M stats by Pawsplay.