CoC Week: Luke Cage

[cyberghostface]

"I start to develop Jessica Jones and asking the simplest questions about her world: Okay, she's not a super hero anymore. She's down here on the street. Who would she know? Who would she bump into? And Luke Cage popped to the top of the list. With Luke Cage I set up a situation where they're both kind of not at their best place emotionally and using each other. With that came a lot of exploration of his character. So I started really finding the inner nobility of his character, kind of scraping off all the blaxploitation elements that were being used by other writers—even in the late nineties he was still saying, 'Funky Honky' and stuff like that!

"It was time for the character to evolve past his roots without losing the thing that makes him special. [Then] I got the job to take over Avengers and really overhaul it, with what I had sold as 'the coolest characters in the Marvel Universe,' which includes Spider-Man and Wolverine. At the time I slipped Luke Cage in there. I remember I asked if it was okay if Luke Cage and Spider-Woman were on the team. Our publisher said, 'You said Spider-Man and Wolverine?' I go, 'Yep.' He said, 'As long as I see Spider-Man and Wolverine are there, you can do whatever you want.'

"Then I realized that I'm maybe the only person right now who thinks Luke Cage is the coolest person in the Marvel Universe, and it was my job inside the pages of New Avengers to prove my point—between the more intimate look of this character in Jessica Jones and the proactive superhero that [he would be as an Avenger],he could become someone with a different point of view than the other heroes on the team. I made it my doctoral thesis to tell the public why Luke Cage is the coolest." -- Brian Michael Bendis

I figured I'd post one of Bendis's issues for Luke Cage and decided on New Avengers #22 which is in my opinion one of the best issues on the title. It took place during the Civil War event.















And at this point Luke escapes with Captain America and his team.

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

"Let's turn Tony Stark into a fascist because George W. Bush."

And yet... It has been done before. J. Jonah Jameson was originally a stand-in for William Randolph Hearst, somehow.

[cyberghostface]

Stan Lee said Jonah was based off a grumpier version of himself. Ditko even modeled Jonah’s hair after Lee at the time.

[starwolf_oakley]

I've heard that Stan Lee expy as well. I thought there was also some stuff about "the perils of yellow journalism."

[speedingtortoise]

This was an amazing scene, definitely a highlight of the whole event to me.

[filthysize]

I do think this was one of the best New Avengers issues. I love the ending with Jessica in Canada watching Luke escape with Cap on the news going "Okay. Now we're talking." Touching and exciting at the same time.

I don't always love Bendis' take on Cage, but he definitely succeeded in selling Cage to the Marvel A-List.

[beyondthefringe]

I can never forget that Bendis loves the Luke Cage/Jessica Jones pairing so much, he wrote an anal sex scene for the two of them in the Alias series.

Now look at them, all married and responsible and stuff.

[gnarll]

The things invulnerable people get up to.

[bravest_spinja]

Well, I suppose young Nicky Coppola would also agree with you.

[scorntx]

(... hold on, isn't Gabriel Jones supposed to be black?
Cuz, uh... unless there's more'n one Gabe Jones in SHIELD, he's looking very white there...
And given the previous issue had SHIELD send Dum-Dum after Cap, pretty sure it was meant to be The Gabe Jones.
Unless it's a lying scumbag pretending to be Gabe, because that's how SHIELD tends to roll those days...)


Reading that interview smack-talk...
Bendis trying to put Luke Cage everywhere, make readers like him and make him super-important...
Isn't that basically what he tried to do with The Hood? And the Sentry? And Spider-Woman?
... suppose sooner or later it had to work for one of them.
(Maybe because it's less obnoxious when it's Luke Cage rather than the Hood?)


Ah, Civil War Tony.
Remember there was a whole one-shot (written, funnily enough, by Bendis) where he explained to Cap's corpse that he was trying to make the most of a bad situation because the US government just wanted to send wave after wave of Sentinels at the heroes.
He really is just the worst at explaining stuff.
... though it doesn't help when you've got writers also having Tony say stuff like "naw, dawg, I didn't do anything wrong, and I'd do it all over again."

(Also kind of weird that Bendis wrote Carol as being the Good Cop, or at least Mildly Sympathetic Cop, then later went on to do what he did with Civil War II: The Quickening.)

also also, knowing that Daredevil is actually Iron Fist is funny.
Did SHIELD really think Danny wouldn't show up to help Luke?
They really are stupid...

[cyberghostface]

The Gabe Jones bit is a coloring error which happens from time to time. He’s drawn as his original self with the hairdo.