I recently bought a copy of
Essential Luke Cage Vol 1, mainly because I had a great article about Luke Cage's debut submitted for the
GhettoManga Quarterly Luke Cage tribute issue, and I needed some scans to go with it. Not being familiar with those early Cage stories, I was surprised how good a read the book is...
I posted this sequence because the issue it comes from is a real high-water mark for the character, in a book full of what I consider great story. Not just the fact that he runs up on arguably Marvel's greatest villain, Doctor Doom, but he shows a similar lack of awe for the Fantastic Four. While respecting Reed Richard's intelligence, he talks Marvel's premier super team into lending him a super-sonic jet so he can journey to Latveria and get the $200 that Doom (his former client) owed him for services rendered.
After assisting an alien-led robot uprising and beating Doom to a standstill,
Luke manages to get the biggest tightwad on Earth to come up off the Benjamins so he can get back to the business of not getting assassinated and/or deposed by a mass of angry robots*. Then to add insult to injury, when he returns the Fantastic Four's plane, he refuses to discuss his personal business with them, and heads to the crib to clean up, giving Ben Grimm the cold shoulder when he wants details on the robot coup.
Good stuff, for sure... anyways, like I said, there will be tons of great analysis of Cage in
the new issue, which will be done soon. until then, if you see a copy of
Essential Luke Cage Vol 1
in your comic shop, I suggest you cop it! It's great to see the old-school artwork and dense writing, not only from household names like Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin and John Romita, but also lots of great work by cats I wasn't at all familiar with. Since there probably won't be room for my review of this book in
the tribute issue, I may post a few more nuggets of it here.
holla!
-samax.
*yeah, that got the robophobic tag added to the post. If Doom can't hold the machines down, who CAN?
I was cool with everything but the 200 bones. It could have AT LEAST been a G.
ReplyDeletedude... it was the 1970's... $200 for one day's work was good money.
ReplyDeletewow. Just the gas to Latveria cost more than $200 (even in the 70s). I'll bet he didn't even fill up the tank before he dropped off the FF plane. He's gonna be sorry when he needs to borrow the FF plane again to get Doom to give back the book he borrowed.
ReplyDeletec'mon, guys... you KNOW Reed Richards does not use fossil fuels! That plane was probably powered by anti-matter or something.
ReplyDeleteIronically, I was just talking to someone about this very issue. Or, to be exact, they told me about it. I didn't believe them.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the "share" button...
Serendipity, baby! share this button right under the post (beneath "Blame it on samax")
ReplyDeleteReed got a hold of Willie Nelson.
ReplyDeleteAnd true, 200 for a week was pretty decent money. I remember people would live off of 250 a week.
Yeah, f&*k that! I'd have been pissed if he beat me for 200 bones too!
ReplyDeletemike
THANK YOU! Can't let dude stiff you! It ain't show Friends, it's show BUSINESS!!!
ReplyDelete