Y'all already know we love Blaxploitation era Marvel super hero LUKE CAGE (
we did a tribute issue of the magazine dedicated to him after all...). We also fux with visionary animation heavyweight Genndy Tartakovsky (
Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory). So rocking with this new miniseries
CAGE is a no-brainer...
Interestingly enough, more than generate any kind of excitement about
CAGE as an action comedy comic book (Let's face it,
Walker and Greene got that covered on Cage and Fist),
what this preview really does is get me fired up at the prospect of a Hero for Hire cartoon show with Genndy Tartakovsky at the helm.
I mean, what is Luke Cage anyway? He's Marvel's cooler-than-cool super-tough black dude! In particular, the tiara-and-chain-belt (black)Power Man is emblematic of an era of white dudes creating black superheroes to react to/comment on the black power movement of mid-twentieth century.
After decades of struggling to get a modern, post-blaxploitation version of Luke Cage to work, Marvel seems to have captured fans with the "grown-and-sexy" Luke Cage we see in Walker and Greene's book and the heavily-anticipated Netflix show starring Mike Colter. Not only is Cage hot, but Marvel is tripping over itself adding more color to its comics, including raising the profile of Black Panther, Spectrum and Sam Wilson (Falcon, Captain America). In this climate where the assorted entertainment industries (not to mention real-world America) are looking forward to a more diverse and inclusive future, I think it would be perfect to at the same time launch a cartoon show that subtly ribs the cultural shortcomings of the past. No character is more appropriate for this than Cage. Let's imagine for a second how sick a cartoon show like that would be. Let's say Tartakovsky is directing it, with David Walker or Aaron Magruder running the writer's room. Because we live in continuity-enabled world, you get a supporting cast that includes Iron Fist and Misty Knight, and guest appearances from characters like Falcon, Black Panther and other black superheroes, talking shit about seventies versions of Captain America or Spidey. This would be Marvel's perfect chance to do a seemingly nostalgic-but-critical story that is informed by modern consciousness, a balancing trick mastered by the late Darwyn Cooke on numerous projects for DC. We know America is willing to reward smart culture-challenging all-ages content from the success of projects like Zootopia and Finding Dory.
Am I bugging here, or does that not sound like a gold mine?
Samax Amen is a professional Content Developer, Illustrator and Cartoonist. He is the artist of many great comics you never heard of like Herman Heed, Champion of Children, The Brother and The World As You Know It. He even writes and draws his own comics, like Dare: The Adventures of Darius Davidson, Spontaneous, and Manchild when he gets around to it. Because making comics is hard and stuff, he started GhettoManga as a blog in 2006 and as a print magazine in 2008. 
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