"Sweet Christmas!"
—Luke Cage
"What is the quality that makes it natural to keep Luke Cage in the periphery at the least, and the center at best? For one possible answer to that question, you have to look at the MO of Marvel comics, a company that endeavors, at various times, to reflect "The World Outside Your Window."
Luke Cage was created in 1972.
Four years earlier, in 1968, Martin Luthor King Jr. was shot and killed. Five years before that, in 1963, Medgar Evers was shot and killed. Eight years before that, in 1955, a young Black man named Emmett Till was tortured, then shot and killed.
These events, and numerous others with frightening similarity, happened in a line, and in the early years of the first decade to reap the social benefits of the Civil Rights Movement, Marvel Comics gives the fans (and the world) a Black male superhero whose primary superhuman aspect... is that he's bulletproof
Not flight, or super speed, or a power ring
The superhuman ability of being impervious to bullets
Superheroes. Action Heroes. Fantasy Heroes
Power Fantasies
Is there any doubt the power fantasy of the Black man in the years following the assassinations of his leaders and children by way of the gun would be superhuman resistance to bullets?"
Luke Cage was created in 1972.
Four years earlier, in 1968, Martin Luthor King Jr. was shot and killed. Five years before that, in 1963, Medgar Evers was shot and killed. Eight years before that, in 1955, a young Black man named Emmett Till was tortured, then shot and killed.
These events, and numerous others with frightening similarity, happened in a line, and in the early years of the first decade to reap the social benefits of the Civil Rights Movement, Marvel Comics gives the fans (and the world) a Black male superhero whose primary superhuman aspect... is that he's bulletproof
Not flight, or super speed, or a power ring
The superhuman ability of being impervious to bullets
Superheroes. Action Heroes. Fantasy Heroes
Power Fantasies
Is there any doubt the power fantasy of the Black man in the years following the assassinations of his leaders and children by way of the gun would be superhuman resistance to bullets?"
—Joeseph Illidge, "Real Life Proves Why Luke Cage Endures"
