Luke Cage and Iron Fist: United by Chris Claremont and John Byrne

Luke Cage and Iron Fist: United by Chris Claremont and John Byrne

You can listen~

By Luke Cage, Power Man #47,
Chris Claremont’s already in place as the scripter, with George Tuska taking us through Cage’s last Chicago adventure on the run from the Treasury Department. A huge train wreck forces Luke into action- and it so happens his costume’s the only set of clothes he’s got. (But it always seemed like those were his only clothes back in the day, didn’t it?) His Fugitive rift as Mark Lucas mixes him up with a lady scientist named Alex who becomes the center of a triangle that returns Zzaxx, the electrical monster. It’s not a bad story- Zzzaxx at this point always comes back as different people, so it’s more of a concept than a character in the strictest sense-we at least get a familiar villain seen over in HULK. But when things get much more personal, they also get much better!


There’s an interesting argument Matt Linton makes as part of his series of articles, Social-Justice-Warriors-On-the-Road-to-The-Defenders---Luke-Cage. The nearly all-black cast of TV’s Luke Cage offers better use of the opportunity to depict the racial clash aspect of policing, Black Lives Matter, even commentary on the death of Trevon Martin (especially in the scene soundtracked with Method Man’s “Bulletproof”). Obviously, drifting off into the market necessities of 70’s superhero comics – like wild science-based villains- means we were never going to focus on a serious discussion at great length, but Matt also points out the character’s always had the origin of a wrongly-incarcerated black man. That’s the aspect Claremont resolves in Power Man #48-50; it will take us out of the ‘fugitive’ storyline and away from a prime defining characteristic of Luke. As a product of an entertainment company for adolescents, the book’s always been more of a Shaft-as-superhero take that digs into the fun of Blaxploitation and its escapism, moreso than social commentary.

One can over-estimate the power of a single story, but maybe if we’d had more uncomfortable but necessary discussion of these issues back when, we’d be further down the road of understanding and have saved a lot of pain. That’s always the question: how to serve the purpose of entertainment without being crippled by self-importance, even inspired by the righteousness of the mission. It’s hard to say how many stories about these very real problems it would’ve taken and how far into the mass media they could’ve been elevated, but the diversity of media is definitely opening such stories like never before! Obviously there’s a set of personally effecting stories that also inspire racial divides.
Power Man was already suffering greatly in sales before being merged with Iron Fist. Would it have sold better, if it’d been guided lovingly into greater realms of expression (or pretension- it’s somewhat in the eye of the beholder!)? Was the comic suffering from too much formulaic emulation, or just the lack of a steady creative team?
And it’s not that Matt’s wrong about the pieces all being in place when Luke’s interpreted for an adult-inclusive audience- but I do think it might’ve been heavy baggage, plot-wise for an action drama to carry in thirteen episodes. Between white nationalists, police, Black Lives Matter, elected and appointed administrators, and less militant observers along the spectrum personally, there are many conflicting points of interest. Imagine this complexity embodied within a cast, much less contained within an episodic storyline starring a single lead. It’s not implausible to resolve such an identity. Other shows these days are going for it, usually with a much wider, soap opera-structure level of cast, but they’re not trying to participate in building a superhero story-verse, which tends to aggregate around the actions of an individual. So, thinking about it, perhaps structure’s the issue.

The blackness of the Luke Cage cast, soundtrack, and cultural references is still fairly novel, especially for superheroes, but yes, that, and reasonable motives, do transform Luke’s interaction. Rather than routine patrols and policing, the spur here comes from a specific murder of a black officer, so the avenue explored becomes the resentment felt in a police department when one of their own is slain- albeit serving action’s premises with its revenge motif.
And what I’m getting at is that dealing squarely with racism and the complexities of community relationships with police departments -an excellent basis for a novel, I might add-would’ve deserved all the plot focus and careful nuance in building everyone on each side. Not necessarily a bad use of Luke Cage, or popular entertainment, but something hard to embody in the actions of a single being whose powers change the rules of consequences. A story with that much social freight would’ve required a lot of thought to carry over into The Defenders. It’s hard to do The Wire, but with superheroes. Impossible abilities erase tragic boundary lines, but not necessarily precluding other drama, nonetheless. The criticism that CAGE starts out kind of slow in its first episodes might be a bigger problem. I’m not in a good position to discuss the Netflix show at present (I will need to acquire Netflix again to even participate in the shows after Jessica Jones more fully).

My point of reference here primarily uses the original comics, refracted in the culture of those times, and the present. Unless I get a helpful editorial fiat to motivate it, it’s outside the scope of this book, though I like thought-provocation. Much of this book depends on my luck with already-collected comics and memories that stir reflection. Here, we reference the modern incarnations-and more often, today’s news- but tie them back to their comic book roots moreso than critically explore the shows. Maybe it’ll spin out into a book that more specifically attempts that conflation. You can find Matt’s brief article yourself online- as well as the show, on Netflix- and think over his points as you will, as it’s a worthy contemporary discussion, and one I’ll revisit as a writer, no doubt.

A 70’s comic book has demands that require a very visual approach, a bombast that sometimes upstages the character moments, but if you can punch a character through a few walls and still maintain good internal conflicts, go for it! That’s what happens when Power Man’s set against the Living Weapon and his best friends Misty and Coleen in Power Man #48. He’s presented with a violent line to cross that makes even his freedom fall into perspective: how could he become a murderer and ever truly be a free man? We get no explanations- we’re dropped in the middle of pure action. Luke feels like he’d kill to be free of the frame-up that put him in Seagate. But who’s he kidding? There’s a place for the story of a person willing to cross that line, but that’s not Luke. Besides, Claremont and Byrne have handily made his targets detectives and a super hero, so there’s hope!
I think, for all its genre concessions- which widen its young audience-the story, starting with a wrongfully-imprisoned black character, illegal and inhumane experimentation, and leading into a multi-racial cast of heroes and villains who differ in methods, accomplishes something memorable, alongside the sheer enthusiasm and talent of the tellers. They gamble on leaving us as much in the dark as the characters, all danger, menace and action--with explanations left to next issue! What a remarkable device for increasing our emotional identification with the characters in their confusion. This pacing technique works smoothly when presenting a multi-part story with the same writer and artist, who can know the explanations, and how much space they’ll need. In a graphic novel you’re more likely to find it nowadays, but for issues of a bi-monthly comic featuring a first meeting of characters-impressive idea. I’ve seen a single issue start with confusion later explained- Amazing Spider-Man #43’s “bank robbery” comes to mind- but I can’t think of an example of it adapted to entire issues, previously. The then-recent seventeen page limitation probably sparked the innovation.

Back to the story itself: peace amid remaining tension and questions rules the splash page of Power Man #49, as Luke broods in the living room of the trio with whom he’s just called off a life and death struggle. Recapping, we see him flashback to breaking in on Colleen Wing, nearly killing her after skilled evasion. Misty- his real target-comes in to be taken out quickly. One at a time, they’ve fallen- until Iron Fist shows up and literally knocks him through the brownstone’s wall! It’s soon after Luke’s berserker fury overwhelms Danny’s skill that he finally comes to his senses. I like the darkened countenance on Cage as he considers now telling them the whole story, while Misty sneaks off with his tea cup to run fingerprints through a crime base from a computer in the study.

Cage finishes telling how Bushmaster shadily recruited him, unveiled evidence gathered by henchman Gadget that proves Wilis Striker planted the heroin that got Cage sentenced to twenty years, and offered a deal to kidnap former undercover agent Misty Knight in exchange for the exonerating photos. Shades and Commanche appear at Bushmaster’s behest, to complete the threat against kidnapped Dr. Temple and Dr. Burstein. Misty’s giving Luke one last chance to come clean when Luke confesses his prison escape, winning the trio’s cooperation.

Seagate Prison, it turns out, was closed a year after Luke’s escape, and sold. In an impossibly full moon’s light, Luke speed boats to the prison, which Misty reveals is Bushmaster’s hideout now; his mind alternates between worry for his two friends and the awful memories, imprisoned there. A tricky paragliding invasion’s nicely depicted; Misty’s bionic arm’s apparently solidly enough attached to her body to survive her stopping her overshoot with a jutting stanchion, while Fist KO’s the guard. Nice vertical panels for the drop-in, the paragliding laid out neatly over Luke’s shoulder in panel one. Somehow on the next page, Danny manages to whisper emphatically enough to get a “burst” balloon after Misty finds, then nerve pinches, Doc Temple. All this covert action’s laid out in tight little panels- as small as can still be very nicely rendered- before Power Man “Kthoom”s -in the doors. Feet in action, from worm’s eye we clearly see his targets, sent flying next. Just terrific Byrne storytelling!

Turns out, Misty’s knock out came too soon: Claire wakes up to tell Cage that Noah’s been hidden in the solitary confinement levels, under day and night operations. This next door goes to Iron Fist, who discovers the advanced laboratory and Dr. Burstein, again in an economy horizontal layout.
Bushmaster’s been transformed into a figure even more powerful than Luke, who nonetheless wades into him while Noah tries reviving Iron Fist. Their fight manages to unleash boiling hot liquid, which then hits the main power lines! Fortunately, Fist finds Luke, who’s survived, and with Gadget captured and the evidence in tow, a vindicated Cage leaves with his new allies, victorious.

Issue 50’s where the new dual logo reflects the Marvel Event. Judging by the letters column, the change was anticipated by a few keyed-in fans in those pre-Internet days. So where will our former solo title star go now? Even if the Frank Miller cover promises a startling new duo, how do we get there organically?
Start with a bit of bubbly, celebrating Luke’s legal exoneration and official name change to Lucas Cage. The man he was, he explains, died when he went to prison. The “montage behind the face over the head space” motif- which makes me think of Neal Adams- follows. He revisits his last date with Riva, enjoying dinner and a show at the Apollo, when he returns home to find he’s been framed with two kilos of uncut heroin! The few panels of his trial speak volumes for the wrongfully accused Everyman- his peer jury is a joke, his lawyer’s unconvinced, and just like that, a man’s life’s thrown away. We complete the trilogy by finally depicting his incarceration, the experiment that empowered him, his desperate escape, and his Hero For Hire professional career gambit- at a place where its telling represents the lowest low, the trial that set him completely free, followed now by what he calls his rebirth! You know what’s interesting? He was freed from Seagate, but he wasn’t truly free- he dresses as an escape artist, but he still bears bands, chains-it’s a nod to his cool, unique design.

The warden who showed him the one ray of kindness (he’s a deeper, subtle factor) is present at the party, as are Misty and Colleen, fashionable and smashingly rendered by John B. Their offer to join Nightwing Restorations is answered with a touch of chauvinism and some honesty about his long-held loner status, but as Jeryn Hogarth and Misty explain to our Muhammad Ali-look-alike, the past six weeks’ proceedings have left him free to pursue the life of his choice- whatever!

Claire Temple, his squeeze of late before his fugitive run, has a nice, brief chat with him that underscores they’re not facing this new life together. The art perfectly backs her reasoning: we see their intimate embrace through a rifle scope on a nearby rooftop! Then Stilletto and Discus, who’d like him to pursue a choice of death, more like, crash the party. (How they heard Misty’s offer of emotional support while smashing through the window- and responded? Just one of those tropes- hah!)

So these are law-and-order vigilantes who think Luke’s acquittal is a fraud? The brothers’ disregard for human life terrorizes the high society party, smashing Jeryn’s phone in a nice horizontal panel capturing cause and effect- absolutely repulsing Danny Rand, who slips off his sweater in time-honored fashion, ties on his Iron Fist mask. In the midst of their assault on target Cage, we get a maniacal close-up of Stilletto- when Iron Fist comes in punching! He argues with Misty Knight about evacuation, hard-headed tension between warriors- it’s just like Archie Goodwin observed, this group of heroes themselves come with built-in conflict! This moment matters because regard for bystanders elevates their purpose. Fist matches skill for skill as he draws fire. Stilletto’s flechettes, he catches between his fingers with spooky reflexes-depressing and impressing appropriate parties. Claremont’s caption uses “scythes” to describe the arc of Discus’ weapon as it explosively buries Luke and a woman I believe proves to be model Harmony Young. Danny takes that rather personally! And she might not have her samurai sword handy, but in yet another useful horizontal panel, Colleen Wing introduces a bare foot to “Disco”’s face. He’s not dead- it’s still only New Year’s Eve, 1977.

Cage manhandles a fallen concrete beam- in Casanova fashion, Luke consoles Harmony’s broken fifty dollars-a-nail manicure (“for a commercial I’m doing tomorrow!”) with a kiss that says, “Claire who? Meh!” One thing you gotta love: Iron Fist proves as reckless as you imagine hot-headed Power Man to be in his pursuit of the re-positioning villains up a slanted roof. The freezing cold leaves his hands too numb to be sure of his grip-until they’re smashed. Now it’s Danny’s on-the-spot turn of reflection, as he sees his dad’ s killer in Stilletto, as he rants about “making things safe for decent people” and “winning” ! I love how you get what haunts the past of both heroes without slowing down a lick. Cage charges “Disco” too hard for the roof’s infrastructure, and boom, crumbles- to his sense of panic at failing the man who put it all on the line to help him win his new freedom!

Danny’s now sliding off to his doom, wondering on his three-hundred-foot drop if this was how his dad felt. Ever the warrior, Danny thinks: there’s a roof on the way down, and he’d asked Jeryn what it covered. Now we get Luke folded into the Danny omniverse folded into the X-universe! Fist (love calling him that) sky-dives his way into an indoor heated pool, where Amanda Sefton ’s answering Betsy’s teasing question about her date with “Kurt”- as in Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler. Yes, it’s the two girls Kurt and Peter somewhat creepily approached in Times Square in a contemporary issue of Uncanny X-Men- maybe the first X-characters Byrne ever draws, published-and it makes a nice splash with me, it does. Amanda even flirtily hints her date might’ve been...X-rated. All in four panels!

Now speaking of fists, an enraged Cage has one ready for Discus when Lieutenant Scarf- Misty’s old police department partner- rushes in to become a new target. One last time, we get a hero horrified by a friend’s apparent murder, as Misty’s thoughts, via caption, now flash back to her own lowest low, after a terrorist’s bomb mangled her right arm. Before her bionic replacement, she lay hospitalized by her heroic effort to snag the bomb and throw it safely away from innocents- and Scarf was right there at her bedside. (Yes, it’s a shame he got tapped for villainy in the TV show.) We are one big gunshot away from execution justice, eyes wide for the begging Discus and the onlooking Luke Cage! A last act of heroism: Power Man dives forward to catch the Magnum slug, saving his attacker’s life and Misty’s conscience. Young writer Claremont never imagined anyone would think Scarf’s badge stopping the bullet was cliché, but the way it ends this violent choreography? Worth it.

Rafael Scarf completely understands Misty’s hair-trigger response: “she’s proving she’s as human as the rest of us.” Misty admits she takes a chewing-out for her recklessness, gracefully. It bonds her with Luke, who started this trilogy damn near killing her- and that makes one very nice ribbon atop this inaugural present to edgy action-adventure with Seventies style. Murder’s called out for its moral turpitude, but mayhem, admittedly, gets a slick, cathartic pass- even the villains have their loyalty to one another, their disgrace at seeing their father (the aforementioned warden!) among the party-goers, so there’s a current of emotion and meaning within the violence. It can’t encompass every contradiction inherent in its depiction: the villains are heroes in their own minds, though their methods and assumptions in place of analysis, to say nothing of endangering innocents, betray their righteousness. The fantasy, however, heightens a reality of identifiable human opinions and passions.

You might think I liked it. Yeah, it was pretty okay.

Not every team is Claremont and Byrne taking their single best shot, but it’s such a breathless high point for Marvel’s unconventional new ensemble. Teams on this title ever after try to hit this wickedly-precise mark. It’s storytelling of this caliber (.44, I believe) that speaks to the dramatic possibilities, and how very cool, it gives us a home for Marvel’s first “inter-racial” romance, the best gender-bending duo of female action heroes to come to the Big Apple for a long time- a tense group of uneasy-riding warriors whose makeup also carries in its appearance a feel-good message, about bonds that transcend learned societal divides- of entertainment, and real life friendship.

Not to attach too much freight to comic books- anywhere that strikes imagination can start conversations, as seen online with provocative creative essayists one encounters-but without pretension, heck, based out of two cultural pop fads, even, Power Man and Iron Fist (and their cool female cohorts) had a tremendous personal influence! I was giving a friend, Crystal, a ride home and pointed out the box of their comics returned to me last night. I told her about Luke’s comic spinning out a tv show I thought she’d like, but also, how it meant a lot to me as a kid growing up in a time still slowly crawling out of Southern segregation to read adventures of a black guy and a white guy being best friends. My version was the James Owsley/ Doc Bright run-I still remember the day I dropped off #118 at the lunch table of the kids of the other class, more the gang I got on with than my own class. Those stories deeply humanized people of color for me. Their simple symbolism, when I was still so shy and capable of a couple of close friendships at most, opened the way to a time when I’d be quick to make friends, and they could be any color or national origin- like my best guy friend, born in Sri Lanka- who taught my best gal friend and I martial arts, at that. Self-defense and skill are true emotional bonds. So is humor, so is kindness- and so are the vast array of well-told stories.

Incredibly, as I paused writing this, the news featured live footage of Emancipation Park, where white nationalists march, fighting anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville today at a protest removing the statue of General Lee, while Virginia State Police stand by at the edge of escalation. I reflect on my opportunity to grow up exposed to an embrace of tradition and a love of history, as well as eyes opened to the need to get along and to realize consequences, a superposition to see the reasoning across the spectrum. As a writer, I strive to comprehend how everyone came to their point, yet, “we should call evil by its name.” You quickly see how an examination of consequence, the necessities of rationality and progress, overloads almost any discussion of entertainment. As it should, the points address something more serious that needs its own focus- and perhaps from there, more innovative entertainment. As real life confusion breaks out, I look at that alarming throwback of irrational rhetoric and emotion about the rights of peoples’ place in America, and realize, we very much need our stories. We need to see bonds of love and friendship, soul-searching, courage. We very much need to keep talking. You never know who needs to hear it- most of all, the young, shaping their opinions.