EP0089: Luke Cage Masterworks, Volume 1, Hobgoblin Lives, and Marvels

The Classy Comics Podcast

Take a look at the origins of Luke Cage in Luke Cage, Heroes for Hire Masterworks, Volume 1.
Then Roger Stern reveals the true identity of the Hobgoblin in Hobgoblin Lives.
Finally, see the origin of the Marvel Universe through the eye of a photographer in Marvels.
Affiliate links included.
Transcript below:
We take a look at Luke Cage's first appearance. Find out how the mystery of the Hobgoblin's identity was solved in Hobgoblin Lives. Then we take a look at the beginning of the Marvel Universe from someone else's eye as we take a look at Marvel's on this all-Marvel edition, straight ahead.
Well, we start out with Luke Cage, Hero for Hire Masterworks Volume One, and we get the first sixteen Issues of this series from 1972 and '73. We get Luke Cage's origin story in the first couple Issues which are written by Archie Goodwin, and you can definitely see from reading these how Marvel was trying to tap into the Blacksploitation films that were so popular at the time.
Luke is a man who has been locked away for a crime he didn't commit and he is hated by Rackham, a senior guard who has become Acting Warden while a new warden waits to arrive; and he's continually being sent to solitary and such. Luke has protested his innocence and he really does carry a big chip on his shoulder, however, Dr. Noah first has come to the prison and he wants to do some experiments on Luke to test the liquid that will regenerate cells, and it involves immersing Lucas in that liquid. However, while the doctor goes away to adjust something Lucas begins to notice that this is very uncomfortable, and it turns out Rackham had followed the doctor down there and he was turning up the temperature to its maximum level.
However, the effect of this is actually to give Lucas superpowers, most notably a skin that is resistant to bullets. Bullets will not kill him, they will hurt a little, but probably more like how paintballs would hurt the average person, if that. But, at any rate, Lucas breaks out of prison and is shot at and is assumed dead. However, he actually escaped and got some clothes and just stumbles into a robbery and foils it, and the grateful owner who he helped gives him some money which he uses to rent a motel room for month, pick up some business cards, as well as build his 1970sarific costume. And he sets out to establish himself as a hero for hire.
In order to promote the Hero for Hire business Lucas takes on the organization of his old friend Jimmy Striker who has become a criminal and who Lucas believes killed the woman he loved, the crime for which Lucas was sent to prison. And he also adopts the name Luke Cage, combining his old first name with something he associated with prison. And the second issue, he has the confrontation with Jimmy Striker and Striker accidentally kills himself.
At the same time, a complication comes into Luke's life when Dr. Burstein moves into the city to start a clinic, kind of shaken up by what had happened while out at the prison, and of course he recognizes Luke Cage as Lucas, the criminal convict who had supposedly died, but in Issue Three decides to keep silent as long as Lucas stays on the up and up – although he doesn't approve of the hero for hire status, and thinks he ought to give out his services for the good of all mankind. And Lucas is like, "I have to eat and get off my back!" And so from there you really see the story take on a different tone as Lucas goes and battles all comers, and in the rest of Goodwin's Issues he…in Issue Three he takes on Gabriel Mace, a military officer who replaced his hand with a mace. And that does make for some awesome fight scenes.
Issue Four is Phantom on Forty-Second Street which has him solving a...