OMU: Power Man -- Year Three

The next year in the life of Luke Cage is remarkable for how ordinary it is. As Power Man, he fights a few new villains and has a couple of grudge matches with old ones. Bits of new information are added to his tragic backstory. He has the requisite romantic ups-and-downs. He meets some more of his fellow costumed crime-fighters—and his book is used as a launching pad for Marvel’s newest black superhero. But none of it seems to amount to much—which may be the point. Luke is a workaday hero trying to make ends meet in a decaying city, spending his time in greasy diners, filthy alleyways, dilapidated buildings, and moonlit construction sites. It’s only the crime lords who seem to enjoy any luxury. Everyone else, good guys and bad, struggles on the edge of poverty and despair. Perhaps Power Man is, at its heart, a story of perseverance.

Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.


Now continuing… The True History of Luke Cage, Power Man!


January 1967 – Luke Cage pays a visit to Reva Connors’ grave in a cemetery in Harlem, telling his deceased girlfriend about his faltering relationship with Dr. Claire Temple. Claire soon turns up, having learned that Luke was there from his friend David “D.W.” Griffith, and assures him that she doesn’t want their romance to end. Luke and Claire kiss and make up, though he still worries that his status as a fugitive will always cast a shadow over them. When they head back to Midtown Manhattan later, Luke saves businessman Maxwell Plumm from falling to his death after being thrown from the skeletal structure of a new skyscraper by a masked construction worker calling himself the Steeplejack. Though the Steeplejack gets away, Plumm explains that he knows the villain’s true identity; he’s a former employee named Jake Mallard who wants revenge for the accidental deaths of his two brothers on that very construction site. Luke hands Plumm a business card and suggests he hire him to take care of the Steeplejack. Luke then escorts Claire back to her storefront clinic near Times Square.

At the clinic, Luke and Claire find Dr. Noah Burstein, the man responsible for Luke’s superhuman powers. Burstein is glad to see they have reconciled but agrees that Luke’s criminal past will always be a threat to their future unless he can clear his name. Claire wonders if there’s any way for Luke to prove he was innocent of the drug-possession charges that led to his conviction, but Luke is convinced the only person who could provide such proof is the man who framed him, Willis Stryker, and he’s dead. However, Burstein suggests that Luke find out which rival gang Stryker stole the drugs from that he planted in Luke’s apartment—perhaps they might have some kind of records that would help exonerate him. Though it’s been nine years, Luke decides it’s worth looking into, and he spends the rest of the day talking to his various informants, including the notoriously unreliable Flea.

In the evening, Plumm hires Luke to guard the construction site, so he heads over there around midnight and finds the Steeplejack sabotaging the building’s steel girders with a homemade acetylene torch. To Luke’s surprise, the Steeplejack proves to be a tough customer, but he quickly falls victim to his own sabotage and plunges to his death. When the Steeplejack hits the ground, the chemical tanks strapped to his back explode, incinerating his body. Satisfied that he’s earned his pay, Luke heads home to his rooms above the Gem Theater on W. 42nd Street.

February 1967 – Luke is curious when D.W. presents him with a special-delivery package that’s just arrived, though he becomes suspicious when he sees there’s no return address. Before he can open the package, he is called away to a meeting with Flea at a phone booth on a corner in Hell’s Kitchen. When he arrives, Luke finds Flea lying in a nearby alley, having been fatally poisoned. Flea manages to get out one word before he dies—“Cottonmouth.” Once Flea’s body has been taken away in an ambulance, Luke returns to his office and opens the package. Two cottonmouth snakes leap out and bite him, though their fangs cannot penetrate his impervious skin. Luke grabs the snakes and beats them to death. A pair of burly men called Mike and Ike then burst into the room and announce they work for the man who sent the package. Their attempt to intimidate Luke fails, and he beats them up and forces them to reveal that their employer is the notorious Midtown drug lord called Cottonmouth. Luke realizes that Stryker must have stolen the heroin used to frame him from Cottonmouth’s gang.

Luke drags Mike and Ike to the skyscraper where their employer has his offices and confronts Cottonmouth and his diminutive assistant, Slick. Angry about Flea’s murder, Luke tries to punch Cottonmouth in the face, only to discover that the gangster has super-strength to go along with his weirdly reptilian eyes. Luke is caught off guard when Cottonmouth apologizes for having Flea killed, saying he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known Flea was working for Luke, as he wants Luke to join his organization. Offering his guest a glass of wine, Cottonmouth says he sent over the snakes merely as a test of the “Hero for Hire’s” resourcefulness and admits to being suitably impressed. Hoping to gather the evidence needed to clear his name, Luke agrees to throw in with Cottonmouth. However, Slick points out that their men won’t accept Luke unless he first proves himself, suggesting he steal back a shipment of heroin that was hijacked a week ago by their rival, the Harlem crime boss named Morgan. Familiar with Morgan’s operation, Luke agrees to retrieve the heroin singlehandedly. He heads up to Harlem, fights his way through Morgan’s heavily armed henchmen, and promptly returns to Midtown with the stolen drugs. Cottonmouth and Slick are delighted and heartily welcome Luke into their gang.

Over the next couple weeks, Luke learns everything he can about Cottonmouth’s operation from top to bottom, though he’s unable to find any written records detailing their activities. To keep Claire safe, Luke stays away from the clinic and has no contact with her or Burstein. He tells D.W. only that he’s working undercover on a big case.

March 1967 – Luke finally has the chance to search Cottonmouth’s office one night, hoping to find the records in his desk. He’s flummoxed, though, when he finds nothing and wonders how Cottonmouth can run such a complex organization without any written records. He decides the time has come to call in the NYPD narcotics squad but is caught in the act by Cottonmouth and Slick. Cottonmouth is outraged by the betrayal and attacks, pitting his super-strength against Luke’s. As they fight, Slick moves around them, trying to get a clear shot at Luke with his pistol. However, Luke inadvertently knocks Cottonmouth into Slick, sending the little man crashing through a window. Cottonmouth is horrified as Slick falls 35 stories to his death, since he relied on Slick’s photographic memory in lieu of keeping written records. Enraged that his investigation has come to nothing, Luke finally defeats Cottonmouth and turns him over to the police.

The following evening, Luke eagerly goes to visit Claire at the clinic, only to learn from Burstein that she’s left town, possibly for good. He is stunned when Burstein gives him a note Claire left saying she’s gone to Los Angeles and doesn’t want Luke to follow her. Boiling with anger, Luke rips up the note and storms out of the clinic.

April–June 1967 – Increasingly bitter that Claire has left him, Luke struggles to get enough paying clients to make ends meet, even though he receives a good deal of positive media coverage for smashing Cottonmouth’s crime ring. As a result of the publicity, most New Yorkers finally start thinking of him as a superhero called Power Man rather than just Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.

July 1967 – Luke is hired by J.C. Pennysworth, the African-American Chief Operations Officer of Richmond Enterprises, to protect a skyscraper construction site from a gang of extortionists called the Wrecking Crew. The villains have already demolished two of the company’s other new buildings, and Mayor John V. Lindsay has refused to pay their multi-million-dollar ransom. Shortly after arriving at the construction site at W. 29th St. and Broadway, Luke meets two other superheroes, Doctor Strange and Nighthawk, who have come as a personal favor to the owner of the company, Kyle Richmond. Though Luke initially mistakes the interlopers for the extortionists, the three heroes agree to team up when the building is suddenly destroyed by the real Wrecking Crew—the Wrecker, Thunderball, Bulldozer, and Piledriver. The ensuing battle goes sideways when the Hulk arrives on the scene and wreaks havoc. The fighting stops when Thunderball finds a small adamantium capsule in the rubble—the real reason they demolished the building—and announces that the gamma bomb it was supposed to contain has gone missing. The villains take advantage of the heroes’ shock, bludgeon them into unconsciousness, and escape.

After they all come to, Luke joins Doctor Strange, Nighthawk, and the Hulk as they track the Wrecking Crew uptown to Harlem, where one of Luke’s young fans informs them that the villains have invaded the Harlem Boys Club. Ignoring Doctor Strange’s words of caution, Hulk storms into the building and attacks the Wrecking Crew, followed by Nighthawk and Luke. Fortunately, the fight moves out into the street before any harm is done. The Wrecking Crew is soon defeated, and the heroes turn their attention to locating and defusing the gamma bomb. Determining that the boy they met earlier was unwittingly carrying the bomb in his baseball mitt, the heroes track him down. Doctor Strange then uses his magic amulet to hypnotize the Hulk, causing him to change back into Bruce Banner, who created the first gamma bomb. Using a bomb-disposal kit magically purloined from a military base, Banner is able to defuse the bomb, whereupon he immediately becomes the Hulk again. The heroes breathe a sigh of relief, though the Hulk is none too happy that Doctor Strange made him fall asleep. Luke worries that he won’t be paid for his night’s work since he failed to prevent the skyscraper from being destroyed. However, a couple days later, he receives a portion of his fee from Kyle Richmond himself for helping recover the gamma bomb. For reasons he doesn’t quite understand, Luke receives the lion’s share of the credit for capturing the Wrecking Crew.

Luke is baffled by a midsummer snowstorm in New York City. Reports of bizarre weather come in from around the globe, but the cause remains a mystery. Near the end of the month, more strange occurrences are reported after Luke wakes up and discovers that everyone in the city passed out two days ago. The Fantastic Four soon announce that these later phenomena were part of an alien invasion plot that they’ve foiled.

August 1967 – A panic in the Gem Theater leads Luke into a vicious fight with Erik Josten, a minor super-villain who called himself “Power Man” and fought the Avengers a few times. Having recently gotten out of prison, Josten is furious that Luke has appropriated his code name and is determined to take it back by force. Their battle causes extensive damage to the theater, but Luke doesn’t take it too seriously until he finds a young girl hiding behind her seat. Enraged by Josten’s utter disregard for the girl’s safety, Luke escorts her out of the theater and then kicks the villain’s ass. Mocking his claims of having defeated the Avengers, Luke tosses Josten into the street and threatens to give him a worse beating if he ever tries calling himself “Power Man” again. As Josten is picked up by the police, Luke takes the little girl to a nearby ice cream parlor.

Later, Luke returns to the theater to survey the damage with D.W., who believes their insurance will pay for the necessary repairs, though he’ll be out of work while the building is closed. Luke tells D.W. that he’s planning to go to Los Angeles to track down Claire, as he’s learned that she’s been sending Burstein postcards from a hotel in Pomona. He just needs to scrape together the bus fare. Heading up to his office, Luke is ambushed by Stiletto and his new partner, Discus, who tosses around razor-sharp discs, though they can’t lacerate Luke’s invulnerable skin. The fight soon carries them outside and down the street to a Nathan’s hot-dog restaurant. There, Luke beats both of his foes into submission, only to have Tyler Stuart, the former warden of Seagate Prison, turn up and reveal that Stiletto and Discus are his sons. All too familiar with the state of America’s prisons, Stuart doesn’t want his boys incarcerated, though he doesn’t condone their vigilante actions. Luke admits that Stuart was the only warden who ever treated him fairly, and since all three of them know he’s really the escaped convict Carl Lucas, he decides to let them slip away before the police arrive. However, he warns Stuart to keep his sons away from him in the future.

Luke is caught by surprise when a powerful earthquake suddenly strikes New York City. He goes out into the neighborhood around Times Square and helps people trapped in quake-damaged buildings. It is soon reported that the tremors were caused by a pair of disgruntled scientists, who have been taken into custody.

September 1967 – When Luke is finally ready to head out to Los Angeles, D.W. decides to accompany him, seeing his temporary unemployment as a chance to visit Hollywood. Luke is glad to have the company for the long, cross-country trip. Unfortunately, their bus breaks down halfway, and the passengers are split up onto different lines. After a few stops, Luke and D.W. find themselves the only passengers left on their new bus. As they’re passing through Arizona, the bus is ambushed by a group of men in militaristic uniforms with automatic weapons. The driver is shot dead, causing the bus to crash into a stand of pine trees. Not sure whether D.W. has survived, Luke smashes his way out of the wreck and beats up their assailants. He discovers that the gunmen work as police officers in a nearby gated community called Security City and uses their own handcuffs to shackle them to the bus. After D.W. has come to, the two friends hike out to Security City and find it to be more like a military encampment than a small town. They force their way through the main gate and head toward city hall, facing fierce resistance from the heavily armed citizens. Since D.W. is not bulletproof, Luke surrenders. They are led at gunpoint to a meeting with the head of the city council, who turns out to be Luke’s old foe Gideon Mace. Having survived their last encounter, Mace gloats over finally besting Luke and brags about his scheme to manipulate the carefully selected residents of Security City to create a new social order with himself at the top. However, D.W. has activated the building’s sound system, causing Mace’s ranting to be broadcast through the loudspeakers outside. As a result, the citizenry riots, furious at having been played for fools. Luke knocks out Mace with a punch in the head and leads D.W. to safety outside the settlement, leaving behind the bloody insurrection.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Luke and D.W. bribe a clerk at the hotel in Pomona to learn that Claire has been spending most of her time at a circus at the county fairgrounds. Heading over there to look for her, Luke is called upon to save the life of a hapless trapeze artist, Luigi Gambonno. Somewhat grudgingly, his identical twin, Ernesto Gambonno, offers Luke and D.W. free admission to the circus. The two friends soon find Claire, leading to an awkward reunion as she reveals that she came to California to help her ex-husband, a scientist named Bill Foster whose association with the former Avenger Henry Pym has left him stuck being 15 feet tall. Feeling like a freak, Foster has taken a job at the circus to fund his research into a cure. Claire explains that she wanted Luke to stay away so Foster, who aspires to be a superhero, wouldn’t discover that he’s a fugitive from the law. Luke reacts to these revelations with anger, so when Foster arrives wearing his superhero costume, the two rivals for Claire’s affections get into a bitter brawl. The fight ends abruptly when they are both lassoed with electrified cables that shock them into unconsciousness. Luke comes to sometime later and discovers that they’ve stumbled upon the notorious Circus of Crime. Seeing Claire being manhandled by Ernesto and Luigi Gambonno, Strongman, and the crafty Clown, Luke overcomes the Ringmaster’s hypnosis and attacks them. The Ringmaster commands the still-hypnotized Foster to stop Luke. However, Luigi Gambonno feels indebted to Luke for saving his life earlier and snatches the Ringmaster’s top hat, using it to free Foster from his trance. Live Wire refuses to use his electrified lasso to kill Foster, infuriating the Ringmaster. D.W., who’s been hiding in the shadows, then uses the top hat to hypnotize the Ringmaster and Princess Python as Luke and Foster defeat the others. While the Circus of Crime is turned over to the police, Claire decides that she’d rather be with Luke and tries to let her ex-husband down easy. Luke is overjoyed to be reunited with Claire after their six-month separation. He and Claire then join D.W. for a tour of Hollywood before returning to New York.

Back in his office above the closed-for-renovations theater, Luke is aggravated that someone in the building next door set up a gymnasium in his absence, leading to near constant thumping on the shared wall between them. Finally, a flabby, stumblebum masked wrestler comes crashing through the wall, causing Luke to completely lose his temper. Calling the intruder fat and stupid, Luke roughs him up until his manager, Bernie Steinsinger, intervenes and makes the wrestler apologize for his clumsiness. Steinsinger promises to pay to have the damage repaired. Luke feels bad after he calms down and realizes the wrestler is mentally disabled, probably from too many blows to the head in the course of his career. A few hours later, though, the wrestler returns, now a heavily muscled powerhouse calling himself “X,” and fights with Luke again. Luke’s office suffers extensive damage before the battle moves out onto 42nd Street. Though he lacks Luke’s superhuman strength, “X” is more than a match for him due to his superior fighting techniques. As their brawl drags on, “X” becomes increasingly reckless and murderous. Finally, he inadvertently hits Steinsinger in the head with a broken brick, mortally wounding him. The shock brings “X” to his senses, and he begs Luke to help his fallen friend. Luke calls an ambulance to the scene, and when it arrives, “X” suddenly reverts to his former flabby physique. The police agree to allow the remorseful wrestler to accompany Steinsinger to the hospital. Luke is left bewildered by the senselessness of it all.

October 1967 – Late in the month, Luke and D.W. celebrate the reopening of the Gem Theater. The building’s owner, D.W.’s uncle, has also gotten Luke’s office repaired. Hearing someone sneaking around upstairs, Luke charges up there to check it out and encounters a white-haired intruder with surprising strength and stamina. Luke is unnerved by the man’s fiery red eyes just before he leaps out through the window and seemingly turns into a bat. Luke then goes into his office, followed cautiously by D.W., where they discover $100 on the desk and a stop-me-before-I-kill-again message written on the wall in blood. The message is signed “Janos Trevorik,” a name Luke is able to find in the phone book. Incredulous, Luke wonders if he’s just been hired by a vampire.

In the morning, Luke goes to Janos Trevorik’s address and meets his attractive landlady, Hazel Donovan. Recognizing Power Man, she agrees to let him into Trevorik’s apartment, since the man owes her money. They are shocked to discover a coffin in the main room, along with a vast collection of occult artifacts. Poking around the room, Luke finds brochures for a group called the Magical Society that operates out of a place in Greenwich Village. He decides to look into it and leaves his business card with the distraught Donovan. At the Magical Society, Luke meets its suave, young director, R. Lambert Martinson, who fuels Luke’s suspicion that Trevorik may be a vampire. Using a list provided by Martinson, Luke spends the rest of the day visiting other members of the society. They all confirm Martinson’s description of Trevorik as a nocturnal creep with red eyes and preternaturally pale skin. After nightfall, another encounter with the man who broke into his office convinces Luke that he’s dealing with one of the undead. Freaked out, Luke rousts D.W. out of bed to see if he has any information on vampires. D.W. offers a couple of books on vampires in the movies, and Luke decides they will have to do. They spend the next few hours poring over the books, trying to learn as much vampire lore as they can.

Just before dawn, Luke receives a frantic phone call from Hazel Donovan claiming that Trevorik is trying to break into her apartment. Luke snaps a baluster out of the staircase and races to the scene. When he arrives, Donovan says Trevorik just ran off to an abandoned brownstone on the corner. Luke gives chase, kicking down the door and entering the dilapidated building. After a couple of shadowy brushes with his foe, Luke finds Trevorik raving like a maniac in a room on the second floor. Luke punches him in the face, knocking him to the floor, and then forces open the shutters, flooding the room with early morning light. As Trevorik recoils from the sunlight, Luke gets ready to stab him in the heart with the wooden baluster. However, at the last moment, he notices that Trevorik is wearing completely different shoes than he was before. Taking a closer look at Trevorik, Luke realizes he is not a vampire but merely an albino. A minute or two later, Luke discovers Martinson hiding in a closet and roughs him up. Trevorik comes to his senses and reveals that Martinson and Donovan conspired to trick Luke into murdering him so they could seize his extremely valuable collection of occult artifacts. Martinson had drugged Trevorik and disguised himself during Luke’s earlier encounters with the “vampire.” Trevorik commends Luke for being smarter than Martinson and Donovan gave him credit for. The conspirators are arrested by the police, and Luke takes the grateful Trevorik out for breakfast. Luke is embarrassed that he could be fooled into thinking that vampires were real, but Trevorik insists that such creatures do, in fact, exist. Luke wonders if his new friend is putting him on.

December 1967 – For about 18 hours, Luke finds himself trapped within a force-field bubble. Try as he might, he is unable to escape. Finally, the force field vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared. He then learns that, while he was trapped, Loki led an invasion force of Asgardian warriors against Washington, D.C., only to be repelled by Thor and the U.S. Army.

Luke continues to work routine cases while he and Claire rebuild their romantic relationship. He’s gratified that she chose him over her ex-husband, whom Luke thinks was a bit of a jerk, and he forgives her for taking off for California without a word of explanation. He’s also glad that his efforts to rebrand himself as Power Man have largely been successful, though acting as a superhero isn’t particularly lucrative. He hopes that things will only get better in 1968.


Notes:

January 1967 – Luke Cage’s adventures resume in Power Man #18 and following. Luke is no doubt infuriated by the race riot that occurs at the Statue of Liberty on New Year’s Day, as revealed in Daredevil #109, which was engineered by the subversive organization called Black Spectre.

July 1967 – Power Man joins forces with the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Nighthawk against the Wrecking Crew in Defenders #17–19. At this point, the Defenders are still largely avoiding publicity, and Luke may be unaware that his colleagues even consider themselves members of a regular team, since none of them mention it. The unseasonable snowstorm results from Dormammu imprisoning Gaea in Doctor Strange v.2 #8–9. The people of New York City are then rendered insensate for two days by alien invaders in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #3.

August 1967 – Earthquakes strike Manhattan in Marvel Team-Up #28. Power Man remains behind the scenes.

September 1967 – Interestingly, during Power Man #24–25, Bill Foster is referred to only as “Goliath” and not as “Black Goliath,” except non-diagetically in the story title and on the cover. He adopts the “Black Goliath” moniker during his next appearance, in Black Goliath #1, where he also reveals that he’d lied to Claire about being trapped at 15 feet and needing to work at the circus to fund his research. It was merely a ploy to try to get her to come back to him. An odd bit of trivia: though they are two completely different people, the Wrecking Crew’s Thunderball and the Circus of Crime’s crafty Clown apparently have the same name: Eliot Franklin. The masked wrestler, Willie Dance, unwittingly drinks a variant of the super-soldier serum that was stolen from its inventor by a petty crook. While fleeing the police, the thief hid the canister in Dance’s locker room, thinking it must be valuable. Dance mistakes it for a protein shake. Since the serum is not followed by Abraham Erskine’s “vita-ray” treatment, Dance becomes mentally unstable, as is usually the case, until the effects wear off.

December 1967 – Various superheroes are seen trapped within Loki’s magical spheres in Thor #233. When the Falcon goes missing, Nomad (the hero formerly known as Captain America) stops by the Gem Theater to see if Power Man knows anything about it. However, Luke is out working on a case. The story in Captain America #183 claims that Luke is in Los Angeles while the building is closed for repairs, but that happened a few months ago. This brings us up to Power Man #27.


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