(Strand)om Stories: Luke Cage Epic Collection: The Fire This Time Review
Luke Cage's second Epic Collection is a mixed bag, some strong storytellers and characterization blended with some cheesy dialogue and weaker writers
—by Nathan on March 15, 2025—
Sweet Christmas, we're back at it again.
It's been about three-and-a-half years since I first tackled the solo adventures of the man with the steel-hard skin and chain belt who must own yellow shirts by the closetful. A decent chunk of that is thanks to Marvel releasing this second Epic Collection three years after publishing Cage's first volume. I picked up that initial volume shortly after it was released, read it, and reviewed it late 2021. The second volume wasn't released until February of last year, and I chose to not pick it up immediately, eventually receiving this collection (appropriately enough) for Christmas. So that last little bit is on me.
But what a sweet Christmas indeed.
In the time since, I have read (but not reviewed) some of Cage's co-op capers with another Marvel legend from the 70s, the man whose fist becomes like unto a thing of iron (give you one guess as to whom I'm referring). I resisted the urge to review the early escapades of these Heroes for Hire, knowing their history really began with a few issues of the original Hero for Hire's solo series. I held out for this volume, and Marvel finally delivered. Since Luke appeared in an Amazing Spider-Man issue I recently reviewed, I thought it appropriate to dive into his continuing adventures.
So if you've got a yellow shirt hanging up somewhere, pull it out and put it on, cause we're hitting the streets of New York to see who'll hire our hero this time around.
Luke Cage Epic Collection: The Fire This Time
Writers: Don McGregor, Marv Wolfman, Chris Claremont, Tony Isabella, Bill Mantlo, Steve Englehart, George Perez, Ed Hannigan, and Roger Slifer
Pencilers: George Tuska, Lee Elias, Ron Wilson, George Perez, Rich Buckler, Arvell Jones, Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins, Marie Severin, and Bob Brown
Inkers: Vince Colletta, Dave Hunt, Fred Kida, Al McWilliams, Keith Pollard, the Crusty Bunkers, Frank Springer, Joe Giella, Frank Giacoia, Aubrey Bradford, Jim Mooney, Klaus Janson, Tom Palmer, Alex Nino, Lee Elias, and Bob Smith
Colorists: Janice Cohen, Petra Goldberg, Don Warfield, Diane Buscema, Glynis Wein, Phil Rachelson, Michele Wolfman, Roger Silfer, Jim Shooter, George Roussos, and Bonnie Wilford
Letterers: Karen Mantlo, Denise Wohl, Dave Hunt, Harry Bulanadi, Charlotte Jetter, Tom Orzechowski, John Costanza, Jean Hipp, Irving Watanabe, Joe Rosen, and Howard Bender
Issues Collected: Power Man #24-47, Power Man Annual #1
Volume Publication Date: February 2024
Issue Publication Dates: April 1975, June 1975, August 1975, October 1975, December 1975, February 1976, April 1976-September 1977
This series was never predicated on a complex premise: Carl Lucas, a prisoner bathed in experimental chemicals, gains strength and invulnerable skin and busts out of prison, becoming "Luke Cage" and selling his superhuman services to anyone who needs a bodyguard or protection in some form. Along the way, he makes friends like D.W. Griffith and nurse Claire Temple and battles a slew of enemies such as Chemistro, Gideon Mace, and the first guy to call himself "Power Man." Cage does his darndest to stay in the green, which becomes difficult when your yellow shirts are torn to ribbons and fights often happen in the office you're renting above a movie theater.
There's gotta be an easier way to make money, right?
We get much of the same in this volume–Cage battles a bunch of bruisers to protect his clients and their interests, he complains a lot about his clothes getting shredded, and he's haunted by his past as a former crook…or, at least, he's haunted by the potential ramifications of his past. Much of what propelled the first volume can be found here, to generally equal or, occasionally, lesser, effect.
It's not that the concept gets old, necessarily. I commented in the original blog how the idea of "Luke Cage as working man superhero" was a bit of a fun twist on the "costumed hero" idea. Forget all that "power and responsibility" jazz. Cage needs to make a living, Carl Lucas is a fugitive, and he's got these snazzy powers. Why not fashion yourself a new identity and see if you can use these powers to help yourself out a little? I don't blame Cage for the direction he takes his career, nor do I blame the assembled creators for indulging in that line.
If anything, what becomes humorously apparent in this volume–which may have been obvious in the first Epic Collection–is that Luke is a fairly mediocre hero for somebody to hire. He'll knock bad guys flat out, absolutely, but the number of near misses, close calls, and outright failures he experiences across these 400+ pages make you wonder why he can maintain a reputation as a hero people will turn to. I recognize a lot of this comes from the writers instilling conflict into the series–twenty-some pages of watching Cage safely transport a shipping crate to its destination or guarding someone without any action would become downright boring. We need the action and suspense to keep the issues moving along at a decent clip.
Perhaps my primary problem is that Cage is never really given much of a clear-cut victory against anybody. He struggles valiantly at every turn, he frees himself from some pretty gnarly deathtraps (like the one where a gaggle of goombas tie him to opposite halves of a bridge, expecting it to tear him in half when it's raised), and generally stops any supervillain looking to muck about in his business. But there always seems to be some kind of cost to his victories, and though I know how powerful a pyrrhic victory can be (trust me, I've been a Spider-Man fan for over twenty years), the constant "almost's" can grow a little stale.
Cage as a character is formidable, and no writer seems to nail him better than Don McGregor. McGregor, like other writers, is guilty of having Cage espouse too much "jive" talk (the number of people he calls "baby" is hilarious, and there's at least one panel where he uses the word twice talking to the same woman in basically the same breath), but he allows Cage more development. Under McGregor, Cage's supporting cast expands to include a young family who form an emotional backbone for a handful of issues as well as a detective simultaneously suspicious of and in need of Cage; a subplot involving Cage's past adds tension beyond masked enemies; and a genuinely great running gag with a frustratingly malfunctioning soda machine is almost a subplot of its own (no, really). Other writers lean in to what McGregor establishes–Marv Wolfman, for example, endeavors to maintain the soda machine gag for at least one issue–but the returns diminish, in my eyes. For several issues, McGregor maintains a great tone to the narrative other writers cannot compete with.
The 70s were an opportunity for experimentation, and one of those experiments was an emphasis on larger ongoing narratives. These are the years we see Chris Claremont plant the seeds for "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and McGregor shape his frenetic "Panther's Rage" over in Jungle Action. Even shorter stories could be wrapped around ongoing themes, such as Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' focus on saving the soul of America in Green Lantern through individual narratives centered around drug addiction, racial tensions, and population control. I note that to say it's somewhat disappointing to dive into a volume which draws in some ongoing subplots but never fully breaks free from "villain of the month" flavor of narrative. We get a few multi-issue arcs, and McGregor allows for decent development in the background, but there are a lot of one-and-done tales here. But maybe I'm expecting too much.
In its final fourth or so, the series does take a unique direction, with Wolfman moving Cage away from New York as conflicts come to bear upon Cage's former identity, Carl Lucas. This move enables Wolfman to toy with the core concept of the character, try and take it in a new direction, and he does admirably in that regard. Perhaps he realized he couldn't compete with or maintain what McGregor had so artfully constructed and wished to leave his own mark. These final issues aren't exactly brilliant–though the second-to-last issue is a very clever "race against time" narrative that explodes (almost literally, in one sense) with tension from page one–but they do feel different, promising a unique angle other writers had not previously explored.
Even if the larger narrative, for what it is, can feel lacking at times, standout issues do crop up, such as the second-to-last installment I just noted. Another memorable issue, courtesy of Bill Mantlo and George Perez, feels like an homage to Amazing Spider-Man #38, where Spidey battles a boxer-turned-wrestler-turned-actor gone berserk after he's bathed in electrified chemicals. A similar concept graces these pages, though it enables Mantlo and Perez to tell a uniquely human story with a dramatic ending, momentarily shifting the focus away from Cage and onto a not-so-bad guy, adding a wrinkle to Cage's "punch first, ask questions later" method of handling problems.
Artistically, I found myself most drawn to the work of Lee Elias. Though he's "introduced" as the penciler with Power Man #40, Elias' career stretched back to the 40s, but he had never worked for Marvel, as far as I can tell, until penciling the first Power Man annual. He pencils 7 consecutive issues here, and despite his experience elsewhere, genuinely develops as a penciler from start to finish. His earliest issue feels like a nod to Jack Kirby, artistically, with subsequent issues maintaining a more unique look. It's hard to say someone who'd already been involved in the comics industry for decades by 1976 could "develop" further, but you can trace Elias' artistic changes from Power Man #40 to #46. The various inkers and colorists may assist in that regard, but I want to credit Elias for shaping himself across these seven issues.
This volume is a blend of styles and storytellers–I hesitate to say "jumble," because it doesn't necessarily feel like a mess. This Epic Collection is definitely a cross-section of talent and tales–you'll find Luke facing vampires, a dude who looks like a fish, and gangsters dressed as knights when he isn't squaring off against crazed militia men and assassins (though no foe is as dreaded as that darned soda machine…except, perhaps, the IRS). There's some Silver Age nuttiness mixed in with genuine attempts at characterization, and you can mostly push that Silver Age nuttiness to one side and rely on a somewhat more realistic story, like you're separating Skittles from M&Ms (unless you're some weirdo who likes eating them simultaneously, you weirdo). I do intend on re-reading the "Cage and Rand Power Hour" adventures at some point (in the relative near future, with "relative" being the optimal word), as I do find the characters together may work at least a bit better than they could alone. After over three years of waiting, however, I am glad to have finally gotten a review for this collection under my chain-link belt.