HERO FOR HIRE #8 (1973)
by Steve Englehart & George Tuska
Of all the people to meet Doctor Doom: Luke Cage, in the eight issue of his first series!
If you’re only familiar with the more modern interpretations of Luke Cage, the original is… something else.
Luke is more upset than usual because people keep attacking him in his office. He decides to go after one of those guys, even dismissing a potential customer for his hero-for-hire services.
After taking care of his subplots, including a relatively unimpressive fight with a guy who still hasn’t got the memo that Cage has unbreakable skin…
…Cage goes back to his potential client, who wants him to find and capture some people.
Also, because it will be kind of important later: $200 in 1973 would be about $1,172 in 2020.
It takes Luke Cage five hours to find his target, but he’s successful.
At first, things are pretty much the way you’d expect from this kind of comic book…
…then suddenly ROBOTS!
The other robots manage to escape Luke (kind of a recurring theme here!). Since he didn’t expect to deal with robots, he tracks down his customer who is currently staying at an embassy.
And when you mention an embassy in a Marvel comic, Doctor Doom is contractually obligated to show up at some point in the story.
Luke Cage’s reaction to Doctor Doom is the stuff of legends.
“Doctor WHAT? C’mon, man…”
Doom’s reply is equally wonderful.
“Come on, you’re the one with super-strenght and unbreakable skin, plus you go around wearing a chain around your waist AND a tiara on your head, and you think I’M the weird one?”
It turns out that Cage’s customer was actually Doom’s middleman.
Doom wants to hire Cage because he’s looking for robots disguised as black people… and Latveria has no black people because sadly no one wants to emigrate there!
The idea that only a black guy can find some other black guys is… kind of unfortunate to say the least… but money is money, so Luke Cage accepts the gig.
I’m not entirely sure why Doom needs Cage for this job: he’s the one telling him exactly where to go to find the robots. But I do like their different attitudes towards this: Doom is all about planning everything to the last detail, while Cage is well aware that plans have tendency to go haywire.
What’s not to love about Luke Cage fighting robots?
These robots are a blast, by the way. They gave each other names and are worried about each other.
And they fight Luke Cage with their bare hands, with regular guns, and with a two-by-four!
However these robots aren’t exactly Doom’s best, and with a few SPOOM! and PLOW! they are easily defeated.
Interestingly, the narration seems to imply that Cage didn’t really enjoy destroying these robots. Which makes sense since they looked pretty sentient to me.
However, when he goes back to the embassy… it turns out that Doctor Doom has skipped town without paying Cage’s fee!
Holy crap, I don’t think we’ll ever seen Cage THAT angry again.
Continues in Part 2 (where aliens show up!!!)
Luke Cage significance: 0/10
I’m not super informed about Luke Cage’s first series, but while there are a couple of subplots I didn’t mention I don’t think it’s really an important story.
Doom significance: 0/10
Unsurprising considering he’s barely in 2 pages.
Silver Age-ness: 1/10
This is one of the weirdest issues of this series, but robots aren’t particularly more Silver Age than unbreakable skin.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
The Luke Cage series is definitely of its time; concepts are generally fine, even if the atmosphere and especially the dialogue hasn’t aged very well. Still an extremely fun read!
It was a Doombot all along
No indication one way or the other.
Take over the world & Destroy the FF!
Continuing the trend of this era, Doom has something else on his mind at the moment.
Crazy tech
The robots are quite unusual for Doom. Not only their design doesn’t resemble anything else he builds, but they’re surprisingly coordinated and self-aware. Precursors to future versions of the Doombots, perhaps?
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 19
Luke Cage is the latest and unlikely addition to the list.