User blog:Gojirob/Review of Luke Cage Hero For Hire Volume 1-7

This is a little Christmas gem, full of good and goofy 70's weirdness. I first read in one of Marvel's Holiday Grab Bag Treasury Editions, and was recently reminded of it by Linkara's Christmas Day review in 2018.

Seeking a quiet Christmas, the first since his super-origin (and the first since he left Hellgate Prison), Luke goes to pick up his girlfriend at the clinic where she works as a nurse. There, he has the first of three encounters with a seeming lunatic embodying harsh aspects of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, and calling himself Marley, though this is never confirmed as his real name. The Past is dressed as a sadistic 19th Century man, beating a newsboy with a cane. The Present disguises himself as a disabled, homeless, stereotypically trigger-happy Vietnam Vet, and the Future is out of an Orwellian dystopia, demanding ID cards and again opening fire. This triggers Luke into getting that all of them are the same man, so Luke fights and then turns him over to the cops. Like something out of BTAS, Luke later finds that the psycho broke out and overwhelmed the officers. Chasing him down, Luke is captured and hears his tirade about the modern world, as well as his plans to end it all. Some chance luck helps Luke stop him in time.

It's a fun adventure, though it does wander into some fairly staid tropes. Supposedly, the guy built his bomb with parts stolen in 1946, a time when some fiction seems to think there was no attention to security at all. He has lunatic strength, which only seems to enable their antics and never leaves them wiped. Luke disarms but doesn't have the seeming insane homeless vet secured after using a machine gun on him. 'Let me destroy this sick sad world' and 'Is That You Santa?' also come into play.

But it is like watching a 1972 Christmas episode of a crime/cop show, and I wish it could have been tweaked as an ep of the Netflix Cage.

Gojirob (talk) 20:24, January 4, 2019 (UTC)