This cover is fantastic. Cage strolls down the street casually in spite of being on fire. The variant has Cage and Josephine dancing in formal wear - but Cage has bullet holes in his chest and Josephine has her scars.
Picking up where we left off, Cage tries to comfort the love of his life. She pushes him away and tells him to never come back. Cage sneaks into a motel room via an open window - and finds Stryker, with two big bodyguards, waiting there for him. Finding Cage wasn't so hard for a guy with such a big information network. Stryker has a proposal: Cage leaves town before he gets himself killed and goes to Maryland to run an apple farm. He's got some scratch and the deed in an envelope for him right now.
Cage asks Stryker why he's doing this. It's because of what Cage did, of what he became, on the night of his arrest. Tombstone shot him twice, square in the heart. Cage was on his back... and then he got up, standing to face Tombstone once more. Nobody'd ever seen anything like it. "To think that a black man was invincible? Sure is somethin'. Somethin' special." Cage insists he's no hero, but Stryker says the people of Harlem think he is — and the last thing they need right now is to find the legendary Power-Man dead in the streets. I hadn't noticed this before, but ever since he got out of the joint Cage has been wearing the suit he got arrested in; it still has those bullet holes just over his heart.
Cage says he has to use the restroom before they head out. When he's in there, he narrates that going along with Stryker is a one way ticket to six feet under. Which means Stryker did something bad, and he's about to do something stupid. Looking around the room, he realizes that some of these old buildings still have gaslights. "Bad for them. Good for me." He puts the lights out, breaks the window, and makes his getaway. Stryker and his goons burst into the dark room. One of the goons lights a match for light. Stryker can make out something Cage had written on the mirror with his finger: "Kaboom". He notices the lights, and then the match. Cue Big "NO!" as a particularly nasty looking explosion demolishes the room and the one next to it.
Cage watches from the roof. Stryker survives, managing to run downstairs and onto the street, where his limo driver tries to put him out with a fire hydrant. Over this, Cage narrates that he's not sure if Stryker is the one who hurt Josephine... but he lied to him and tried to get him killed. The way he sees it, the man got what he deserved. Right about now, most people would skip town. Luke Cage, on the other hand, has a reputation to protect. We then return to that flashback. Cage stood up after being shot in the chest and knocks Tombstone flat with a vicious right punch. Luke Cage has a reputation. In fact, it's just about all he has left.
Cage says that sometimes when you're lost in the woods, you just need to retrace your steps. That's why he thinks it's time to talk to Jackie, the dancer who fed him lies about Josephine in the first issue, again. He finds her at the train station, and "accidentally" bumps her onto the tracks under the pretense of being absorbed in reading the newspaper. He starts interrogating her, never looking up from his paper. She keeps reaching for her bag, which landed just beyond the third rail. She spills: Tombstone got the royal treatment by the police after he shot Cage, to the point that they made him a cop himself. However, Tombstone and Officer Rachman were dirtier than a pig sty. With Stryker, they took over every racket they could find (booze, pros, numbers), and even starting bringing in heroin.
Cage is surprised about that last one. Moving heroin's extremely expensive. Jackie says they're also hooked up with some rich black dude downtown; his money is what's running all this. And what about Josephine? Turns out Rachman made another move on her after Cage got put away. When she rejected him, he had Tombstone cut her up and Stryker make her disappear. Jackie's told him all he needs to know, so he pulls her off the tracks - but she needs her bag. "It's said that when the dragon gets its claws in you, it takes your mind, body — and soul. You become something other than what you were.", Cage narrates as Jackie steps on the third rail and electrocutes herself. "You're already dead. You just don't know it yet."
The Amsterdam News reads "Luke Cage wanted for Murder! MIDNIGHT SPECIAL!" We cut to Stryker's hospital room, where the guy's tucked neatly into bed, wrapped up like a mummy, and fed through a tube. He says he wants Cage dead. Rachman, in a wheelchair, and Tombstone, with a sling around his arm, tell him to join the club. Rachman insists he's already dead — the question now is just how much pain they can bring him. The trio's mysterious benefactor enters the room, unseen by the reader except in shadows. He says it's pathetic that Harlem's baddest have been humbled by such a low-rent hood.
We're back with Cage, who has returned to the room he woke up in after being knocked out last issue. You know, the blood-soaked room with evidence scattered about to frame him for Daisy's murder. Cage thinks about what Jackie told him, that black money downtown was financing Stryker, Tombstone, and Rachman. He finds that odd, since there isn't any black money south of 125th. How is Randall Banticoff connected to this? Or is he? Cage notices a wall featuring nothing but pictures of Daisy - a planted Stalker Shrine to make it seem like he was obsessed with the woman. He notices something about them... the flash is too bright and they're overexposed. Only one person he knows is that fast and that sloppy.
Cut to some kind of cabaret or something, where Cage talks backstage to a photographer called "Snap". I'm guessing he's supposed to be a version of "Snap" Wilson, the Falcon. Anyway, Snap confirms that he took those photos. He says the Banticoffs were regulars in Harlem. Cage is surprised to hear that Mr. Banticoff was in on this, and Snap tells him they got a full pass. Cage explains in narration that certain white people were let in to see things most whites never see, "from the rent parties to the Savoy Room jazz—off to things you'd never believe." Peeking out from behind the curtain, he sees an audience full of them watching the show. Cage thinks they should continue their conversation outside.
Snap says Rachman payed him to take those pictures of Daisy in secret. He doesn't know anything else, though; less he knew, the better, it seems. Doesn't matter, since knowing Rachman was involved is pretty much all he needed. He tries to pay Snap off, but he won't accept Cage's money. Cage is his hero. He was there when he got shot. It changed the way he thought about everything. Cage tells him it isn't like that, but it was to Snap. But if Cage is in a giving mood, he'd love to take a picture for posterity.
Back at Stryker's hospital room, the big boss rants at his Quirky Miniboss Squad for letting one guy confound them so much. Stryker claims to have an ace up his sleeve. Meanwhile, Cage is thinking. Daisy wasn't cheating if her husband was around all the time. He's obviously connected to her murder in some way, but how? Did he owe money to someone or screw around with the wrong black guy's woman? "Or was it just good old greed and he did it himself? The pieces were all there. I just had to put them together."
Cage returns to Fronty's Meat Market, and isn't pulling his punches at the door this time. He doesn't bother with that "password" stuff, hooking his fingers in the guy's nose and banging his head against the door again - only many more times and with much more force than before. He tells the revelers in the club to get out of the place or face off against the Power-Man. He doesn't find any clues, but he finds a whole lot of money, which is almost as good. He collects the money in a sack, torches the place, and starts firing his gun into the air as he walks down the sidewalk. "When you start a war, you want to keep sure they know who they're fighting."
It all started that night. "From here out, I was invincible. Indestructible. I was Power-Man.", he narrates as we're treated to another flashback to that fateful day. This one, however, continues from there. After decking Tombstone, Cage walks into an alley and grits his teeth in pain. He pulls a flask out of his jacket... and sees two bullets stuck in it. "But I wasn't bulletproof. I was just very lucky." He tosses the flask into a gutter and surrenders when the police surround him moments later. That's when it all began.
In Stryker's hospital room, Stryker brings in their trump card: a young boy by the name of Lucas Cage, Jr. Stryker, Tombstone, and Rachman laugh uproariously (and, of course, evilly).
That night, Randall Banticoff is knocked out by an unknown assailant and kidnapped.
End of issue #3.
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