The covers are both awesome and I'm having a really hard time describing things today so we'll move right on.
We open with another flashback to the day of Cage's arrest, and we see what happened after Cage strolled into that alley: Stryker helped the battered Rachman off the ground. Soon, the two of them and Tombstone were clinking champagne glasses over huge stacks of money. Cage narrates that one incident seemingly unconnected to another started something else entirely... that one small gesture changed Harlem forever. "And it would have stayed that way for a long time to come... but they messed with the wrong negro." Cage takes that sack of cash and puts it in a locker that's, like, on the street. There's a whole row of them. I've only been to New York once, but I'm just going to take the comic's word for it that this exists.
Stryker, well enough to be discharged from the hospital but still bandaged like he were the Invisible Man, is taken to his club - and finds it burning. Randall Banticoff stumbles into the police station exhausted and bloodied, claiming to have escaped from his kidnappers before collapsing on the ground. Life's full of surprises... Cage thinks he missed one when it was staring him right in the face. That's why he's back at the morgue to take another look at Daisy.
The first time he examined her body, he'd mistaken the bloating he saw as an indication that she'd been dead longer than estimated. But his mind was someplace else, he wasn't thinking straight. He was just going through the motions. The swell is gone. He knows why even before he pulls back the sheet, seeing a huge hole in Daisy's stomach that wasn't there before. She was pregnant when she died... and somebody removed the evidence.
Cage hears the door, and it's none other than his old pal Tombstone. He'd tailed Cage there the first time and figured he'd come back. Tombstone's got a score to settle, but not before he tells Cage a little story. You see, to make it big in Harlem, you need whitey in your pocket - and if your whitey has a badge, that's even better. Tombstone and Stryker made sure Rachman heard that Josephine liked "a big, strong, cornfed cracker like him." (Note: other than "cracker", none of those words actually apply to Rachman). Anyway, this ensured that Rachman would mack on her at the club with reckless abandon. They knew that would get a bee in Cage's bonnet and Rachman would take a beating from him. From there it was a simple matter of taking care of Cage and offering Rachman a helping hand.
There was just one problem with this whole set-up: Cage was supposed to die. Cage says he's sorry about that, and Tombstone is, too. Because when Rachman went after Josephine again, she had a man in the joint to think of. That's when things got messy... that's when Tombstone got called in to clean it up. He ambushed her in the shower and gave her those scars with his trusty switchblade. Oh, she struggled at first... but Tombstone thinks she actually started to like it as much as he did after a while.
Cage does just what Tombstone wants him to: lose his cool. But Tombstone isn't expecting what Cage has behind his back. He stabs Tombstone with needles hooked up to tanks of embalming fluid. Then... he turns the valves on the tanks. He walks away and shuts the door behind him. Tombstone turns into tomato surprise a few seconds later. Cage sees a car outside, and figures it's waiting for Tombstone. Well, Tombstone ain't coming. Cage gets in the driver's seat; backseat passenger Rachman asks him if it's over, not looking up from his paper to notice who his guest is. Cage turns around and tells him not to mess with another dog's bone. He sends the car right off a bridge, jumping out just in time, leaving the injured Rachman guaranteed to drown in the water below.
Meanwhile, a cop advises Banticoff to cancel a party he's holding for Daisy's favorite charity. Banticoff refuses to back down in spite of his recent kidnapping - Daisy used to say "When you're in pain or sorrow, help another and it will heal you." Since he's being so obstinate, they've got blues working as extra security for the event. Cage reads about Banticoff's kidnapping in the paper and tries to put it all together. Daisy was pregnant, she was killed, and now the baby's gone. Maybe it was her secret that got her killed. In any case, he knows what he has to do.
He goes to St. Adrian's, and surprises Josephine in the Confessional. He just wants her to listen. When he got pinched, he thought his days were numbered. A black guy like him doesn't beat up a white cop and not get his. It took a few years before he realized it wasn't coming. That's when it hit him: killing him would've been too easy. "Instead, pick me apart slowly. Take my freedom, take my girl, take my—" "Son."
Cage didn't know he had a son. Josephine had wanted to tell him, but he was deep in the hole. That boy is the only reason she's still alive... for all of Tombstone's ugliness, he was always a mama's boy. He took pity on her as a single mother and let her live, but Stryker forced her to fall off the face of the Earth, keeping Junior as insurance in case she tried to get creative. Junior, after his daddy. Josephine caresses Cage's face through the screen. Stryker's using his own son as a shield. There's no course of action that doesn't put his boy in danger. But he can't not do anything.
Cage tells Josephine that he probably won't see her in heaven. Why not? "Because I'm about to kill a whole lotta people." As Cage makes his way across town, he lets his mind take him to the place where normal people live. In that place, he rescues Junior and they go with Josephine to live happily ever after on that apple farm. "But this is Harlem and I'm not normal." Instead, he does his thing. He gets word out that he wants to talk to Stryker, he sets the place. Of course, it's the only place Cage cares about: the barber shop. Cage's own father was a barber, and so was his father. One of the few trades available to a black man back in the day.
When he walks in, he sees Junior in one of the chairs, getting his head shaved by Stryker. Stryker says that on the cotton field, they didn't have razors - they used anything they could find that was sharp. For instance, the piece of flint that he's using right now and a little corn oil. Takes a steady hand, though... one false move and you had a body on your hands. Junior is clearly distressed, but doesn't dare cry. Stryker wants his money back. His men have Lil' Walt at gunpoint, by the way.
Cage tells Stryker he doesn't owe him anything. They were like brothers, and he put the screws to him. Stryker insists it was just business — and "accidentally" cuts Junior's head pretty deep. He asks for a towel. Cage tells him not to bother; let the kid bleed to death. Stryker says he's bluffing, but if he is he's not showing it. Cage says Josephine was a whore and he doesn't think the kid's even his. Stryker has a Villainous Breakdown, unwilling to accept that he doesn't have total control of this situation.
Cage grabs a towel... and uses it to smack the flint out of Stryker's hand. Lil' Walt knocks out the guy holding a gun to his back with a jar of combs in the confusion, and one of the other barbers uses an Aerosol Flamethrower to handle the other goon. Cage tells Junior that he didn't mean any of the things he said about him or Josephine. But Stryker isn't finished with him. Gun to the back of Cage's head, he's ready to see how the invincible man fares against six rounds through the melon. Cage isn't scared - he's mad that his boy is going to see him die like this... and at the hands of such a tool.
Lil' Walt to the rescue! A lucky toss of a pair of scissors catches Stryker right in the eye. He stumbles backwards and knocks over a picture of Lil' Walt when he was with the Harlem Hellfighters. Cage says Stryker got off easy... but in knocking over that picture, helped him see what was always right in front of him. Cage talks to Lil' Walt for a minute, gives Junior the key to his locker, and gets a heartfelt hug from his boy before he leaves.
Cage says Harlem isn't a place to him anymore. It's a time. And that time's passed him by. He goes to Banticoff's building to have a word with his employer. The papers said Banticoff got kidnapped by Stryker's men... but there aren't any uniforms guarding the service entrance. Why? Because it's bull. Louis Armstrong himself is playing as Cage walks up to Banticoff's table and tells him he knows who killed Daisy.
Here's how it went down. A black man gets a taste of paradise in Paris after the war. "Treated like a hero. Even better, treated like a man." Then he comes back home, back to being a second class citizen. He's worried he'll never know fulfillment like he did again. So he re-invents himself. Very light skinned, he easily passes for white and under this new persona he's quickly accepted into the highest rungs of society. Soon, he meets and marries a wealthy white socialite, and things are good. So good, in fact, that without his wife's knowledge he uses her money to finance a gang in his old neighborhood.
However, fate deals him a bad hand: his faithful and loyal wife is pregnant. He's in shock; due to an accident in the war, he'd thought himself sterile. Soon this shock turns to fear when he realizes that this baby would almost certainly expose his secret. "He decides, yes, it's better to kill her and be a grieving widower than to have the baby and be just another broke negro." By now, the police have crowded around Banticoff's table. Anyway. he does it - with his own hands. Now he just needs a patsy to pin it on, someone with a record... someone nobody would care if he went back to jail or died. Someone like Cage.
Banticoff pulls a gun on Cage. "Couldn't stay on the field. Had to come into the house and mess it all up for all of us. That's the problem with you dark-skinned types. Jealous." He stands up and shoots Cage twice, right in the chest... but Cage doesn't even flinch as he takes those slugs, hitting Banticoff with such a vicious punch that he flies out the window. Cue Big "NO!" on Banticoff's part as he falls to his death from the tall building. Josephine opens up Cage's locker and collects the money.
Back at Banticoff's party, Louis Armstrong asks Cage how the Hell he managed to take those shots and keep going. "Because I'm Luke Cage. Tell people what you saw here tonight." Cage leaves the building and walks onto the docks by the bridge. He looks back at the building and says "Sweet Christmas" before falling backwards into the water. "Rarely do people know the real story. They only know the myth."
We cut to Lil' Walt's barbershop, where Cage's narration continues. He says that's okay, because the myth is stronger - as Lil' Walt looks at his Hellfighters picture. "R. Banticoff" in the bottom right corner. It's cleaner, as we see the cover story for the Amsterdam News, about Luke Cage's heroics in the Banticoff case and mysterious disappearance. A black cop at the corner of 125th and Broadway smiles as he reads it, as do a black businessman and a black schoolteacher in different parts of town. "It allows people to believe what they want. Gives them hope. Gives them pride." Josephine reads that paper, too, as she and Junior take the bus out of the city. She smiles. "Gives them a tomorrow."
I'm sorry, I think I have something in my eye.
End of Luke Cage Noir.
Coming up next: I.... am not sure. This one's going to be a touch act to follow. I'm only really considering Punisher, Daredevil, and Iron Man, though, since I want to save Wolverine, Weapon X, and Deadpool Pulp for the last few entries. Punisher would probably have a lot of thematic common ground with Luke Cage, so I'm leaning towards that one despite it being one of the ones I didn't read. Oh, and sorry to let you down, SKJAM, Junior's just fine. Did you see the big twist coming?
