YMMV / Luke Cage: Hero for Hire

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• Complete Monster:
  • Cage Vol. 1 (1992-1993): Hardcore is hired by crime boss Cruz Bushmaster to find a way to give him Luke Cage's powers. To learn more about Luke, Hardcore hires Nitro to kidnap Luke's friend Dakota North, even knowing that Nitro will kill several people in process. Hardcore later kidnaps the scientist who gave Luke Cage his powers, and is forcing him to work in his lab in Colorado that is run like a concentration camp, where Hardcore will kidnap people with no family and experiment on them. These experiments either kill the test subjects immediately, or give the subjects them powers but kills them later. Hardcore reveals that, to distract Luke, he allowed one of his test subjects, a man named Steele, to escape with samples of the Power Man formula, which Steele is planning on using to poison the water supply in Colorado, to force the world to work on a cure. Luke stops Steele, but Hardcore blows up the lab, killing everyone left inside. Later, Hardcore kidnaps Luke again and threatens to kill several of Luke's loved ones if Luke doesn't agree to a dangerous experiment that will give Cruz his powers.
  • Douglas Carmody. See that page for details.
• Creator's Pet: Many fans grew tired of Luke's overexposure over the years since he's a favorite of Brian Michael Bendis.
• Faux Symbolism: The 'cage' in his name and the chain-belt his old costume had.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Doctor Doom infamously once told Luke Cage◊ that he was surprised to see a black man in the Fantastic Four. Years later, when Michael B. Jordan was cast in the 2015 adaptation, many expressed a similar kind of bewilderment.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Where's my money, honey?"
  • "Nobody laughs at Mr. Fish!"
  • And of course, "Sweet Christmas!"
• My Real Daddy: Mary Jo Duffy has probably had the greatest influence on the character, and before that his 00s revival by Brian Michael Bendis. Honorable mentions should probably go to Chris Claremont and Fred Van Lente too.
• Nightmare Fuel: In the 2018 series, Luke develops CTE as a consequence of years of taking blows to the head, and the symptoms start to pop up. At one point, he struggles to remember his own daughter's name.

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