Luke Cage: Second Chances, v. 1

Collects: Cage #1-12, story from Marvel Comic Presents #82 (1992-3)

Released: September 2015 (Marvel)

Format: 320 pages / color / $34.99 / ISBN: 9780785192985

What is this?: Luke Cage takes his solo Hero for Hire business to the Windy City, where he allows a newspaper access to his cases.

The culprits: Writer Marcus McLaurin and penciler Dwayne Turner

Luke Cage, v. 1: Second Chances, v. 1 is 320 pages long, but it easily feels double that length. Reading each page is the equivalent of watching the minute hand on the clock in algebra class: You know you’re getting closer to the end, but you swear to Yeenoghu that you saw that hand move backwards at least once.

Cage, which premiered in 1992, returned Luke Cage to circulation for the first time since Power Man & Iron Fist ended in 1986. That absence is a crime; Luke Cage is too good a character to languish for more than half a decade, and returning Cage to the Marvel Universe is by far Cage’s greatest achievement.

Writer Marcus McLaurin and artist Dwayne Turner decided to update Cage for the ‘90s, which is a good idea. Turner’s modifications are largely successful. Turner gets rid of the afro, yellow shirt, tiara, and chain belt; the new Cage has close-cropped hair, no headgear of any sort, a tucked-in jacket that’s open in a deep V across the chest, and a large metal belt. It’s a good look overall, although the belt looks a lot like an upscaled version of Cage’s old tiara, hung around his waist. But McLaurin’s changes are just as dated today as Cage’s original trappings. The exclamation “Sweet Christmas!” is gone, although other characters use the not-at-all stupid minced oath “Dag!” Cage confronts evil rappers and street gangs, has an “attitude,” and uses ‘90s slang. The book is peppered with random references to mutants. In the end, the book could not be more ‘90s if it tried.

Another part of Cage’s ‘70s past that is jettisoned is his sleazy Times Square environs. Cage is primarily set in Chicago, which should make me like the book more. I’m a sucker for Marvel stories set somewhere other than New York; that’s one reason I enjoy Hulk stories. But as cartoonish as Luke Cage sometimes was in previous series, his setting was important and had an effect on the character. Cage, on the other hand, might as well be set in Minneapolis or Salt Lake City or Portland or any city with a few large buildings downtown. Chicago is a non-entity in this book, and neither the writing nor the art gives any indication Cage has set up shop in the US’s third-largest city.

During Second Chances, Cage is repeatedly harassed by Hardcore, a new villain created by Turner and McLaurin for this series. Unfortunately, Hardcore is an inadequate foil for Cage. He is, essentially, a middle manager, hampered by his boss’s restrictions and his underlings’ incompetence. Hardcore’s only offensive capability — a taser chain — is no threat to Cage. His personality, encapsulated by the occasional familiar quotation he flings at his adversaries and a Southern accent he often forgets to use, is not worth discussing.

Who is Hardcore working for? I’m going to spoil it for you, because it doesn’t matter: Cruz Bushmaster, son of Cage’s old enemy, Bushmaster. Why doesn’t it matter? Cruz appears only in #12, when his plan comes to fruition. He gains Cage’s powers, only to have them sucked dry by his apparently reborn father, who himself seems to die a few pages later in a fight with Cage and Iron Fist. It’s a pointless ending: second-rate villains disposed of in a second-rate story.

Turner and McLaurin made the excellent choice to use Dakota North, a private investigator who had made only a few appearances previous to Cage. Cage has no formal investigatory experience and no time for subtlety, so a character who can actually figure things out is a welcome addition to the cast. However, most of North’s investigations are about Cage himself and his family; she doesn’t help Cage much, and her investigations have little to do with the overall plot. Unfortunately, Turner draws her as an anatomical freak: impssibly thin but busty, long-legged, and wearing tight clothing. I realize that’s sadly not unusual for comics, but Turner also draws her clothes as dark, tight, and otherwise boring. Given that North was once a fashion model, she should never wear boring clothes.

The rest of the supporting cast is dull. Jeryn Hogarth, Heroes for Hire’s attorney, pops up but does nothing interesting. Analisa Medina, editor of the newspaper that follows Cage, is a nonentity. Mickey Hamilton, a photographer, follows Cage around, drops hints about Cage’s father, and serves as someone for Cage to rescue. We learn nothing about Mickey’s personal life or why he makes the choices he does. Troop, an orphan Cage takes in, has a character arc, but it’s a predictable one: he depends on Cage, Cage fails him, and then he joins a gang to get revenge on Cage. Given how much sympathy the book has for Troop, you can probably guess what he does when the gang sets a trap for Cage.

Even characters making guest appearances are dull. Cage’s last interesting client is in #2. The last interesting villain (Kickback) is in #4, and he’s not that interesting; his ability to time travel three minutes into the past or future allows for some interesting causal loops, but Kickback himself gets a complete character change between issues #3 and #4. Many innocents are subjected to the Power Man process, which eventually kills them, but they come and go like mayflies while Hardcase lingers on …

Some of the blame must fall on how Cage himself acts. He makes no strong attachments, other than Troop, pushing everyone else away. When Troop leaves, Cage is alone, with only his brash attitude and surliness for companionship despite living in the metropolis of Chicago. Despite having little trouble romantically in his previous series, he doesn’t date, and his only flirtation is with Medina. (That relationship goes nowhere.) Cage even bristles at the presence of Iron Fist, showing no interest in teaming up — or even being friendly to him.

I had planned on buying Second Chances, v. 2, but now I fear that book’s release. I realize Marvel wants more material featuring Cage out before his Netflix series is released, but it would be better to bury this series. Reading Second Chances, v. 1 is like being afflicted with a cold that won’t go away, one that doesn’t even give you entertaining fever dreams.

Rating: 0.5 of 5

Essential Killraven, v. 1

Collects: Amazing Adventures #18-39, Marvel Team-Up #45, Marvel Graphic Novel #7, and Killraven #1 (1973-6, 1983, 2001)

Released: July 2005 (Marvel)

Format: 504 pages / black and white / $16.99 / ISBN: 9780785117773

What is this?: A former gladiator and his companions fight against the Martians who have enslaved Earth.

The culprits: Writer Don McGregor and others and artists P. Craig Russell, Herb Trimpe, and others

The setup for Killraven is one of those sci-fi concepts Marvel came up with in the ‘70s that didn’t survive beyond the Bronze Age. Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Neal Adams, it has a simple hook: the Martians, after losing the original War of the Worlds, won the rematch in 2001 and subjugated humanity, and only an ex-gladiator named Killraven and his band of Freemen oppose them.

If you’ve ever seen Thundarr the Barbarian — and if you haven’t, I pity you — Essential Killraven, v. 1, might be a little familiar. Killraven fights the Martians (wizards for Thundarr) and lots of monsters. He visits American cities that, despite being ruins, have one distinguishing feature from the pre-war days. Humans have been shaped into weird forms and given superpowers. And then there are the aliens who eat babies …

Wait. That last one wasn’t on TV. And that’s where writer Don McGregor, who took over with Amazing Adventures #21, makes Killraven something other than a needless continuation of a sci-fi classic. His stories have babies eaten as delicacies, forced breeding, and humans tortured, warped, and killed for no real reason. Yes, the casualty rate for Killraven’s band of Freemen is absurdly low, but even they are touched by loss, and why are you complaining? This was a comic book meant for kids, and they’re talking about eating babies because they’re yummy.

The major flaw in Killraven is that the setup lends itself to a lot of repetition. The Freemen head to a new town, fight the weird menace, and then find themselves in a new place at the beginning of the next issue. McGregor does his best to play with that, especially at the end, when he has Freeman Old Skull tell the others his origin story (#37) or has the group run into a fairy-like creature named Mourning Prey in a butterfly-filled Florida swamp (#39), an issue that has the slight tinge of a fever dream about it. But he can’t disguise that repetition, and his comic-booky “man who lives for only one day and must mate” plot (#35) certainly gives that issue the feel of just another Marvel book, despite its trappings. (Bill Mantlo’s fill-in on #33 and his Marvel Team-Up Killraven story only compound the feeling.) Still, McGregor is good for some surprises; when Carmilla Frost joins the Freemen, for instance, it’s Killraven’s friend M’Shulla, not Killraven, who gets the girl.

Additionally, there’s something completely endearing about a comic in which the hero gets so lost that while heading to Yellowstone National Park to find his brother that he travels instead from Indianapolis to Michigan to Chicago to Tennessee to Georgia to Florida. Killraven has no sense of direction, and it appears his cohorts have no desire (or ability) to correct him. To be fair to Killraven, he can’t exactly ask the mutants, collaborators, monsters, and Martians directions on the way, and everyone else they meet is even more clueless than they are. Even more entertaining is that Yellowstone is obviously a trap, and the Martians get so impatient they move the trap to where Killraven is wandering (Cape Canaveral) and don’t bother to disguise it at all. The amusing cherry on top of it all is that Killraven doesn’t question meeting his brother thousands of miles from where each is supposed to be at all. “My brother’s supposed to be in Yellowstone and just runs into me in Florida? Sure, why not?”

That happens in Marvel Graphic Novel #7, and without that issue, this wouldn’t be half as good a book. Without the MGN, Killraven is a meandering story in which McGregor takes his heroes across the eastern U.S. Sure, that gets better as the book goes on, but the story just sort of peters out in Amazing Adventures #39 when the Freemen encounter Mourning Prey. But MGN #7 puts paid to the big motivation for the Freemen’s journey: finding Killraven’s brother. It doesn’t go very well for the characters, but it does end the plot, something that needed to be done.

The obvious way to end the series in MGN #7 would have been with Killraven and the Freemen fighting back against the Martians, leading a revolution. Unfortunately, while that might be a definitive ending, that sort of ending is rarely satisfying: not enough buildup, too many characters, too improbable a plot, or a hundred other problems. Instead, McGregor and artist P. Craig Russell give the readers one reveal, but they do so in a plot much like previous stories. Oh, their ally for the story is more developed and relatable than most of those in the Amazing Adventures run, but it tonally fits with the rest of the story. McGregor even develops Carmilla and M’Shulla’s relationship, as if he expected to write more stories Killraven. (According to McGregor in this interview with Richard Arndt, 50 or so pages of Killraven: Final Lies, Final Truths, Final Battles was written in the late ‘80s, but it was scuttled when Russell couldn’t get assurances it would be published in Marvel’s best format.)

And the art …

Much like Bill Sienkiewicz and Moon Knight, Russell’s art is the biggest selling point for Killraven, and the MGN is where Russell gets the opportunity to show off the most. It’s unfortunate that the size of the art had to be reduced for the Essential’s page dimensions, and for some reason the art isn’t reproduced in the pure black-and-white pencils and inks the rest of the book features. But even the slight muddying can’t hide Russell’s skill or maturation; he was excellent in issues #27-32 and 34-9, but in the years between Amazing Adventures and MGN #7, he’s become something else. The art is polished, fluid, and expressive. His figures all have a litheness about them — even some who shouldn’t, like Old Skull — but his monsters are bizarre, horrific, and most important alien.

Russell wasn’t the first artist on the title. Adams did the first half of the first issue and was followed by one and a half issue by Howard Chaykin; both do good, if brief, work, but we have Adams to blame for the horrible, horrible costume designs. (What the hell did they think the future would be like back then? This is one Essential I was glad had no color, fearing that a ‘70s palette on those ridiculous costumes would sear my eyes.) Although a mismatch of genres, Gene Colan did his usual atmospheric work on one issue (#26). Herb Trimpe (#20-4 and 33) and Rich Buckler (#25) round out the art duties, both doing solid work. Trimpe’s work is similar to the art he produced for the Hulk; Buckler’s work is interesting, more subtle and clear than the other artists.

The book concludes with the Killraven one-shot written and drawn by Joe Lindsor. To call it missable is an understatement of grand proportions; if I had paid for the single issue when it came out in 2001, I would have wanted my money back. There’s nothing in the issue for Killraven fans, except that it advances the timeline without incident by a half year or so. The actual plot, in which Killraven counsels a hippy chick who woke from a cryogenic tube and then promptly wants to go back to sleep when she sees what a hellhole 2020 is, is so light I was afraid it might blow off the page. It was included to fill out the page count, I imagine, but 20 blank pages might have been a better choice.

Essential Killraven is often silly (it is a product of the ‘70s), frequently repetitive, and occasionally stupid (as when McGregor tries to convince us “mud brother” is a term of endearment that Killraven has given M’Shulla instead of the racial slur it so obviously seems to be). But Killraven is worth a glance for some of the details and the P. Craig Russell art.

Rating: (3 of 5)