Most people think that the best decade to be an Avengers fan was in the ’10s and this makes sense. It was when the team became the most popular thing in the world, the Marvel Cinematic Universe making it and its members into household names. However, there’s another school of thought, one that says differently. Instead, these people posit, the ’00s were the best generation for the Avengers, because they laid the groundwork for all the success of the future, as well as expanding upon the mythos of the team, creating ideas that would make their way to the big screen. New Avengers was the biggest book in comics, combining Marvel’s superstars with the Avengers’ greats and it made one character into a icon – Luke Cage.
Luke Cage was first introduced in the ’70s, part of a new wave of Marvel characters in the decade of disco who would keep the publisher vital. His team-up with Iron Fist made him even more popular, but the two characters couldn’t really keep that up long term. Cage’s return in the ’00s was honestly something of a fluke, helped along by an industry that was pushing boundaries to get attention after the ’90s almost killed it. Luke gained a whole generation of fans in the ’00s, as well as the kind of great character growth that made him even better. Luke has become a solid C-list character in the 2020s, someone everyone knows and shows up a lot, but isn’t that important. This is the second time he’s fallen from prominence, so I think it’s time to ask the question – can Luke get back to the heights he was at? Should he? The answer lies in the ’00s.
Luke Cage is an example of Marvel imitating life. In the ’70s, blaxploitation movies were all the rage and Luke was basically the superhero version of that. A prisoner chosen for an experiment, he got unbreakable skin and super strength and decided to use his powers to clean up his neighborhood. This led to him becoming the hero of Harlem, meeting Iron Fist and the rest of NYC’s street level heroes, and paved the way for his time in the Avengers. By the year 2000, he was a character that hadn’t had a book since 1997 (a reboot of Heroes for Hire that didn’t catch on) but one that most fans know about.
Marvel started their MAX line in the early ’00s and Cage was one of the first books they put out on the line. Brian Azzarello and legendary horror artist Richard Corben gave readers an over the top, violent story. The book was underprinted and it became an hot item thanks to Wizard Magazine, who was pushing the book hard. Cage would start showing up in books written by Brian Michael Bendis as well, appearing as Jessica Jones’s lover in Alias, showing up in Daredevil, and playing a role in Secret War. It was something of a gradual roll out and it succeeded.
New Avengers was a change to the Avengers formula and Cage was the perfect example of how well it could work. The former street-level hero became one of the stars of the book and fans loved him. Cage is a simple character – a man who wants to do the right thing and has the power to do so – and Bendis was able to put this man out there. His relationship with Jones humanized him. The key to this whole thing, in my opinion, is focusing on Luke. He was still part of an ensemble, but he was at the head of it. This focus on him allowed him to grow and allowed readers to see how he reacted to his new life.
Cage rose to the top of the Avengers, becoming the leader of the team after Civil War. He defined an entire era of the group. He’d soon became the trusted Avenger, the leader that everyone respected and it was awesome. He became so much more popular and it coincided with Marvel’s greatest successes in the ’00s. He led Avengers teams until 2012 and was left off the team during Jonathan Hickman’s landmark run on Avengers and New Avengers. It was the first time 8 years he wasn’t an Avenger.
Since then, Cage has gone back to being a sidekick or partner and that’s the problem with the character right now. Cage is a great character, but what makes Cage so cool is seeing him, letting him be the one everyone is looking at. That’s not to say he shouldn’t have a supporting cast or anything like that, but Luke shines the brightest when he’s the center of attention. You can say a lot about Bendis’s New Avengers, but the man put Luke front and center of the team and it made readers fall in love. Making him a partner again and not a star hurt him.
That’s the biggest problem with him right now – Marvel has stopped putting him out front and started burying him a bit. Since he’s led the Avengers, he’s also led the Thunderbolts, joined the Defenders, and eventually became mayor of New York City. All of this is cool, but it’s taken Luke away from where we liked him – up front. I don’t like Bendis-written events, but I loved seeing how this guy from Harlem reacted to the craziness of the Marvel Universe. Cage is great as a street level character, but he’s even better as an A-list Avenger dealing with the greatest threats ever.
Cage became a star in the 2000s because Marvel and its creator made a concentrated effort to make him popular. It worked and it showed the character where he was the best – with the Avengers, fighting the biggest threats out there. Since then, they’ve stopped that and the character has fallen again. So, does Luke deserve another chance? Of course he does; most characters do. That’s the fun of comics. However, Marvel needs to realize they can’t do it in half-measures; Luke works the best when he’s the brightest star in the sky.
Luke Cage as mayor is a cool idea, but it often feels like a pretty jail cell for a character that should be out and about. It keeps Cage in an important role, so Marvel can point to it when fans like me say, “Hey, can I have some more Luke Cage?” However, that isn’t where Luke Cage should be. Luke Cage and his fans have seen the promised land of the pinnacle of the Marvel Universe and we don’t want to go back to where he was before the ’00s.
Luke Cage is in an interesting place. The Netflix Defenders have come to the MCU and Cage has always been one of the most popular of them. Fans want to see more of him, both in the MCU and in the comics, and Marvel needs to listen to its fans. I don’t really have an opinion on him in the MCU, but I became a massive Luke Cage fan and I want that Luke back. Marvel can make him an icon again with a concerted, two-pronged effort, pushing him in the comics and beyond. Luke Cage deserves another chance to get a whole new generation of fans.
