Luke Cage

Lucas "Luke" Cage, born Carl Lucas and also known as Power Man, is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He first appeared in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1 (June 1972) and was created by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska, Roy Thomas, and John Romita Sr. He is one of the earliest black superheroes to be featured as the protagonist and title character of a Marvel comic book.

Created during the height of the blaxploitation genre, Luke Cage had been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit and gained the powers of superhuman strength and unbreakable skin after being subjected voluntarily to an experimental procedure. Once freed, he becomes a "hero for hire" and has forty-nine issues of solo adventures (comic title renamed to Luke Cage, Power Man with issue #17). In issue #50, Cage teams up with fellow superhero Iron Fist as part of a crime-fighting duo in the renamed title, Power Man and Iron Fist. He later marries the super-powered private investigator Jessica Jones, with whom he has a daughter. In 2005, writer Brian Michael Bendis added Luke Cage to the lineup of the New Avengers, and he has since appeared in various Avengers titles, becoming leader of a group of reformed supervillains called the Thunderbolts.

The character has been substantially adapted from the comics into various forms of media. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Mike Colter portrayed the character in the Netflix television series Jessica Jones (2015–2019), Luke Cage (2016–2018), and The Defenders (2017).