Issue(s): Cage #2
Cover Date: May 92
Title: "Creative hate"
Credits:
Marc McLaurin - Writer
Dwayne Turner - Penciler
Christopher Ivy - Inker
Kelly Corvese - Editor

Review/plot:
Luke Cage has taken on a job protecting a hip-hop artist, MC Large. Prior to a concert, there is an attack by a guy in a suit of armor that used to be used by the anti-mutant organization, The Right. The guy in the armor says that he's from a group called The Hammer.

The person in the armor turns out to be a kid.

Since alerting the police to a group of white supremacists intent on attacking MC Large would cause the concert to get canceled, the group convinces Cage to hold the kid and not report it until after the concert is over.

The Hammer do indeed turn out to be an offshoot of The Right. They're expanding from fighting mutant subversion to "all" subversion.

The Hammer attack during the concert.

Cage gets some help from a kid that was part of MC Large's entourage, someone that Large rescued from homelessness.

The kid, Daryl 'Troop' Andrews, will stick around as a supporting character in this series, kind of a sidekick to Cage.

Cage is able to stop the attack.

Meanwhile, Dakota North gets attacked by a ninja at the Chicago Spectator building.

The ninja turns out to be Hardcore, the villain that was introduced last issue. But Dakota doens't learn that it's him. Hardcore gets away with some files on Luke Cage, but it turns out that what he was really after was not in the file.

And in a lead in for next issue, three super-villains, Tombstone, Nitro, and a new character called Kickback enter the Spectator...

...and Nitro blows the place up.

The art in this is very rough, and the writing isn't so great either. I like the use of the Right. I like the idea of the anti-discrimination mutant metaphor kind of evolving backwards to cover real discrimination. But aside from that there isn't a lot to the story. There's a bit about how maybe the hip-hop artist and his manager Kurt Lockely (possibly an analogue to Public Enemy's producer Hank Shocklee) aren't such great guys themselves, but it's underdeveloped. Which is kind of for the best because i didn't need a false equivalency story. But there isn't really a strong message here. Still, i don't mind Luke Cage fighting people in Right armor, and i don't mind Dakota North getting a little action, and nothing here is terrible; just not great.

The use of a couple of established villains for the next arc is theoretically more promising, though.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Next issue begins "six hours" after Nitro's explosion.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

This is a book very obviously written by an editor. The amount of obscure or random things from continuity that show up borders on the absurd. The whole thing doesn't have much going for it beyond the continuity porn.

It's not very well written and the art is completely unspectacular and below average. It's almost like this is the book that everyone seems to think Mark Gruenwald books are.

the Hammer goons are just in armor, but all of the references to the Right's smiley-faced troopers in the mutant books suggested they were cyborgs.

I liked the idea shown here that some of the members of the Right were also white supremacists. If you have an organization of militant racists who hate a certain group of people so much that they want to murder them, the odds are good that they are not going to be at all enlightened about *any* other groups who they perceive as being different from them.