Issue(s): Power Man & Iron Fist #123
Cover Date: May 86
Title: "Getting ugly"
Credits:
Christopher Priest - Script
Christopher Priest & M.D. Bright - Plot
M.D. Bright - Penciler
Jerry Acerno - Inker
Don Daley - Assistant Editor
Bob Harras - Editor

Review/plot:
This is a Luke Cage solo story, or rather, one that doesn't feature Iron Fist, that makes nice use of news reports as a narration device. The story is that a failed super-soldier, William Blake, has been arrested by Tyrone King...

...with help from Cage and the Falcon, after killing black cops and civilians and leaving an (off panel) racial slur on a wall. Blake's powers cause him to look like a big irradiated monster, but a glitchy computer (apparently the operator has hacked it so that he can play Super Pac-Man) says that Blake is white.

The news reports detail unrest in the black community after the army takes custody of the super-soldier, because they think that means he won't be charged for his crimes. Cage, riled by protestors' comments to him about not being black enough...

...is goaded into breaking into the army prison to take Blake back to the police. In the subsequent fight, however, Cage discovers that Blake is really black...

...which causes the protests to vanish, and that he's been acting "ugly", per the issue's title.

In a sense you can file this under the same category as the "leader of the sons of the serpents turns out to be non-white", and i am surprised to see what amounts to a "black people are too quick to claim racism" story. But taken at a human level, with Priest and Bright showing Cage's flaws, it's an understandable story, and it touches on an issue that has plagued Cage since at least when he moved out of Times Square to work with Iron Fist.

And for contrast, there's Tyrone King, for whom i guess this is just a jurisdictional dispute (his comments are also interesting in light of the eventual revelation that he's really Master Khan)...

...although he doesn't have a problem exploiting the unrest to that end.

Two quibbles. First, i really don't see the Falcon, who especially in his recent appearances in this series under Priest has been shown to be close with SHIELD, helping with or even condoning an attack on a military base to give a villain back to the local cops.

Second, Cage and King have been shown to be antagonistic towards each other, and even in this issue Cage delivers the letter from Misty from last issue while saying that it doesn't mean they are now friends, but at the end of the issue they're both shown hanging out together with Falcon. Especially since just prior to that we saw King taking Cage to task over his black "hang-up". I would have liked to see how they wound up in the same apartment.

Also worth mentioning that next issue is mostly a solo Iron Fist story and that these two stories occur after a change in the Editor credits from Denny O'Neil to Bob Harras. It's always interesting to see the lag time on these books. I'll talk more on the final issue (#125) about how O'Neil's instructions to Priest affected the ending. Both solo stories are by the regular creative teams and issue #124 has important development for Iron Fist, so these aren't just inventory stories or something, but somehow Bob Harras is listed as editor already even though, at least per Christopher Priest, Denny O'Neil had influence on the final issue.

Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 102,109. Single issue closest to filing date = 122,999.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• When Falcon attacks Blake, he worries because the last time he attacked someone without knowing their capabilities, as in Falcon #3, "Electro wiped up the street with me".

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A