Collects Luke Cage Noir #1-4.
*During his ten years inside Riker's, he went by the name of Inmate 3457AG15. But on the outside, he was known as Luke "The Power Man" Cage, an urban legend to a people that needed a hero.
Now he's been released. But on his first day on the outside, he finds out there's one hell of a price to being free. He's been extended a helping hand by a childhood chum, Stryker, now mob boss of all of Harlem. He's been given a very stiff arm by one of the city's most vicious enforcers, Tombstone. And he's been given a hard job by Randall Banticoff, a white man with a white wife found dead in a Harlem alleyway.
Is Luke Cage destined to be a hero for hire? Or just a chump for a double-crossing setup?
The ultimate urban legend!
The people of Harlam thought he was dead. Or that he'd had experiments performed on him behind bars at Riker's. Or that his skin was strong as steel. The people of Harlem think a lot of things about him. But aside from all the mystery he carries with him like an extra layer of skin, there is one thing the people know for certain: Luke Cage is a bad, bad man -- and you do not want to cross him.
While he was incarcerated, the world has changed: Prohibition outlawed liquor and beer, and made them more profitable than ever. The old demarcation lines of New York's gangland turf have been redrawn and then redrawn again. And Josephine? Well... that's a story about a girl that's too tragic to tell. But it's Luke Cage's plan to find his old love and hear her story from her own mouth.
But his plans go awry when a white girl is found dead on 141st Street in Harlem. That's not a good thing in any location -- but on these streets, it means there's a lot more killing yet to be done. And when the girl's husband comes calling on Cage to be a "hero for hire," Luke finds himself square in the middle of it.
Also in the middle of it all: Stryker. There's a lot of real estate between 125th and 180th streets, and Stryker runs the game. And now that his boyhood pal Luke Cage has been unexpectedly sprung from ten years in lockup, it seems Stryker could use a guy like him. Especially with a vicious enforcer like Tombstone on the loose and causing problems -- big problems. *Source: Dust Jacket
**A lot can change in ten years. And rarely for the better. Local legend, Luke Cage, invincible, unstoppable, unflappable, finds that out the hard way when he returns to the mean streets of Prohibition-era Harlem after a ten-year stretch in Riker’s Island. All he wants is to be back in the loving arms of his woman, but certain powerful men have different plans for Cage. Willis Stryker, Cage’s childhood friend turned Godfather of Harlem, wants him on his crew, and under his thumb. And wealthy white socialite Randall Banticoff, whose wife is now very dead, murdered in a Harlem alley, wants Cage to investigate her death. Cage is about to learn that coming home is never easy, and to survive he might just have to kill a whole lot of people. **Source: marvel.com