luke cage

It’s a rare condition in this day and age, to read any bad news when it comes to Luke Cage. We wouldn’t dare break that streak, either, as the minds behind that Avengers/Full House parody have now brought us a mashup of Luke Cage with Family Matters, and it’s eerily perfect.

We’ve barely recovered from Luke Cage and snippets of Iron Fist shown at New York Comic-Con, and already The Defenders have a big bad. Get your power-loaders ready, as Alien star Sigourney Weaver will menace the street-level foursome as The Defenders’ main villain!

As readers will know from our weekly Best Cosplay Ever feature, we’re big fans of cosplay at ComicsAlliance. The comics, sci-fi, gaming, and fantasy communities have proved time and again their exceptional talents for homemade disguises and superheroic sartorial excellence, and all of their craft and skill are on display this weekend at New York Comic-Con. Our chief cosplay correspondent Betty Felon is on hand to document as much of it as she can. Scroll down for some of the very finest cosplay from New York.

Luke Cage and Danny Rand have never been as high profile as they are right now; with one successful Netflix show in the can and another on the horizon, the Heroes For Hire are hotter than ever. However, things might get a little too hot in November's Power Man and Iron Fist #10 as David Walker and Sanford Greene bring back former Runaway Alex Wilder in a new story titled "Harlem Burns."

Odds are, you're one of the millions worldwide who binged all of Luke Cage when it premiered on Netflix last weekend. With its sterling cast, gripping story & standout score, Marvel's newest original TV series for the streaming giant is the best one they've made yet. If you loved the NYC authenticity & hip-hop/R&B-infused aesthetic of the series --- and you've read all the Luke Cage comics you can get your hands on --- we've got five of the best creator-owned comics that capture that same feeling. Love that? Try this!

The dust is still settling on whether Luke Cage marks the most Power-ful of Netflix’s Defender series, but certainly working in its favor is the rich complement of musicians, some of whom even contribute to the soundtrack. Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker apparently even paid tribute to Prince in an early episode, hoping the legendary musician would cameo.

Anyone who made it through the entirety of Luke Cage knows that the Marvel Netflix series paid homage to the character’s 1970s roots where possible, but primarily focused on more topical implications of a bulletproof black superhero. At least some think the character was most effective in the original blaxploitation context, as Quentin Tarantino claims of his prior idea for a Luke Cage movie.

If your Luke Cage binge has ended, there’s only one thing left to do. Okay, eleven things, if you feel compelled to watch ten more times, but we’re talking about the easter egg hunt. There’s plenty overt ones a bit of Iron Fist foreshadowing, but did you know a newspaper clipping puts Back to the Future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Now that everyone has had a chance to binge through Luke Cage, there’s no overlooking the series’ impressive soundtrack. The icing on the cake saw an original “Bulletproof Love” rap performed by Method Man himself in-series, which Marvel has now made available online.

Marvel’s Luke Cage has officially struck out in his own series, but that hasn’t stopped Jessica Jones fans from wondering if Mike Colter’s Hero for Hire will end up hired back to Hell’s Kitchen. Luke and Jessica will at least reunite for The Defenders, while showrunner Melissa Rosenberg teases if Luke might have any role to play in Jessica Jones Season 2.