So, The Essential Luke Cage came out this week and it contains a two-issue story that is, in my opinion, the finest thing that the Marvel of the 1970s came up with - Hero For Hire issues 8 and 9. These two titanic tales are reason enough to purchase this 600-pages-for-$18 tome.
You see, someone representing the fine folks at the Latverian embassy asks our hero to perform a certain duty. He does said task and is told to pop by the next day to get his princely sum of $200 for the work he's done. Of course, Latverians being who they are, they leave him high and dry and shut down the embassy. He has to fight some robots, too, but that's incidental as to why I love this story so much.
Now, I want to ask you something. Let's say you're owed a pair of C-notes by a dictator who is encased in armor and can shoot lasers out of his fingers. What do you do? It's obvious that you borrow one of the Fantastic Four's incredibly expensive pogo planes, fly to Latveria, find Doom and say, and I quote from the text here: "Where's my money, honey?" And that is exactly what what Luke Cage, Hero For Hire does. I don't want to spoil what happens next, but you have to know that any story that starts with the phrase "Jive talkin', freakin' motherless candidate for the psycho hatch!" and features Dr. Doom redefines the word "Essential" to the point of no return.
