Essential Luke Cage/Power Man Volume 2 TPB

View books by Don McGregor, Bill Mantlo, Marv Wolfman, Steve Englehart, Ed Hannigan, Roger Slifer, Chris Claremont, Mary Jo Duffy.

Sweet Christmas!!!! - Rated
This is a great collection filled with all sorts of colourful characters as our New York based hero-for-hire fights to stay in business.
Piranha Jones, Cockroach Hamilton, Wildfire, Spear and his dim-witted brother the Mangler, Mr. Fish, Magnum Force (a.k.a. Moses Magnum), Big Brother and Cheshire Cat, The Baron all take their turn and a couple of Cage's oldest foes Chemistro and Gideon Mace come back to haunt him.
Cage takes on Goldbug with assistance from an old acquaintance of Daredevil who is now known, with some irony, as Thunderbolt.
Cage may take on and defeat all manner of evil characters, he even fends off enquiries by detective Quentin Chase but can he defeat the tax-man?
The oddest tale involves the electric creature Zzzax who is the only villain from Marvel's extensive non Power-Man back catalogue featured here..
Twice during this run the title missed deadlines, the first time the Mr. Fish story was used as a last minute replacement making the stories run out of sequence; the second time Chemistro's first appearance was repeated as a prelude to the new tale
The volume closes with a two part story where Cage joins with Iron Fist and his allies as they fight to defeat Bushmaster and save Cage's close friends and find the evidence to prove his innocence.
Despite the constant changes of writers and artists the book still manages to maintain its appeal. This is a fairly solid collection that leads nicely into the longer term team-up of Power-Man with Iron Fist.