Whatever Happened To…Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Luke Cage?”
August 31st, 2009
A little over two years ago this month, at Wizard World Chicago, the Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack creator announced that he was working on a four issue mini-series featuring Marvel Comics’ Black supehero icon. The above concept art accompanied the announcement, and that, combined with Tartakovsky’s pledge to return Cage to his 1970s Blaxploitation roots had me pretty excited.
Sadly, I haven’t seen any subsequent stories about the project. If ya got any info, be sure to send it my way.
NOTE: This post was inspired by SideBarNation.com’s October 2007 interview with Phil LaMarr, the voice of Samurai Jack. You can find their podcast with the talented voice actor and MadTV alum here.
- JEP
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Yea and now that Marvel’s all disneyfied I wonder if it will ever happen. Luke Cage is also really tied in to so many overarching Marvel Universe plots I doubt they could revamp his character for some time. Still it would be awesome to see. The comic book world needs someway to compensate for what DC/Cartoon Network did to Cyborg from the Teen Titans.
Cbass-
I think (hope?) the intention was for Tartakovsky’s tale to be out of continuity. As far as Cage’s line-wide entanglements, I’ve got to do a more comprehensive post about Luke Cage one day. I applaud that they’ve made him more prominent in the Marvel Universe, I just have some issues with the path they took to bring him there.
The thing I liked best about the Cartoon Network’s depiction of Cyborg was that the designers finally made his costume work. I love George Perez, but I never understood the silver singlet. Was that supposed to be his body or a metallic outfit? It bunched like cloth, but I was never sure.
- JEP
Yea, I’d love to see that post, he really is a great character. Seems like Marvel came up with a really good Heroes for Hire idea a couple years back with the female characters from that series. Do you remember that?
Yeah, I had the first couple issues of the Heroes For Hire revamp from a few years back. In this one, supporting characters from the original series, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, took center stage as bounty hunters of supervillains. The series’ artist, Khari Evans, had a sexy, funky, dynamic style that suited the series well. I think they added too many characters toward the end, and it took the focus off Knight and Wing. If you didn’t read it when it first came out, it would be worth tracking down the early issues, at least.
- JEP