#41 is the debut of Goldbug. He’s a minor character, but he has the distinction of first appearing in Luke Cage’s book and not having a name that’s a spin on racial stereotyping. He’s not even Jewish! And he has a nifty hovercraft.
From here, he’ll disappear until appearing in The Hulk in about five years.
His partner from the cover, Thunderbolt, also has a few more minor appearances after this.
The pair start seeming to be villains, but everyone is friends in the end we they figure out what’s really going (and what’s really going on doesn’t matter).
Their storyline wraps up halfway through #43, when a new storyline starts.
Mace puts an A-Bomb in the heart of Chicago, and Luke has to track it down and disarm it. Mace seems to die in the course of the story. But he’ll return for one more fight, in Spectacular Spider-Man.
An interesting aspect to this story is that Mace “dies” in #45, but the bomb still needs to be found and taken care of, which is how Luke spends issue #46, Marv’s final script for the series.
Also:
Marv showed Luke to be a ladies’ man. Here, he made that nice Claire Temple girl cry. Shame on you, Luke.