Marvel Two-In-One #13: Power Man (1976)

Let’s stick with the splash page, because there’s not much of a story in this book.  Luke Cage is reading “Players” magazine, with a naked black girl on the cover, in an office that has obviously been demolished many times over. He hasn’t bother to straighten the picture of his girl hanging on the wall (but he has replaced the glass in his door).  He’s talking to a white accountant who is shaking and stuttering because he’s so scared to be sitting across from Power Man, and Cage calls him “Sugar.”  Then he asks him, “What’s the beef?”

This is everything that was wrong (stilted dialog and stupid slang, Cage having a horndog, lackadaisical attitude in his place of business) and right (everything around him is broken, and he can’t fix it in time for the next catastrophe) with Luke Cage in the mid-’70s.

Anyway, Luke gets an odd client who needs help monster-bashing.  Luke tells him to go to the Fantastic Four.

There’s the standard “nice to meet you fight.”

And then they team up to take down the monster.

There’s a bafflingly long creators list for this:  Two scripters (Roger Slifer and Len Wein) and a separate plotter Marv Wolfman. It’s a simple and stupid story. I’m betting there was some deadline crunching here.

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