Hero for Hire 1 — covered-dated June 1972, but on the newsstands in March — begins in the maximum security Seagate Prison, where the man who will be Luke Cage is caged.
No cosmic rays or radioactive spiders for him. He gains his super powers of strength and durability through a prison experiment that’s a sinister, shadowy reflection of Captain America’s WWII origin.
But Cage is no volunteer. He’s a victim.
And as Luke Cage’s first adventures were being published, the infamous Tuskegee experiments were coming to light in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service studied the progression of untreated syphilis in African-American men in Alabama under the guise of receiving free government health care.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study’s ruthless mistreatment of black men seriously and permanently damaged the black community’s trust in U.S. public health efforts.
Ironically, the experiments became a front-page scandal in July 1972, just four months after the first issue of Hero for Hire appeared on newsstands.
“Probably no connection unless Archie (Goodwin), Stan (Lee) or I had seen earlier reports somewhere, since obviously Hero for Hire 1 was plotted out roughly half a year earlier,” noted Roy Thomas, the character’s co-creator.
“We just followed human nature, which is suspect in the best of times, even irrespective of race. The story was about powerful people experimenting on less powerful ones. Race wasn’t really a major factor in that part of the plot... Lucas just happened to be the unlucky recipient of the bad guys’ attentions because he was in jail.”
Nevertheless, the comic book they created ended up echoing the zeitgeist, for the very reason Thomas cited. The less powerful the race, the bigger the target on its members’ backs.
Cruel scientific experimentation on black men turned out to be no comic book fantasy.
