TV Series: Luke Cage

I haven't been keeping my readers informed about what television series I've been watching lately. I don't even know if I want to do it on a regular basis, but if I don't start now I never will.

Last week I watched the first eight episodes of "Arrow" Season 4, and I watched the first eight episodes of "Flash" Season 2.

Now you know.

This week I've been watching "Luke Cage", the Marvel television series available on Netflix. I don't know why I've waited so long to start watching it, but the release of the new "Defenders" series gave me a kick. I don't want to fall too far behind with my TV series. So far I've watched four episodes (since yesterday), and I'll watch a few more this week. I don't know how many. My main priority is still films.

There's a lack of continuity between Luke Cage as he appeared in the "Jessica Jones" series and in his own series. Is Marvel turning into DC? In "Jessica Jones" he owned a small bar. In this series he works sweeping the floor in a barber shop. "No problem", shout the modern Marvel fans, "This is an alternate universe". That's a cheap way to excuse mistakes. Why can't they just admit that the writer didn't know what he was doing?

Having said that, I have to admit that Luke Cage's origin story, as told in the fourth episode, is an accurate re-telling of the story in the first issue of Luke Cage's comic. Fairly accurate, at least. In the comics Reva was the girlfriend of one of Luke's friends before he was sent to prison; in the TV series she's a prison psychologist.

In the comics Luke Cage had an afro hairstyle. I accept that he can't look like that in a series set in the 21st Century. Afros are so 1970's, today people would laugh if a man walked around like that. But at least he had an afro briefly in the flashback to his time in prison. Now that he's out his head is shaved.

At first I didn't recognise the police detective Misty Knight, and then it clicked. Wasn't she Iron Fist's girlfriend? I checked my old comics, and there she was in Marvel Premiere #21, published in 1975.

She's a completely different character in the series. In the comics she was a powerful kung fu fighter, as shown above. In the TV series she's a conservatively dressed police detective with psychic powers that allow her to see what happened at crime scenes. I don't remember her having this power in the comics. A year later she lost her right arm in an explosion, and it was replaced with a bionic arm, giving her super strength, in one arm at least. We first see her new arm in Iron Fist #3.

Her costume in the comics looks so much more exciting than the police uniform in the TV series. I'd love to see the actress Simone Missick dressed like this, even if she doesn't have an afro.

Or maybe she could dress like this? That's a very impractical place to wear a gun holster, but who cares? It's a first class costume.

I'm curious about how the series will continue. It has a lot of feeling to it, much more emotion than in the comics that I read in the 1970's. The gangster Cottonmouth is better developed more than he was in the comics. He's a parallel to Wilson Fisk in the Daredevil TV series (not the comics), but on a smaller level.

There are a lot of good TV series being made today, but I have to be selective. I can't watch them all.