First Appearance of Luke Cage: Hero for Hire #1 Value

Luke Cage first appeared in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1, cover-dated June 1972, created by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska, Roy Thomas and John Romita Sr. Wikipedia describes him as Marvel's first African-American superhero to be the main character of his own series, so his debut is also the first issue of his own title.

His origin is in that issue: Carl Lucas, a prisoner, gains superhuman strength and nearly unbreakable skin from a prison experiment and uses them to escape (Wikipedia). He then works as a hero for hire.

PriceCharting values retrieved September 25, 2026:

• Ungraded: $127.50 (about one sale a day)
• Graded 4.0: $196.05
• Graded 6.0: $263.48
• Graded 8.0: $513.00
• Graded 9.2: $1,480.37
• Graded 9.8: $23,229.95 (about two sales a year)

PriceCharting marks some grades for this book as estimates based on other grades and the comic's age. The step from 9.2 to 9.8 is more than fifteen-fold and rests on about two sales a year; for a typical copy the useful numbers are the 4.0 to 8.0 range.

• Power Man: the series was renamed Power Man with #17 (1974).
• Power Man and Iron Fist: renamed again with #50 (1978), pairing him with Iron Fist.
• Jessica Jones: she first appeared in Alias (2001), almost 30 years after Luke Cage, as his romantic interest; in the comics they married and had a daughter, Danielle (Wikipedia).

So in the comics Luke Cage came first. On Netflix the order is reversed: Mike Colter first played him in Jessica Jones season 1 (November 20, 2015), before his own series.

Luke Cage ran two seasons and 26 episodes on Netflix: season 1 on September 30, 2016 and season 2 on June 22, 2018. Mike Colter was cast in December 2014 to appear in Jessica Jones first, and his reception there led Marvel to move his series up to become the third Netflix Marvel show. Netflix canceled it on October 19, 2018. Wikipedia reports creative disagreements over the season 3 scripts, a demand for a new showrunner, and that the series was costly for Netflix, which did not own the property. Colter also played Cage in The Defenders (2017) and Jessica Jones season 3 (2019), and his Wikipedia article lists him returning in Daredevil: Born Again seasons 2 and 3.

The show does not state Luke Cage's age in the sources we checked. Colter was born on August 26, 1976, so he was 40 when season 1 was released.

Photograph the front cover straight on, then the indicia (the small print on the first page or inside cover with the title, issue number and date). ComicLens reads the title, issue number and cover from the photo, matches the likely issue with a confidence indicator you can correct by hand, and shows a reference price range that moves with the grade you pick. For Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1, confirm the issue number and date in the indicia before comparing prices, because later reprints and collected editions reuse the same story. There are free scans every day; the range is a reference estimate, not an appraisal or an offer.

Research and drafting were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed on this page. Prices are the figures shown by the named source on the date given; they change with the market, and a grade that trades about once a year can move a lot on a single sale.