The Luke Cage with the combined powers of the Hulk, Iron Fist, and Sentry from an alternate future is back in the Marvel Universe. Fans first met this older take on Luke Cage, going by his previous codename of Power Man, in Marvel’s 2023 end-of-the-year one-shot Timeless. The dark future that Power Man came from was being ruled by the new Moon Knight, who just happened to be his former Heroes for Hire partner and best friend, Danny Rand, aka Iron Fist. Power Man used his combined powers taken from Hulk, Iron Fist, and Sentry to defeat Moon Knight and seemingly died in the process. However, we find out he was thrown through time and is now in the present-day.
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ComicBook has the exclusive preview of Power Man: Timeless #1 by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, Bernard Chang, and Marcelo Maiolo. It begins with Power Man drifting through the cosmos as an unidentified voice speaks to the reader through captions. They tell us about Luke Cage destroying the moon and shattering time, and how he became Power Man, Master of the Living Weapons. After waking up, Power Man only has one thing on his mind: finding Danny Rand and stopping him before he takes over the world as Moon Knight.
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What Power Man doesn’t realize is Danny Rand is currently dead. Danny died during the events in last year’s Iron Fist 50th Anniversary Special #1, and his closest friends in the superhero community have gathered to pay their last respects at his funeral. Captain America, Wolverine, She-Hulk, the new Iron Fist (Lin Lie, the former Swordmaster), Shang-Chi, Daredevil, Spider-Man, the Avengers, the younger Power Man, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage are all in attendance. What Power Man doesn’t realize is Marvel has already planted the seeds for Danny Rand’s resurrection.
Power Man begins to realize that the dark future that he comes from isn’t the same one this current universe is destined for. This Luke Cage still has a wife and kid who are very much alive. After seeing this, Power Man leaves Earth and heads out into the deep recesses of space for solace. Our mystery narrator calls back to how Power Man gained these Living Weapon powers, like how seeking solitude worked out for Hulk. And how Danny Rand harnessed the power of the dragon Shou-Lao. And how Sentry buried himself in the center of the Earth to keep the powers of the Sentry at bay, only to be reminded that the Void is still with him. Plus, the Void is revealed to be our secret narrator for Power Man: Timeless.
ComicBook spoke to Power Man: Timeless writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing about the miniseries, where they revealed that Void would be their narrator for readers.
“So something that we do in throughout Power Man: Timeless is that rather than having this story be told from Luke’s internal system, rather than having Luke be the narrator of the story or having some kind of third person narrator, the Void is your narrator,” Jackson Lanzing said. “The Void is the one who is talking through this. And over the course of the book, you’re going to start to understand that that’s not just happening to the reader. That’s happening to Luke. That what the Void is saying to the reader is what Luke is saying to himself. And that it starts to be able to express his own insecurities, his own fears, his own anger, his own need to explode.”
He added, “All of that undercurrent is going to be the thing that Luke is wrestling with the entire time. Even though he is going to have a villain of epic proportions to deal with that’s right in front of him, perhaps the more terrifying villain is sitting underneath his soul.”
Power Man will also be fighting a new cosmic threat. “You’re gonna meet a new supervillain who was designed as a counterpoint and a counteraction to a character that we came up with back when we came up with Timeless the first time. Just a cool idea that we came to and we were like, we’d really love to play with this someday,” Lanzing said. “And then eventually he found himself in this story. It also takes some stuff that we’ve been looking at working on that we’ve been looking at just in our own lives in terms of the solar system and how it operates.”
Collin Kelly added, “Celestial secrets that have been buried in the solar system for a million years. As well as some new allies. And by issue three we do have some truly excellent cameos as he continues to traverse the solar system.”
Power Man: Timeless #1 goes on sale Wednesday, February 5th.
