Comic book superhero, owned and published by Marvel Comics. He made his first appearance in "Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1" in June 1972. He was created by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska, Roy Thomas, and John Romita, Sr.
In the 1970s, one of the most profitable film genres was blaxploitation. Yeah, the movies were made cheaply, but they made giant profits, and they showed Hollywood that making movies for African-American audiences was an excellent strategy. And other parts of the entertainment industry learned the same lesson: Black audiences wanted to be entertained, and their money was as green as anyone else's. One of the industries that learned that lesson was the comic book industry.
So one day, Stan Lee heads into the Marvel Bullpen, grabs Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, and John Romita, and says, Hey, "Shaft" is a giant movie, everyone's talking about it, why don't we make a character like that. Marvel already had the Black Panther and the Falcon, but they were respected superheroes, and Stan was envisioning more of an anti-hero, a blaxploitation character built for comic books.
The initial design for the costume was almost entirely fantastic. Yellow boots, tight blue pants, loose yellow shirt, open almost down to the waist, metal wristbands, a metal headband, and a small afro. The only part of the outfit that hasn't aged well was the large metal chain used as a belt -- as Romita remembered later: "The chains were because we wanted the slavery angle." Thanks, Marvel, if there's one thing I'm sure all Black people love reminders of, it's slavery.
So Luke Cage started life as Carl Lucas. He was a street tough in Harlem, mostly committing petty crimes. While working to go straight, he angered an old friend, who framed him for heroin possession. While in prison, he was recruited as a volunteer for a cellular regeneration experiment based on a variant of the fabled Super-Soldier process. When a crooked guard altered the experiment in an attempt to kill Lucas, the process went out of control and granted him superhuman strength and toughness. He escaped the prison, returned to New York, changed his name, and went into business as a Hero for Hire -- if you could pay his fees, he'd help you out of whatever scrape you were in and take out the toughs and gangsters messing with your family or business.
While his initial plan may have been to stay out of superhero crap -- at least partly because it made it easier to embrace blaxploitation as an aesthetic if you didn't also have to deal with weirdos in colorful clothing -- it wasn't very long before Luke was having encounters with superheroes and supervillains. Probably the most celebrated came early in his run -- he does a job and doesn't get paid the $200 fee agreed upon. When he finds out the cat who hired him was none other than Dr. Doom, Cage breaks into the Baxter Building, steals an experimental mini-plane, flies to Latveria, beats up a bunch of Doom's thugs, and confronts Doom himself, leading to this glorious dialogue:
Doom: "When my men reported a crazy Black man in the Fantastic Four's craft, I knew it had to be you!"
Cage: "Where's my money, honey?"
After that, they fight, Cage breaks Doom's armor, Doom pays Cage his $200, and Cage goes home.
Soon, Cage adopted a superhero name of Power Man and began teaming up with a white guy named Danny Rand who went by the name of Iron Fist. Marvel had decided to join up their blaxploitation hero with a character created to capitalize on the growing martial arts movie craze. And the team worked wonderfully. Cage's hard-nosed, streetwise attitude contrasted with Rand's more naive nature (he'd been raised in a magical, interdimensional kung-fu city called K'un-L'un and knew almost nothing about the modern world) to make a team that seemed to have something for everyone. They team up fairly often with the Daughters of the Dragon -- martial artist and swordswoman Colleen Wing and martial artist, detective, and cyborg Misty Knight.
Skipping over a number of decades (lots of superhero stuff going on from the '70s to the current day, and most of them are just not important), by the early 2000s, Luke had grown up a lot, shaved his head, was still trying to be a positive force in the city, and was mostly working as a part-time superhero, part-time bodyguard. He started a relationship with Jessica Jones, a former superhero, current private eye, and they ended up getting married and having a daughter, Danielle, named for Danny Rand.
While generally preferring things as a solo act, Cage has joined more than a few superteams, including a few different versions of the Heroes for Hire, a few different versions of the Defenders, the Avengers, the New Avengers, the Secret Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, and the Thunderbolts.
By the early 2020s, after Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime, was elected Mayor of New York City (what is up with New Yorkers electing outright crooks as mayor?), he passed anti-vigilante laws to keep superheroes from interfering in his criminal enterprises. Cage ends up running for mayor against Fisk -- and wins the campaign! He isn't able to get the anti-vigilante laws repealed right away, though, so the few times he's tried to stop evildoers, he runs the risk of getting arrested for doing the right thing.
Luke was a character in the Netflix "Jessica Jones" series, where he was played by Mike Colter. He also had his own Netflix series, and he was in the Netflix "Defenders" series, alongside Charlie Cox as Daredevil, Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, and Finn Jones as Iron Fist.