Power Man – 28 Days of Black Super Heroes – Day 19

Previous (Day 18) Super Hero – Static!

Day 19 of 28 Days of Black Super Heroes, today’s hero is the Marvel Comics’ character Power Man.

This character is extremely new, like hot off the presses new at the time of this writing, so there’s just not much on him yet. He doesn’t even have an official entry on the Marvel.com wiki. Anyway, I like him a lot more than I thought I would.

WHO IS POWER MAN?

As many of you no doubt know, the most well-known Power Man was Luke Cage, the 1970’s blaxploitation type character that has since abandoned the name.

Now, who the hell would want to use a name like Power Man? Of course it’s gotta be a teenager.

Enter Victor Alvarez, a young kid who showed up on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen during the Shadowland crossover story, which centered mostly on Daredevil and the street level Marvel heroes.

Essentially Daredevil was taken over by an evil spirit and ended up in turn taking over all of Hell’s Kitchen with an army of Ninjas.

Victor didn’t directly take part in this, but he was out there on the streets against the Shadowland backdrop.

HIS ORIGIN

It turns out Victor’s origin has everything to do with Daredevil, though.

Just a few months before Shadowland, Daredevil’s arch-nemesis Bullseye tricked Daredevil into a confrontation inHell’s Kitchen. Once DD showed up, Bullseye blew up a building full of innocent people.

The guilt from this sent DD into a shame spiral, where he ended up at such a low place the evil spirt was able to take over.

But to back up a bit – when Bullseye blew up the building, Victor and his father were in there along with the other innocents. Victor survived the explosion, but he absorbed the “Chi” of all the other victims.

As it turns out, one of these students was a student of Danny Rand, the martial arts master known as the Iron Fist.

Victor absorbed all his knowledge and thus became a martial arts master (or very close to it) without really knowing any martial arts.

WHAT DOES HE DO?

So Victor can absorb Chi from thin air and utilize it in different ways.

In one way he absorbs the different knowledge and experience of other people, and in another way he can absorb the Chi and release it as powerful energy.

At the end of his Shadowland debut, Victor absorbed the Chi from pretty much all of New York. It seemed to take a lot out of him, and he only did it in an extreme moment of distress to save a loved one, so I don’t think he can pull off that level of power all the time.

ON THE SCENE

When the new Power Man first showed up on the scene, he took out some Hand Ninjas. They recognized his style and went looking for Iron-Fist.

The Fist called up Luke Cage and they went looking for the new “Power Man”. When they found him, it became apparent really quickly that Victor had a problem with Luke Cage.

It turned out he considered Cage to be a sellout for leaving the hood and running off to join the Avengers. In essence blaming him for his father’s death, since his dad had been a social activist.

Cage wasn’t really interested in dealing with Victor, but Iron-Fist was the exact opposite. After Victor displayed that he could actually block the Iron Fist, Danny realized that Victor could pull Chi right out of thin air. With an ability like that, Victor could be of great use to the 7 Cities of Heaven (one of which is K’un L’un, where Iron Fist learned his skills).

Victor was not interested in such things, however.

HERO FOR HIRE

Victor took more from Luke Cage than just the color scheme and name (I also notice they managed to keep those chains in there). He also took Cage’s original M.O. Victor was a hero-for-hire around the Hell’s Kitchen area.

You could reach him by responding to his ad on Craigslist (and paying his agreed upon fee). Once payment was rendered, Power Man would show up to save the day.

Victor’s hid all of this from his mother and family, placing him in a similar situation to many other teen heroes.

POWER MAN AND IRON-FIST

After the Shadowland crossover ended, Victor agreed to become Iron-Fist’s student, and the duo has moved into a new Power Man and Iron-Fist comic, which at this point I haven’t read.

If anyone’s read it so far, let me know what you think about it.

THE WRAP UP

I have to admit the character is better than I thought he was going to be, but I don’t know if I’m interested enough to keep reading up on him.

Victor’s a little bit difficult to like sometimes, and he’s one of those characters who is overly concerned with fame and accolades. He’s one of those trash-talking types that no one really respects like Superboy or Speedball were at first.

Also, Victor has shown on a few occasions that he’d willingly let people he considers to be bad guys die. Obviously Iron-Fist will break him of that mindset but I don’t think I’ll stick around for all that.

I’ll probably just catch him in the next crossover.

Oh yeah, Victor is obviously Latino, too, so I guess we’ll just go halfsies on the whole Black Superhero thing. Until next time guys, and here’s the pencil art of the new Power-Man!

Next (Day 20) Super Hero – The Falcon!

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