Comic writer Ho Che Anderson has explained how exactly his first Marvel project, Luke Cage: City of Fire, was canceled mere weeks before it would have gone on sale.
Anderson sat down for an exclusive interview with CBR to discuss his career, during which he was asked about City of Fire. Despite the three-issue miniseries being canceled in Nov. 2021 when the third issue was already halfway done, the writer is still working with Marvel and spoke about his enjoyment doing a Blade project and "cool stuff" for the company. However, he admitted, "Luke Cage was painful, man," opening up about the circumstances of how "right-wing nuts" and City of Fire's real-world subject matter spooked Marvel into not releasing the title.
Anderson recalled his conversation with Marvel executives, saying, "Long story short, they sat me down and said, 'We're canceling this book. We're afraid that the subject matter is going to be damaging for you. We don't want you to be attacked by right-wing nuts.'"
Luke Cage and the Series’ Connections to George Floyd and Kyle Rittenhouse
According to the writer, his miniseries drew inspiration from police brutality and George Floyd, a Black man murdered by a white police officer in May 2020, with the title's premise being "what would happen if the mother of George Floyd hired Luke Cage to protect Derek Chauvin, her son's murderer?" Anderson shared his own assumptions for why else Marvel axed City of Fire, guessing higher executives might have said, "No, this is going to affect our bottom line." He added that the book would have come out shortly after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges raised against him for killing two people and wounding a third with an AR-15-like rifle, which happened in Aug. 2020 during the protests that followed George Floyd's death.
"They were really worried that there was going to be some blowback with the Kyle Rittenhouse lovers of the world or whatever," Anderson said about Marvel at the time. "So they chose to take the cautious route."
All the Work Anderson and Others Put Into Luke Cage
While recounting City of Fire's cancelation, Anderson broke down the hard work that went into the series, which began as a short, five-page story before Marvel suggested it be turned into a one-shot or miniseries, and later approved the writer's pitch for three issues total. Anderson was given permission to use Daredevil Elektra Natchios in City of Fire, and sent trade paperbacks of writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Marco Checchetto's Daredevil run to catch up on her prior appearances. Two weeks before the original release date for Luke Cage: City of Fire #1, Anderson was asked by Marvel to do more notes for both the lettering and coloring, and also write a trigger warning regarding the book's subject matter. The series was canceled a week later.
Anderson labeled the cancelation as "devastating" because three artists -- Sean Damian Hill, Ray-Anthony Height and Farid Karami -- had all collaborated with him on City of Fire and done a "phenomenal job," in his words. "I read the PDF of the completed first issue, and I couldn't believe that I'd written this comic. It didn't feel like one of my comics. It felt like an official comic as opposed to one of my weird-ass comics."
How Marvel Canceling Luke Cage Impacted Anderson
Following City of Fire, Anderson questioned his career as a writer, sharing that he thought to himself, "Why am I doing this? I don't need to do this in my life," but has since gotten over this mindset. He talked about never creating something quite like City of Fire again though, saying, "I will never do work for Marvel that is about anything other than 'The villain of the week wants to take over the world.'"
Anderson closed out his answer to the original question by declaring City of Fire a "missed opportunity" overall. "I felt like we had an opportunity to tell a story that had some real-world relevance. The fact that it got shut down so quickly told me unequivocally that that is not what they want. They don't want that at all. They just want safe material. So if they hire me again, that's what I'll give them. I'll give them safe material. But it's a shame because I feel like we had an opportunity to tell a story that had some relevance, and they would have been on the right side of history for being strong enough to tell the story. So it's a missed opportunity."
Source: CBR