Power Man

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Luke Cage is more than just a pile of muscles packed into a packaged of unbreakable skin.  The dude is mentally superior to your average human being, as well!  Despite humble, street-gang origins, Luke has educated himself on a variety of subjects over the years, including learning multiple languages and becoming an expert on legal matters (rivaled only by his sometimes-compatriot Matt Murdock/Daredevil.)  Oh yeah, he’s an awesome street fighter, too.

Power Punches

Since we always do combat first with characters, let’s talk about Power Man’s fighting style.  He joins the venerated ranks of Little Mac, Captain Falcon, and Raoh in the art of punching really, really hard.  To put it bluntly, most of the time Luke Cage fights people by pummeling them with his fists until they can’t get up.  It’s not to say his street-fighter style is ineffective, however it is sometimes a bit inelegant.

But guess what?  Real fights are inelegant.  Head on over to YouTube and look up a couple street fights.  They aren’t pretty.  Ever.  The pretty, choreographed ballet of most martial arts styles evaporate in a real-world environment.  Heck, even MMA matches look kind of pretty compared to street fights (for a variety of reasons including rulesets, weight classes, and environment.)

This is the world that Luke Cage grew up in, and you can see it in his fighting style.  He’s all about utilizing his strengths (namely massive strength,) and overwhelming his opponents with relentless blunt force trauma.

If you want to learn to fight like Luke Cage, I’d honestly head on down to an MMA/kickboxing gym and start taking lessons there.  It’s not a perfect analogue, but I’m definitely not going to recommend you start getting into random street fights just to be like a comic book character (spoiler alert: getting into lots of street fights isn’t even guaranteed to make you a proficient fighter, and it comes with a healthy helping chance of brain damage.)  Barring an MMA gym, a traditional boxing gym wouldn’t be a bad idea either.  No matter what, you want a place that spends most of their time on sparring/bag/pad work, not forms or kata.

The Not-Lawyer

Luke Cage is known for having an extensive knowledge of the law, rivaling that of even his sometimes-teammate, Matt Murdock AKA Daredevil, who is actually a lawyer.  Like it or not, we live in a world controlled by a sometimes-complicated legal system, and knowing the ins and outs of that system can be incredibly helpful, even if you never plan on practicing law yourself.  Luckily, there’s some online resources to start!

First off, there’s the Open Law Lab.  Full of a whole bunch of learning resources, it’s a great go-to to begin your understanding of law.  They even have a section with games to learn legal concepts! Check out Project Topics>Learning Law Better for that one!

Then you’ve got The Legal Geeks! These should be right up your alley!  In addition to teaching legal aspects and concepts in a fun, and entertaining way, they also tend to profile a lot of fictional, hypothetical situations!  As we speak, there’s articles considering the legality of certain situations and actions involving Luke Cage, Dr. Strange, and Godzilla on the front page!

Finally, there’s FindLaw.  This site is less about making law fun, and more about just giving you straight, to-the-point information on various legal subjects.  You can answer almost any question you might have about any broad legal concepts here in a relatively short amount of time.

Again, having an understanding of legal matters can be important in day-to-day life even if you never plan on actually being a lawyer.  It doesn’t have to be scary or intimidating, just pick a topic and jump in!

Multi-Lingual

You know, I tried really hard to find out what languages Luke Cage is fluent in while writing this post.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with anything concrete except for the fact that MULTIPLE sources confirmed he does, in fact, speak multiple languages.  This means you get to pick!  If you want to become Luke Cage, learning at least one more language is a definite must.  The best site, in my personal opinion, is none other than Duolingo.

Duolingo allows you to learn languages online, for free, at your own pace.  They’ve got over twenty languages to pick from at this point, including Spanish, German, Italian, and more!  Go check it out!  There’s massive benefits to learning a new language, no matter what language it is, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Learning How to Learn

Luke Cage is almost entirely self taught in everything he knows.  Being able to teach yourself and learn on your own is incredibly powerful, and you’ll truly have no limits if you learn how to unlock this skill.  Unfortunately, it can be very difficult for me to teach you how to teach yourself, as everyone learns differently, and in different learning styles.

For starters, I’d point you towards my own YouTube channel, Unleash the Ultramind.  Although it’s currently on hiatus, there’s already a good body of work containing tons of tips based upon various great minds through history.  I hope to be able to start the channel up again soon, though I am still giving priority to the Be a Game Character channel at the moment.

Then there’s an extremely well-regarded course on Coursera called Learning How to Learn.  I myself have not taken the course, so I can’t offer my own opinion on how good it is, but I’ve heard great things from multiple sources, so I’d say it’s definitely worth checking out!

In the end, learning how to teach yourself comes down to understanding the ways you best absorb information, and then putting that information into practice to reinforce it.  Some people read, some people listen, some people watch, or learn through doing.  Figure out which method works best for you, and then start absorbing as much information as you can.  Knowledge is power.

That’s it for Power Man!  Tune in on Thursday for the final post in our Luke Cage series, Hero for Hire!  Until then, remember to live boldly, change the world, and continue to be awesome!

Dan “DaRatmastah” Wallace