Luke Cage (Earth-21399)

"You can't fix me. I'm unbreakable."

- Luke Cage

Early Life
Carl Lucas was born and raised in Harlem, where he was once a member of a small-time street gang during high school. Once he graduated, however, Lucas realized the error of his ways and left the gang, going on to have a legitimate job as a hairstylist and a girlfriend named Reva Connors.

Framed
However, Reva's ex-boyfriend, Lonnie Lincoln, was enraged with Lucas for supposedly stealing his girl away from him, and sought to teach him a lesson. To this end, he planted heroin and a sheet with the names and contact numbers of numerous known suppliers and users in Lucas's apartment, then sent an anonymous tip to the police. Lucas was arrested, convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and was later informed through the prison phone line that Reva had been killed in a drive-by shooting.

Having been betrayed, wrongfully imprisoned and having his girlfriend and life stolen from him, Lucas was consumed with rage. He would often pick fights with other inmates and attempted to escape numerous times. His parole hearings often ended with a violent outburst followed by a stint in solitary.

After numerous incidents and a good three months spent in solitary, Lucas was transferred to Seagate State Prison in Georgia. There, he where was routinely abused by a cruel, racist guard named Albert "Billy Bob" Rackham, whose excessive brutality eventually got him demoted.

Second Chance and Escape
Five years into Lucas's sentence, Dr. Noah Burnstein, a scientist working with Alchemax, Inc., came to Seagate to work on an experiment similar to Project Rebirth, the super-soldier program that created Captain America. The experiment called for testing on death row inmates, whom the Alchemax execs regarded as expendable guinea pigs, but Burnstein took pity on old Carl Lucas's state, and came to him with a deal: If Lucas signed on for testing and survived the treatments, Burnstein would see to it that his sentence would be reduced. Lucas accepted.

When the day came, Lucas was taken out of his prison cell to the testing facility, where he was placed in a bath tank and immersed in the experimental chemical Diox-3. However, the project was sabotaged by Rackham, who struck Burnstein in the back of the head, incapacitating him, and then deliberately maxed out all the controls in an effort to murder Lucas inside the chamber as revenge for his demotion. However, Lucas instead emerged from the chamber 6 inches and 200 lbs bigger than he was before, with superhuman strength and durability.

Using his newfound power, Lucas beat Rackham to the brink of death and escaped from Seagate Prison. He was presumed by the guards to have drowned in passing between the island prison and the coastline, and Lucas used this to his advantage. He shaved down his head and crafted the alias “Luke Cage” to hide from the authorities, all the while somehow procuring the necessary documentation to make his new identity appear legal (at least to cursory inspection) before making his way back to Harlem.