Hey there and welcome to another presentation of Great Moments in Comics History. The first one was about a month ago. This time, it's Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. Unlike the other superheroes, this dude offers his services to anyone who can pay. Man's gotta eat after all. Only in issue 8 of his own comic (volume 1, 1972) he was hired by none other than Doctor Doom and well....Doom is a tightwad.
But first a little background: Dr. Doom, through one of his cronies, hires Luke Cage for $200 a day to track down some robots of Doom that decided to go rogue. These robots have disguised themselves as black men, for some reason, so Doom reasons he needs a black man who can take care of himself to go hunt down these robots. Cage does as he's told and ends up destroying all of Doom's rogue robots because they tried to kill him. Silly robots.
However, when he returns to the Latverian embassy to collect his two hundred bucks, Doom's gone. Oh, you do not welch on a deal with a poor, hungry black man. Especially if he has a skin that is impervious to bullets. Doom is as dumb as his robots it seems.
Most people would probably just chalk this up to experience and move on. Not Cage, oh no. He goes rampaging into the Baxter Building and practically demands the Fantastic Four to loan him their rocket ship so he can fly to Latveria and claim his money (issue 9, Luke Cage: Hero for Hire, volume 1, 1972).
Well, he actually arrives at Latveria and after the required six-page fight with Doom's minions, Luke Cage once again faces Doom:
I'm so gonna use that line whenever someone owes me some dough. "Where's my money, honey?" before I give them an atomic wedgie. Cage and Doom are interrupted by some weird alien something or other wearing a large fish bowl over his head but Cage quickly kicks that guy's ass. Doom is grateful. Which is very uncharacteristic of him.
Is Doom laughing? Was he on medication at this time? The man never laughs. But yeah, in the end Doom does part with $200 and this crazy episode gets a Great Moments in Comics History award. 
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