A biography for Cheo Hodari Cokerhasn’t been written yet.
“Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don't always act correctly.”
“The Luke Cage you saw in Season One was a reluctant hero. He was trying to figure out if he wanted to be a hero in the first place. And then fate intervened and forced him to step up his game.”
“Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.”
“Black women are the most passionate commentators, and even as black female geeks and nerds, they are rarely acknowledged.”
“For me, hip-hop has always been black superhero music.”
“In the imagination, Harlem will always be the spiritual capital of black excellence in America.”
“I was a huge fan of comics: not necessarily 'Luke Cage.' I was more of an 'X-Men' head. I was always more Chris Claremont, Frank Miller, John Byrne.”
“If a superhero is a community superhero, then is he going to protect his community by controlling everything? If he decides to control crime, does that make him a crime boss? Does that make him a criminal?”
“The reason I keep making so many musical metaphors with 'Luke Cage' is that I don't view it as much a television show as I do a concept album with dialogue.”
“Fatherhood is something that is personal to me because I didn't grow up around my father.”
“I'm not going to be one of those people who says, 'I'm a showrunner; I'm not a black showrunner.' I'm black when I go to sleep. I'm black when I wake up, period. It doesn't affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it's who I am, and I'm proud of it.”
“'The Wire' is, by far, my favorite television show of all time. And I've always said that my aspirations for 'Luke Cage' was that it would be 'The Wire' of the Marvel television universe.”
“If you're a black person in America, it's really hard to avoid being black. And what I mean is that the reality of your cultural history, regardless of whether or not you talk about it, it's there.”
“One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on 'The Wire.'”
“'Daredevil' is haunted by Frank Miller, from the standpoint of the Frank Miller run on 'Daredevil' is so insurmountable.”
“Sometimes you have to take the risk that somebody will consider what you're making is noise, but if you don't try it, then nothing will move forward. I'd rather people hate something than just go 'meh.'”
“Human sexuality is not always about being labeled. It's about having a human moment, an emotion.”
“The only thing that's different about doing a superhero show is that you can have your hero do things that a normal cop in a procedural can't do. But the structure of the storytelling is universal.”
“When I was a critic, I reviewed Public Enemy's 'Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age' - this is back in '94 - and I called it a 'Dante-esque spiral of the hip-hop hell.' I idolized Chuck D, but I just hated that record, and I did not hold back. Chuck didn't freeze me out. Every time I met Chuck, he always treated me with the utmost respect.”
“I wanted Luke Cage to very much be an African American superhero rather than a superhero that happens to be black. I felt it was important to give him that cultural grounding but also show that it doesn't make him an obtuse or one-sided character.”