Marvel’s Power Man aka Luke Cage had a number of catch phrases that early writer Archie Goodwin tried to use.

Ultimately “Sweet Christmas!” became Cage’s clarion call.

Being that it is Christmas….

CBR:

The first time Luke Cage used any sort of exclamation was in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #2 (by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska and Billy Graham), when he shouted “Mother of…!”

He would use “Mother of!” in issues #5 and #15, as well.

The following issue (also by Goodwin, Tuska and Graham) introduced Cage’s first catchphrase, “Sweet Sister!”

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #8 (by Steve Englehart, George Tuska and Billy Graham) gave us “Christmas!” for the first time…

This very soon became his go-to catchphrase, appearing in issues #13-16, 18 and #20-24.

In one of those issues without a simple “Christmas!” in it, Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #19 (by Len Wein, George Tuska and Vince Colletta), we see “Holeeee Christmas!”

Finally, in the summer of 1975, fill-in writer Bill Mantlo gave us the phrase that pays by merging “Sweet Sister!” and “Christmas!” in a merger that took way longer than you would have thought in Power Man #27 (art by George Perez and Al McWilliams)…

And Mantlo brought it back quickly two issues later when he once again filled in for regular writer Don McGregor…

Mantlo returned again in Power Man #39…

Marv Wolfman wrote Power Man #40 and a non-Mantlo writer used the phrase…

And it’s been part of the Luke Cage lexicon ever since, even making its way into the Luke Cage TV series!

By the time he said it on Netflix’s Jessica Jones it would drive fandom wild.

Far more interesting was how that particular phrase entered his vernacular. It was revealed and explained in an interview with the late great Dwayne McDuffie by Black Hero Doc.

The phrases were stand-ins for cursing or swearing— which Bill Mantlo and Marv Wolfman really wanted to come out of Cage’s mouth in the spirit of the 1970s Blaxploitation film Shaft — but because it was comic books and for kids, they couldn’t.

So Wolfman and Mantlo  looked to the books of writer Chester Himes.

Himes was know for his detective fiction, novels like The Real Cool Killers and Cotton Comes to Harlem, which were written late in his career during the 1950s and ’60s.

“These hard-boiled stories — featuring Black New York City police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson — are brutal and wildly surreal. But no more brutal and surreal, Himes may have said, than the situation of being Black — even of being a prominent Black writer — in mid-20th century America.”

So although Goodwin thought he was using authentic Black urban phrases when he borrowed them, the phrase was actually a patois invented by Himes for the fictional Harlem of his books.