Luke Cage’s KC connection: Hometown playwright Nathan Louis Jackson

While Black Panther and War Machine helped power “Captain America: Civil War” at this year’s box office, another black superhero in the Marvel pantheon quietly emerged as a fan favorite on Netflix.

“Luke Cage” premiered Sept. 30 with 13 episodes that follow the exploits of a former convict (Mike Colter) who battles crime in Harlem, thanks to his bulletproof skin and superhuman strength.

And it’s co-written by one of Kansas City’s hometown heroes, Nathan Louis Jackson, a playwright who has made a name for himself in the worlds of theater and television without uprooting his family and moving to the coasts.

“The series makes a bigger, grander statement about African-American men and how we view them,” Jackson says. “It is undoubtedly a black show. But at the same time, it is just a superhero show. We deal with something all the other superheroes deal with. We just do it from a different standpoint.”

Jackson is part of an eight-person writing staff on “Luke Cage” and solely credited on the sixth episode, “Suckas Need Bodyguards.”

“I try to bring as much personal baggage as I can to the show in a very constructive and helpful way,” he says. “Because I’m actively writing plays, there are some ‘theatrics’ I can bring from there. They are two different beasts, but some of those lessons I’ve learned in playwriting can help out with television writing.”

Jackson admits he wasn’t much of a comic book reader when growing up in Kansas City, Kan. Although he did enjoy the superheroes who made it onto TV and film, he never paid much attention to Luke Cage, instead favoring the X-Men and Black Panther.

In fact, Black Panther had another connotation around his household.

“A lot of people said my father was a member of the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panthers,” Jackson says. “A newspaper article even said he was. He told me he wasn’t a member; he just ran with them.”

The 37-year-old emphasizes he was raised to take great pride in his heritage. He recalls an image of his mother standing by her wedding cake, which was shaped like a black power fist.

That cultural appreciation helped shape his own skills. The Washington High School graduate studied theater at Kansas State and then was accepted into the Juilliard School’s two-year playwriting program. This eventually led to a Lincoln Center production of his family drama set in KCK, “Broke-ology.” (The Kansas City Repertory Theatre made it part of its season in 2010 and has since produced several of his plays.)

Jackson then headed to Los Angeles to pursue other avenues of writing, leading to his introduction to Cheo Hodari Coker, who would go on to create and produce “Luke Cage.” The pair met in 2009 when both were staff writers on the TNT series “Southland” during its second season.

“Nate literally didn’t speak for the first three weeks,” Coker remembers. “Then all the sudden out of nowhere: Boom! He just lit up the room with his stories and his perspective. He’s so laid-back and in the cut, you almost feel like he’s undercover.”

Coker promised then that if he won the opportunity to some day put together a staff, Jackson would be a part of it. Fortunately, Marvel was as enamored with the KC writer as Coker was.

“He has a way of getting to the essence of people and what makes them tick,” says Coker, who also co-wrote the 2009 rap biopic “Notorious.”

“A perfect example is some of the stuff on ‘Luke Cage’ when we have Luke washing dishes at Harlem’s Paradise. Nate would tell stories about when he would wash dishes at a barbecue joint, and he would literally have dogs following him home because he smelled like barbecue. At the same time, covered in barbecue grit, he gets a letter saying he got accepted into Juilliard.”

(Jackson says he worked at both Ricky’s Pit Bar-B-Q in KCK and Famous Dave’s in Manhattan, Kan.)

“No matter what grandiose heights he writes at, he never leaves his other experiences behind,” Coker says. “He brings this essence of reality and grit … and barbecue sauce!”

Jackson represents the rare TV writer who is based full time in Kansas City. While he often commutes to L.A. to collaborate in the “Luke Cage” writers room, he found a way to stay lucratively employed in his hometown.

In 2013, he earned a $174,000 playwright residency grant awarded to the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. The three-year award was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. That was renewed and upped this year for an additional $232,000. Thus, Jackson continues writing for the Rep through 2019.

The Rep has staged Jackson’s death row drama “When I Come to Die” and “Sticky Traps,” about a Kansas woman’s effort to protect her gay son’s honor when a church much like Westboro Baptist in Topeka comes to protest at his funeral.

His first project for the theater since securing the new grant will be a staged reading Monday of his latest play, “Brother Toad.” The work deals with gun violence in the African-American community and with the Second Amendment in general.

“I started thinking about how I feel about guns because I’ve had family members who were taken away by guns — whether they were shot and killed or they did the shooting and went to jail,” Jackson says.

“Guns to me were never viewed as a thing to protect; they were viewed as a thing to take lives. That’s the way I grew up. Then after going to K-State, it’s a different story out there. There’s not the same murder rate in Manhattan, Kansas. For the people out there, they grew up around guns that were meant to protect. I had to learn to respect both sides of the story. As an African-American, I had to say, ‘Where do I stand?’ ”

From gun rights to assisted suicide to the death penalty, Jackson doesn’t shy away from divisive topics.

“Nathan writes about the most pressing issues of our time in a voice that is nuanced, specific and rooted in the very real dramatic situations he creates for his characters,” says Eric Rosen, the Rep’s artistic director. “Unlike many writers of his generation, he’s less interested in ‘sending a message’ than putting his characters into very real situations in which conflict comes out of story.”

Juggling the Kansas City-based theater residency with the L.A.-written, New York-shot “Luke Cage” has proven difficult for the family man.

“I love it here in KC. I grew up here. If I could live my life and rest my bones here, I’d be a happy man,” says Jackson, who’s the father of a 9-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

“But at one point my wife asked my son, ‘Where does Daddy live?’ My son said, ‘He lives at the airport.’ ”

It’s hard, but he’s making it work.

“Luke Cage,” which is produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Studios, hasn’t officially gotten renewed for a second season. However, expectations are bright for the hour-long drama, which has been well-received by critics, earning a 96 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And it’s been highly praised for its grounded, streetwise vibe and throwback soundtrack.

The Los Angeles Times wrote, “The significance of a black hero who dresses in a hoodie and whose skin is impenetrable to bullets should be lost on no one. The references to the Black Lives Matter movement, both implicit and explicit, are there, but so are the allusions to Crispus Attucks, Jackie Robinson and Langston Hughes that place Luke Cage in a historical lineage of black heroes.”

“Historically, there hasn’t been this kind of show, which lends people to believe these shows won’t be successful,” says Jackson, who also wrote episodes of the recent ABC series “Resurrection.” “We can be just as successful as the other Marvel shows. The only difference is the color of our characters’ skin.”

Coker says his debut series is in many respects a reflection of the gifted team that is helping create it.

“ ‘Luke Cage’ is really about a man trying to accept what he is in the world,” Coker says.

“He wants ‘to be left the hell alone.’ With his superhero comes his responsibility — a responsibility he might not be ready for. To a certain extent, Nate personifies that. He’s just a normal brother who wants to be left the hell alone most of the time. But he has a talent that needs to be shared with the world. In doing so, the world’s a better place.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2016 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Luke Cage’s KC connection: Hometown playwright Nathan Louis Jackson."