Cage (2002)

Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben's five-issue MAX series from 2002 turns Luke Cage into a hired hand on a rough beat, asked to look into the death of a young girl killed when one set of gangsters shot at another. It plays as street crime, not superheroics. What matters is the seedy strip club, the bars and the people he leans on, and Azzarello's street dialogue sounds lived in. Corben's heavy, grotesque style, colored by José Villarrubia, is the love-it-or-hate-it factor: the exaggerated anatomy can tip into caricature, and the ending will split readers. Violent and profane, but short enough to finish in an evening, which makes it the quickest way into Marvel crime on this list.