If the original 1970s version of Luke Cage were to turn up in 2016, he would be sure to get some funny looks. Debuting at the height of Blaxploitation in 1972, Marvel Comics’ first African American superhero to get his own title sported a gaudy open-chested canary-yellow jacket, chain belt, lavish afro and bizarre steel tiara. His catchphrase, “Sweet Christmas!” would have made even Chef from South Park grimace with embarrassment.

Instead of ignoring Cage’s history, Netflix’s latest Marvel show has embraced all that cultural resonance, but given the man with bulletproof skin and superhuman strength a refit for the 21st century. Netflix subscribers may already have seen Cage in last year’s Jessica Jones, where Mike Colter delivered a performance of hushed potency as the superpowered PI’s sometimes paramour. Now he’s out on his own, in a show that’s supposedly a sequel but feels more like a prequel, and in which we learn just how he came by his spectacular powers.

The first seven episodes suggest a slow burner – just the kind of story arc that works so well as binge TV, but would never survive on a network. As the show opens, the mysterious Cage is lying low in a New York barbershop, that traditional fulcrum of African American cultural identity, hiding his powers and working menial jobs to pay the rent. But it’s not too long before the new guy in town is forced to face up to the fact that the community he’s living in is rotten to the core, and only he has the abilities to take down the bullies.

And it’s the neighborhood where Cage emerges as the hero of the hour that sets Cheo Hodari Coker’s show apart as a vestibule for hip-hop culture to be introduced into the Marvel universe. Where earlier efforts Daredevil and Jessica Jones were both set in a strangely un-gentrified version of Hell’s Kitchen, Luke Cage is all about Harlem and the area’s powerful resonance as a repository of African American culture and music. Charles Bradley, Faith Evans and Raphael Saadiq all perform live at the opulent nightclub owned by villain Cottonmouth (House of Cards’ Mahershala Ali), and the show’s soundtrack is liberally peppered with raw-edged blues, soul and hip-hop motifs, from Wu-Tang Clan to Nina Simone and Mahalia Jackson.

It’s a potent stew of cultural reference points that means Luke Cage ends up being fiercely watchable even for those who would not usually take in a superhero show. There are strong supporting turns from Frankie Faison as barbershop owner Pop, Simone Missick as local detective Missy Knight (who loses her bionic arm from the comics but gains a sort-of crime scene superpower) and Alfre Woodard as a shady politician who’s secretly being funded by the bad guys.

In places, the show is as uncompromisingly savage in its depiction of criminal underworlds and localised political corruption as Boardwalk Empire and The Wire. But there’s also a strong sense of the hip-hop western, with Harlem as the wild west town and Cage as a Shane-like reluctant hero slowly facing up to his responsibilities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Coker (best known for writing middling Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious and producing brilliant LA neo-noir Ray Donovan) has described Cage’s wearing of a hoodie as a tribute to Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter movement, there are even occasional nods to civil rights-themed cinema as our hero battles with the disadvantages of being a poor black man in New York.

The show only seems to run into trouble when it remembers it is supposed to be just one story in a wider Marvel arc – Cage is due to team up with Daredevil, Jones and the still-to-debut Iron Fist as “street-level” Marvel superhero ensemble The Defenders next year – rather than its own eccentrically soulful animal. In particular, there’s a weirdly clunky moment when an old favourite from previous Netflix episodes suddenly pops up in Harlem just in time to spin the plot in a convenient direction. The Marvel Cinematic Universe came up with the mid-credits scene precisely to avoid having to squeeze such saga-building glue all over the main plot, and those coming to Luke Cage cold might be forgiven the odd double-take at the liberties taken with the movies’ small screen cousin.

And yet by the time it begins to veer just slightly off course, the show’s excellent first few episodes (directed with characteristic verve by Sherlock’s Paul McGuigan) have already built up such a repository of trust that our hero could suddenly run into Spider-Man, or develop powers of invisibility, without causing us to blink. And this is, after all a comic book show.

Even those who rather miss the old Cage, tiara and all, will find something for them, in the form of a not-so-subtle “Easter egg” moment that will both serve to remind long-term fans of the superhero’s hokey past glories, and have the rest of us belly-laughing at the audacity of the reference. And yes, at one point (just once, mind) I can confirm he even utters that old immortal line: “Sweet Christmas!”