Black Panther Round Up Part 1

 

When Chadwick Boseman died, Marvel made several hundred issues of the various Black Panther comics free in digital form.  These include various runs  - such as the Priest run as well as newer issues (such as Coates) as well as the movie tie in books.  Prior to the release of the movie, the only Black Panther comics I had read was the Coates run.

               A couple general comments – There are some people who say the Black Panther, T’Challa, is too perfect, too all seeing.  This might be true.  There were at times when I did roll my eyes.  But this is hardly different than say Batman or Captain America, and T’Challa comes across as far less holier than thou then either of those two heroes (if you can call Batman a hero).  I was, at one time, a huge X-Men reader, and when I started reading, it was Storm and Forge as a couple, so that’s by far my preferred Storm partner.  (WTF? Her and Wolverine?  You got to be kidding me!). Coates’s writing, however, has warmed me up to Storm/T’Challa.

Black Panther (1977-1979) and Fantastic Four #52

               FF #52 introduces the Black Panther and is a pretty good, if perhaps a bit dated, story.  The 1977-1979 series is pretty much would you except from the 70s.  Fun, if dated.

 

Black Panther 1988

               Not the best but interesting because of Ramona.  It actually ties Wakanda into the larger African continent.

 

Christopher Priest (1998-2003)

               Priest’s run seems to be the one that most people refer to as THE RUN.  In part, it seems to because of the interplay between the US government agent, Everett Ross, and Panther himself.  In part, Priest places Wakanda in al larger global stage.  Panther’s time in NYC is about moving Wakanda ontoa global stage.  It is in Priest’s run that we get the Dora Milaje (based on the Dahomey Amazons) so that means we get Okoye and Nakia, though they are different that their MCU counterparts as is Ross.                            

Priest’s run also gives us Queen Divine Justice who, quite frankly, is well worth the read because comics need more characters like her. The way she deals with Hulk is just great and worth the price of admission. She has great sense of common sense and calls bullshit on things that are, well, bullshit.  Ross, too, in some ways is a refreshing voice because he is the non-super hero caught up in everything, though it does lead to one important question – why does Nikki see him. 

               There are weak aspects to the later issues – the time travel jumps, the switcheroo.  But there are actually two disturbing plot points.  So, spoiler warning.

               The first, somewhat strangely, has to do with the Dora Milajie.  In Priest’s run, Okoye, Nakia, and, later, Queen Divine Justice are the only three Dora Milajie that reader meet in any great depth. They are all significant younger than T’Challa.  As in under 18, “not quite legal age” as Ross tells it and dressing with high hems and plunging necklines.  Wives in training as well as a bodyguard, the Dora Milajie are girls chosen from the various tribes to serve the Black Panther.  The arrangement keeps the peace, and the girls will be become wives if T’Challa ever has sex with them.  This raises questions about how much of a life these girls have considering that T’Challa does not want to marry any of them.  To Priest’s credit, he uses Queen Divine Justice to challenge and question this tradition.  And if it that was the only issue, it really wouldn’t be an issue because Priest does have characters question it.

               But there is Nakia.

           Nakia in Priest’s run is nothing like the Nakia in the movie, so if she was your favorite character, you might want to skip Priest’s run.

               While in NYC, T’Challa becomes very hot and heavy with Nakia in his car.  He does this while under the influence/control of Mestipho.  This is a literal  “the devil made him do it” plot point.  At first, it seems that Nakia understandably has a crush or a longing for T’Challa.  She is a young girl; he is the king/hero.  The increase in desire that T’Challa shows to her drives her into obsession, and she becomes a villainess who wants to be T’Challa’s wife. Basically, a young girl who is a in a grooming situation is made to be the villain because she wants more than her groomer can give.  It’s true that I am looking at the plot point with Western eyes.  And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t matter.  It’s T’Challa’s story, he’s the hero; he has to be the good guy.  However, the devil made me do it excuse is one that men use all the time for any sexual assault or harassment.  It is an uncomfortable point in the plot. T’Challa regrets his actions in the issue where they occur, but that’s it.  The only character who even really speaks in Nakia’s defense is Everett Ross, but he becomes problematic a few issues later.

               Ross becomes problematic because of his treatment of Nikki, his boss and girlfriend.  Throughout the comic, it is quite clear that for whatever reason Nikki loves Ross. It is revealed that when T’Challa was in college, he and Nikki had a relationship.  By the time Ross meets T’Challa, the relationship is long since ended.  Ross is not told about the relationship that Nikki and T’Challa had, and finds out about it in the worse possible way.  He is understandably upset that he wasn’t told.  His response, when Nikki tries to talk to him about it, when she asks if he wants to hit her, is for him to, in fact, hit her from behind.

               Ross’s response when he is angry at his girlfriend is to hit her.

               He’s angry at her because she didn’t tell him about a relationship that was over.  She was not cheating on him.  The anger is understandable.  The violence is not.

               Soon, she is killed by Nakia and her death repairs the relationship between T’Challa and Ross because T’Challa can tell Ross, he trusted him because Nikki chose him to love.  (And the whole sexually jealous object has been removed by being fridged).

               Ross, like T’Challa with Nakia, is never sorry for what he did.

               To be fair to Priest, this run is around the time I stopped reading Marvel comics because of how the female characters were treated and how the male characters were always given passes on how they treated the women they supposedly cared for.  Around this time, we have the pairing off of Silhouette  with the man who kidnapped and tied her up naked to get revenge on her boyfriend, we have Wolverine ready  to kill Psylocke because some stranger said she was a fake, we have the whole Gambit mess, we have Justice’s (Marvel Boy’s) treatment of Firestar.  We have Cyclops and whatever you want to call the Maddie/Jean Grey/Emma Frost thing.  And Deadpool had been trying to kill his ex-lover.

               And how many times has Wolverine had to kill his true love?  (I know of at least two).

               So yeah, it’s a Marvel thing that leaves a sour taste in the reader of the Priest run.

Reginald Hudlin – Black Panther (2008-2010), Black Panther 2005-2008, Flags of Our Fathers

               Hudlin’s run on Black Panther is primary known for the wedding of Storm and Black Panther.  He, however, also give us Shuri as Black Panther and really gives Shuri in fact.

               Flags of Our Fathers is about Captain America visiting Wakanda during WWII and teaming up with T’Challa’s father or grandfather.  It is the best mini-series and the best Hudlin writing of the Black Panther.  Hudlin uses a Black member of Fury’s Howling Commandos’ to tie the story and thus can touch on the question of America asking Black citizens to risk their lives while delaying them basic rights.  

               For me, however, the 2005-2008 is over bogged down by the very forced relationship between Storm and Black Panther.  Marvel did not make the Storm mini-series that details the couple’s meeting free at this time.  But they ret-conned it.  Originally, Storm saved Black Panther.  IN the new telling a young T’Challa saves a younger Storm (she is 12) and they have sex.  Apparently, it was her first time, and it was so good for both of them so they always carried a flame in their hearts for each other. (This trope needs to die, btw) 

               While I understand and fully the support a Black power couple in Marvel comics (there needs to be more than one.  How many white power couples are there?), I do also wonder why is it that the two African characters in the comics know each other so well, especially when one of them is from a secretive country.

               In the early run (the 2005-2008) the relationship feels very forced and sudden.  It doesn’t help that T’Challa travels to all his ex-girlfriends who are still his friends to get their blessings or something before he proposes to Storm.  Additionally, constantly having the characters use “my love” to indicate they love each other as opposed to showing it doesn’t quite work.  It also didn’t help that Marvel shoehorned them into things, like the Fantastic Four, which are just strange.  Yes, the team needs to be less white but they are not the only team.  At one point, the Avengers looked like they were all Aryans.

               But the Storm/Panther relationship aside, Hudlin’s writing in the earlier issues, the 6 original ones, is reallyquite good and is actually better than both Priest and Coates.  In the 2008-2010 series, we also have Shuri taking the reins, and in some ways, being better for Wakanda than T’Challa.  The relationship with Storm works better in this series as well.

 

Doomwar

               Didn’t like this at all.  Meh.

Klaws of the Black Panther

               This could have been good but the artwork was horrible.

 

Ta-Nesihi Coates – Rise of the Black Panther, Black Panther (2018-2021), Black Panther and Crew, Black Panther (2016-2018), World of Wakanda

               Coates’ run starting 2016 is the one that the Black Panther movie draws from in its portrayal of the Dora Milaje, who are simply bodyguards and who become, in many ways, the moral center of the opening story arch.  The opening arch deals with the question of kingship – if Wakanda is so advanced why does it have a king, in particular a king who seems to spend quite a bit of time outside of his kingdom doing stuff.  What do the subjects do in that case?

               It is the examination of this issue that makes the Coates run so outstanding.  That and his use Shuri who becomes, basically, a powerful griot.  Coates centers the family relationships in the comics as well.  We are not told about the love in the family; the reader is shown it.  The relationship between Storm and T’Challa too works much better here.  In part, this is because T’Challa and Storm are far more nuanced characters; they are not the perfect extra special beings that they seemed to in Hudlin’s writing.  They are gods (some of what Coates’ does with Storm’s powers is so cool) or godlike, but they are also heartbreakingly human.  They become the power couple they were forced into being in name in the Hudlin series.  They work as a true power couple here.

               T’Challa has real friends in this series, and that was something he really didn’t have before.

               Well, there was not one scene in the 2018 series, Intergalactic Empire Wakanda,. When Storm and (alternate) Nakia have a conversation about T’Challa that feels like conversation a man would want two women to have about him that and that problem is then quickly resolved by (alternate) Nakia’s death. I have mix feelings about the Empire storyline.  The end is good, the plotting needs to be tighter. 

               But the 2016 series is so awesome and wonderful.  It is adventure but also philosophical in nature. 

               Rise of the Black Panther is a bit weaker in writing.  And the ideas behind Black Panther and Crew are interesting, an all Black super hero group to battle injustice, but the writing is not so good, and some of the characters, like Storm and Misty Knight, feel out of character.

But Coates’ arrival also allows for writers such as Roxane Gay  to join him, though World of Wakanda does disappoint as a s story because you, as the reader, have to know all the back story from all the crossovers.