Black Panther (vol. 3) #1
The Client
Everett Ross is a member of the US State Department who is tasked with escorting foreign diplomats who are visiting America. He has just recently been assigned as liaison to T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, aka the superhero known as the Black Panther.
Reporting back to his superior, Nikki Adams, he tries to explain a series of bizarre events that happened when he first started working for T’Challa, whom he simply refers to as “the client”.
He starts his story off with a moment where he, sans pants, is sitting on a toilet in a run down apartment in the housing projects of Brooklyn, pointing his gun at the biggest rat he has ever seen in his life. All the while Zuri — one of T’Challa’s closest confidants — drones on about Wakandan history.[1]
When he notes that Zuri wouldn’t shut up until the Devil showed up, Nikki stops him and points out that Everett is getting ahead of himself and needs to start from the beginning. Ross then struggles to restart his story from the beginning. First he talks about how he and T’Challa’s entourage — which includes two members of the Dora Milaje, Okoye and Nakia — got arrested. Then he talks mentions how he and Zuri found themselves in a mud wrestling match at a strip club. Back further still, Everett speaks of how he was showing his credentials to a local drug deal named Manuel Ramos, making an ass of himself trying to use street slang to communicate.[2] Adams gets frustrated with the way Everett keeps jumping around the story instead of telling events in chronological order and tells him to start making sense.
Everett decides to start at the part of the story just before he lost his pants. After T’Challa arrived in America, he insisted on staying in the Brooklyn projects. There he and the Dora Milaje confront a local drug dealer named Manuel Ramos. Knowing that T’Challa is the Black Panther, Ramos begins threatening T’Challa and mocking the Black Panther’s costume. when Manuel and his thugs pull their guns, T’Challa uses a taser device to electrify the car they are sitting in, jolting the drug dealers badly. T’Challa then drags Ramos out of the car and orders the Dora Milaje to deal with his pals, but reminds them not to kill anyone. Tossing Manuel into a pile of trash in the alley, T’Challa changes into the Black Panther and tells the drug dealer to come at him. Ramos is more than happy to oblige and charges at the Panther with a switchblade. However, the knife harmlessly shatters when it strikes the Vibranium weaved costume that T’Challa is wearing.
The Black Panther then drags Ramos up to the rooftops by his hair. There he questions the drug deal about the death of a little girl. This girl was the poster child for a charity that T’Challa funds called the Tomorrow Fund. He is in a hurry to find her killer as the girl’s death has dragged him away from his homeland during a desperate time.[3] He tells Ramos that he will help him find the killer and marks him with an energy dragger so T’Challa can follow him anywhere, telling Manuel that his life belongs to him now.
While this is more coherent than anything else Everett has relayed to her at this moment, Nikki still doesn’t understand what’s going on and tells Ross to start again from the beginning. He then jumps back to when he went for Chinese take out with T’Challa, then jumps back to when he was driving to the airport to pick his client up.[4] Eventually, Nikki gets fed up and throws her drink in his face, this gets Everett to smarten up and start his tale from the very, very beginning.
It all started with what the press was calling “Wakandagate”, as fraud and embezzlement allegations were being made about the Tomorrow Fund. The FBI and Department of Justice were already investigating it when the post child for the Tomorrow Fund was found dead in an alley. This has prompted the Black Panther to come from Wakanda to begin his own investigation. The State Department chose Everett to be T’Challa’s liaison for the visit. When he tells Nikki at his apartment — the two are also in a relationship — he figures it’s going to be an easy job since even though T’Challa is a member of the Avengers, he doesn’t have any super-powers so it won’t be that dangerous.[5]
What Everett didn’t know at the time was that Wakanda was going through a period of political unrest. Violence in neighboring countries led to refugee camps being set up within Wakanda’s borders. This led to tensions with the locals, particularly the regional tribes that live outside the major city. This soon erupted in violence that the Black Panther and the Dora Milaje had to quell. The feelings in Wakanda at the time was that T’Challa, who was educated in the outside world, wasn’t viewed as a strong politician by his people.[4] This was the worst time for a political scandal like Wakandagate to happen. When T’Challa heard about the scandal and the murder he wanted to leave for America immediately for answers. This came at a difficult time, but T’Challa insisted a need to go, and left his step-mother, Romanda in charge in his absence.[7]
From here, Everett was given the job of being T’Challa’s escort and figuring that the prince always came to America alone, went to JFK International to pick him up in his own car. This time however, he was shocked to see that T’Challa brought an entire delegation of Wakandans for his trip. Nikki gets frustrated with the pace of the story and tells Ross to skip ahead.
She wants him to get to the part where the Devil showed up. Ross says that it was while T’Challa was out roughing up Manuel Ramos and he was stuck at their rented apartment with Zuri without his pants. He finally left the bathroom when he heard a knock on the door. When he answered the door he found the demon Mephisto standing there. After a moment to let the sight sink in, Everett slammed the door closed and told Zuri that it was for him.[8]
Recurring Characters
Black Panther, Mephisto, Everett Ross, Nikki Adams, Zuri, Okoye, Nakia, Ramonda, Manuel Ramos
Continuity Notes
Everett mentions how Zuri told the story about how T’Challa drove the “white devils” out of Wakanda four times. He is referring to when T’Challa was a boy and avenged the death of his father T’Chaka at the hands of Ulysses Klaw, who sought to gain access to the Wakandan Vibranium mound. This story was originally told in Fantastic Four #52-53.
The mud wrestling fight at the strip club is how Everett, T’Challa, and his entourage get arrested. It’s also how Everett loses his pants. This will all be explained in better detail next issue.
The murdered girl is named Jamie Robbins and her death was orchestrated by Achebe, the man who is currently staging a coup in Wakanda while T’Challa is away. This is explained in further detail over the next two issues.
These are more details that are fleshed out and elaborated upon next issue.
Reference is made of the Black Panther’s membership in the Avengers. He had been a member since Avengers #52. Since around issue #88, he had become a reserve member only serving on the core team for short stints as his duties to Wakanda would regularly call him away.
For more on T’Challa’s outside education, see Avengers #87.
The appearance of Ramonda here and her referencing herself as being T’Chaka’s second wife reconciles a long standing issue with T’Challa’s family tree at that point. The Black Panther entry in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #2 stated that his mother was N’Yami. Despite this, Ramonda was identified as T’Challa’s mother when she first appeared in Marvel Comics Presents #14. This story clarifies the issue.
Over the course of the next four issues we’ll learn that Mephisto had given power to Achebe in order for him to stage his coup of Wakanda. He also has come for T’Challa in an effort to steal his soul. Something that the demon fails to do in Black Panther (vol. 3) #5.
Topical References
Manuel Ramos and his gang speak using 90s street slang that is considered dated by todays standards. Everett also makes a pretty poor attempt at trying to talk like them as well in this story. It’s all very cringe. Anyway, the slang and manner of speech used here should be considered topical because it is a product of the period in which this comic was published. To some, the use of this style of speech would be considered offensive as it perpetuates harmful stereotypes by today’s standard.
When T’Challa and the others are arrested, their mugshot photos list the date as September 16, 1998. This date should be considered topical as it is relative to the date of publication.
Manuel Ramos and his thugs are depicted driving a late 90s model Mercedes convertible. This should be considered a topical reference as this is a real world vehicle and not many 90s models remain on the road. Ramos doesn’t strike me as a guy who would buy a vintage vehicle to go cruising around in.
When describing the Dora Milaje, he refers to them as “Deadly Amazonian high school karate chicks” and then inexplicably mentions Bill Clinton. Clinton was the President of the United States at the time of this story and, I’m thinking the humor here is that — at the time this story was published — Clinton was in the middle of impeachment hearings over a litany of things but mostly people were focused on the illicit affair the former President had with one of his staffers, Monica Lewinsky, during his Presidency. The issue was mostly treated as a joke outside of politics and I’m quite sure this is what is being joked about. It doesn’t make much since Everett is joking about the Dora Milaje who he refers to as “not quite LEGAL age”, whereas Monika Lewinsky was a woman in her mid to late 20s when she had the affair. But hey, when you’re writing jokes about low hanging fruit, not being factual hardly matters.
Everett also complains about how his “Swahili For Dummies” book was useless because the Dora Miaje speak Hausa. This is a reference to the For Dummies franchise of books which began publishing in 1991. It started off as user guides for computers and later expanded to a wide range of subjects. The series became hugely popular in the late 90s and early 2000s. It spawned another type of low hanging humor where the joke is usually something about a For Dummies book about whatever the joke is about. For those who are serious minded, as of this writing (December, 2022) there has not been a “Swahili For Dummies” book published. At any rate, this is a topical reference since For Dummies is a real world series of self-help books.
In the flashback where Everett is driving to the airport he is listening to “Jungle Boogie” by Kool & The Gang. The song was released on their 1973 album Wild and Peaceful. You could consider this a topical reference, however since Everett is depicted as a tone deaf white man trying to appeal to the Black people he is interacting with, this was an intentional choice on his part.
When describing T’Challa, Everett jokingly refers to his codename as Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver was an early leader of the Black Panthers, a Black power political group that existed from 1966 to 1982. Since this is a historical reference (and a joke) it wouldn’t be considered topical.
Everett states that the car he drives is a Mazda Miata. This should be considered topical as it is a real world automobile.
During his verbal history of Wakanda, Zuri states that the nation first invented magnetic pulse technology in 1984. Given how technologically advanced Wakanda was when it first appeared in Fantastic Four #52, one could argue that this is a factual reference and not a topical one.
