Black Panther in the 2000s: ... And Finally, Wakanda Forever!

As the Black Panther entered the 21st Century, we got a step closer to what would become the foundations that would define the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, there were birth pangs along the way. The third volume of the series continued on for about sixty issues, consistently written by Christopher Priest. Priest, for those who skipped my Black Panther in the 90s primer, could be considered the prime architect of the modern day Black Panther and is responsible for elevating the character from a b-list to an a-list character. Funny how when you take a Black character and finally let Black writers handle him you get good stories about said character. Crazy, I know.

Still, Priest wasn’t without his controversies nonetheless. The primary of which was criticisms of his Everett Ross character and how some of the things the character would say were insensitive. I’ve covered my thoughts on that over in the 90s primer, you really ought to read it.

Anyway, Priest took these criticisms of his work — because he knew it was good, and he’s not wrong — and doubled down on the things that he was being criticized over. Priest subverted the expectations of not only the Black Panther, but every African-American superhero that passed through the book. One of the greatest subversions was introducing an alternate version of T’Challa from the future. He was intentionally drawn in a Kurby-esque fashion and spoke in bombastic dialogue that was commonly used at Marvel in the 1960s. Here, Priest was measuring up his Black Panther with the one of yore and the commentary feels like an indieitement of the character’s past portrayals. This Black Panther was ridiculous and over the top and had a stupidly short attention span. It would later be revealed that this version of T’Challa was suffering from brain damage and was a portent of the future to come for the present day T’Challa.

Some might call this use of the character sacrilege to the earlier work of Jack Kirby, the Black Panther’s creator. However, the criticism is wrong. No matter how much you can revere Kirby as a legend, his Black Panther work was hot garbage. I’ve mentioned it here in my 70’s primer, but Kirby’s work on Black Panther was one of disinterest because he was pissed at Marvel for not honoring their deal when he came back to work for them. That entire run of comics were just phoned in. It didn’t help that he was taking over in the middle of an acclaimed run by Don McGregor. So, I find that Priest’s commentary here is justified. It’s a decent roast of Kirby’s not-so-great work.

Another feather for Priest’s cap is that he was also the first writer to cement a connection between the Black Panther and Captain America, making it so one could not have achieved greatness without the other. This would be in Black Panther (vol. 3) #30, a story that reveals that T’Challa’s father was the one who provided the Vibranium that would lead to the creation of Capitan America’s iconic shield. This story would be come a bedrock of the legacy of the Black Panther as well as the prolonged origins of Captain America. However, later tellings of this story would expanded upon and replace the role of T’Chaka with that of a 1940s Black Panther named Azzuri.

But the controversies didn’t stop there, as Priest’s work would continue to be dogged by editorial demands. Rather than maintain and keep current readers, the demands from up top wanted to attract new readers to the book. Which is really interesting since it was Priest’s work that elevated the Black Panther to an ongoing series in the first place. Suddenly, that wasn’t good enough. We could discuss how the comics industry is just a pulping machine that grinds creatives with ridiculous demands while offering shit pay, but this is a page about comic books and not late stage capitalism.

There was a decision to mix it up by introducing a brand new Black Panther. So out went the political intrigue that was actually working and interesting and in come the introduction of Kasper Cole. Cole was a half-Black half-Jewish New Yorker who was the heir apparent of T’Challa himself. It was a massive departure from what had been going on in the book previously. This was a period where Marvel was taking risks to try and boost sales. It was 2003 and they had revamped all the X-Men books. Conspicuously, all of the Rob Liefeld inspired characters (Cable, Deadpool, and X-Force) were completely reshuffled and rebranded (to Soldier X, Agent X, and X-Statix). Trying to capture lightning in the bottle a second time, Marvel also tried this approach with other titles, notably Thunderbolts (turning it into a weird comic about superpowered wrestlers) and, of course, Black Panther. However, Unlike X-Statix (which was huge hit with readers), these other attempts at a reinvention didn’t go so well.

I think I understand what Priest was doing with the Kasper Cole character. Having faced harsh criticisms from that vocal part of the fanbase you’d wish would die in a house fire, Priest probably wanted to double down to piss them off even further. Reading his writings about this period of his career, a lot of his decisions were supported and refined with the help of Marvel editor Tom Brevoort and the blessing of then editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. A lot of people capital H hate Brevoort and Quesada too, so and it amuses me to no end that the two of them green lit a Panther that would piss off the teacups in the cheap seats. Frankly, I don’t blame them.

I think the brilliance with Kasper Cole was the fact that he was an unlikable character to start. He was trapped in a loveless relationship with a kid on the way that he did not want. He was suffocated by the women in his life and is learning how his dad may have been a dirty cop. Then the guy stumbles upon the Black Panther’s gear and takes on the mantle a concept that spits in the face of the legacy and traditions that have been created for the character.

The fan response was vocal. Google anything about Kasper Cole and you’ll have many fans who have little good to say about the character. It’s is endlessly amusing to me watching someone like, say Comic Drake, sputter and fume over such a character because he never researches past the story. He seldom explores or tries to understands the historical and creative context that created the stories he often commentates on. Look, don’t get me wrong, I follow Comic Drake and usually his videos are good, but sometimes… man, sometimes… the context of stories go over his head. Like, he had some salty things to say about the Scarlet Witch/Vision romance in the Kree/Skrull War storyline and I had to point out that it was an allegory for interracial relationships, which was a taboo subject when the story was originally published in the late 60s/early 70s. Also, he thought the Kree/Skrull War was boring, without understanding that it was an allegory for the McCarthy era communist witch hunts. Sorry to get off topic, but that’s not a dunk of Drake. The fact that he has grown up in a world where the idea of an interracial relationship or political persecution is not given a second thought that he wouldn’t pick up on the context is actually a good thing. As long as my nihilist mind views the modern world as an enduring trashfire, we are still making some kind of progress, but I digress. Anyway, who said comics are too woke now? Because I got some bad news for you. Now, where was I? Oh, right, context….

I don’t pretend to fully understand the context of what Priest was trying to create. I believe that speaks to an entire experience that I know nothing about, me being white and all. As miserable and disadvantaged I am in general, I’ve also still benefited from the privilege of being alabaster tone. I think that if there is anything critical I can say about the character, is that corporate was pushing for sales before giving the character room to breath and the story to play itself out. Because what ends up happening is that Black Panther gets cancelled at issue #61.

Priest managed to pivot the characters and stories he was working on to another book called The Crew. It was a team book that explored the issues of the oppressiveness of capitalist class structures. Framed around a gentrifying Brooklyn. Since it was a book trying to make a strong social commentary about inequities in society it didn’t last more than 7 issues. Apparently, nobody was interested in a team of all. Reading Priest’s reflections on this series, he tried to write a book about an issue that effects everyone regardless of race. It just happened that the characters that were in the book happened to all be Black. Apparently, such a concept was difficult to grasp up in the nosebleeds. So a lot of these stories ended up getting the axe before they could be properly resolved in the time they needed and it was a huge rush to wrap everything up for a title refresh.

It took over a year, but Black Panther came back with a crew title and a new creative team. The book was back under the Marvel Knights banner, at least to start.

Taking over writing duties was screenwriter Reginald Hudlin, filmmaker best known for his movies Animal House and Boomerang. He had jumped in on Marvel Comics to write Marvel Knights: Spider-Man and the 4th volume of Black Panther. While, I wasn’t a fan of his work on Spider-Man (which featured a bizarre story about a Skrull/Superman pastiche who was both a superhero and a staunch Christian), his work on Black Panther is top tier stuff. He built on the foundations of what Christopher Priest started and expanded upon it.

However, whereas Priest had the Panther mostly slumming around New York City, Hudlin brought the Black Panther back to Africa. The political intrigue was back because saner minds prevailed. However, Hudlin didn’t just expand T’Challa as a character, but also built on the lore of Wakanda. Here, Wakanda itself was treated like a character itself. Prior to Hudlin you could sum up the fictional African nation in a few sentences: It’s got some magic metal, there is a cyber-forest, and sometimes dinosaurs. But as far was the Wakandan people, its culture, and the history of the nation — things that would gives Wakanda definition — were bare bones. Sure, you had writers like McGregor and Priest trying to give Wakanda more definition, but it’s Hudlin’s work that really cemented what Wakanda is.

What was really missing was the lack of anything that felt authentic. Before, most of Wakanda was basically white people’s idea of Africa as influenced from adventure movies from the 50s and 60s. Just mostly naked black people with spears and wooden shields. It wasn’t a good look.

What Reginald brought to the book was that much needed authenticity. I don’t profess to be any expert on African culture or history. I mean, I know all the parts where white people came waltzing in and enslaved and murdered people for shiny metal and made parts of the continent utter hellholes for centuries. But I couldn’t tell you anything about the indigenous population that lived there. Their culture, or language, or societies before white people came in and finger fucked everyone with our cultural sausage fingers (they’re laced with razor blades BTW).

Hudlin worked on the premise that until the “modern age” Wakanda was a hidden land, that did not interact with the outside world. While such an idea may have been feasible in the 1960s when the fictional country was created, not so much in the 21st Century. So it was less the fact that Wakanda was an hidden land per se, but now it was a nation that had and always been able to repel white colonizers over the centuries. Wakanda became a isolationist nation. Not so much “hidden” in the literal sense, but in the fact that anyone who tried to walk in got very, very fucking dead.

The other issue that was fixed was rooting the Black Panther at home. For decades there was almost an aversion of telling stories in his native Wakanda for any period of time. T’Challa instead always slummed it in America and only came back when the kingdom was in peril. Even during Priest’s run, the idea of having the Panther spend any time in the country he is supposed to be ruling over is miniscule or used as an excuse to explain why he isn’t in a particular Avengers story. But in Priest’s own defense, he had to build up T’Challa and make readers care about him as an individual since that ground work had been long neglected. He had to work on making people care about the Black Panther first. Then the world building could begin.

Still, what was it that made T’Challa want to leave all the time? What was lacking? It was the fact that nobody had established that T’Challa had any kind of family back home. His biological parents were dead, sure he had a step-mother but she was under utilized. Hudlin gave us T’Challa’s extended family, his sister Shuri, and other characters (as well as brining back some classics from the McGregor run) to pad out his cast of characters. It gave T’Challa a solid connection to his homeland and made him want to stay. He also finally ended that “will-they-or-won’t-they” relationship between T’Challa and Storm of the X-Men that has been teased since the 70s.

But the other thing was that Hudlin also created legitimate competition for the mantle of the Black Panther with Shuri. Before Shuri, everyone who tried to usurp the Black Panther role were pretenders. Killmonger, Kasper Cole, they were all pretenders. Shuri created a family member of the royal bloodline that could potentially succeed T’Challa. Which was an interesting new direction. However, a lot of this would fall by the wayside as the title got penned in with the many company-wide crossover events going on at the time. Civil War, Secret Invasion and so on. By early 2010, the Black Panther found itself on the backburner of publications until the mid-2010s.

The 2000s, despite the turbulence and the hard sells, was a decade of incredible growth of the character. His world was finally being fleshed out and he was rapidly becoming the character that we ended up seeing on the silver screen.