Black Panther (vol. 4) #5
Who is the Black Panther? Part 5
Ulysses Klaw has led an invasion into Wakanda. Military forces try to contain the Rhino, who has plowed through all the border defenses, but fail to stop him from reaching the edge of Wakandan civilization. Monitoring things from the palace War Room, the Black Panther (T’Challa) and his advisors organize the counter offensive. While W’Kabi sends fighter planes to engage the Rhino, reports come an army from neighboring Niganda are coming in through the hole in their defenses.
T’Challa places a call to M’Butu — the tyrannical leader of Niganda — to thank him for the invasion. See, until now, Wakanda has remained a neutral party in the affairs of neighboring nations, including Niganda. T’Challa had actually hoped that its people would rise up against M’Butu and his kleptocracy, but this invasion gives T’Challa good reason to deal with M’Butu once the invasion has been thwarted. M’Butu is unafraid, boasting that Klaw will kill T’Challa as he did his father years earlier.[1] This angers the Panther enough that he smashes the view screen he is using to talk to M’Butu. That’s when he is told that the Black Knight is causing trouble for the Wakandan Air Force. This prompts T’Challa to take a direct hand in quelling the attack, ordering his men to prepare a skybike. As the Panther leaves, S’Yan — his uncle — advises T’Challa to keep his cool around Klaw.
That’s when S’Yan gets a call from Shuri — his niece — who is calling urgently from the Vibranium Mound. She was there investigating a strange earthquake earlier when the attack started. Now she is trapped within the mines with the Radioactive Man (Igor Stancheck), who has been sent by Klaw to do something to the Vibranium.[2] Igor hears her distress call and goes to confront her, however when he gets to her location, Shuri is gone. Believing the girl is in over her head, S’Yan tells the others to summon the Black Panther, regardless of the fact that T’Challa is already in the air.
Meanwhile, the Wakandan Air Force have managed to take down the Rhino by firing missiles containing a powerful knock out gas. However, in dealing with the Rhino, they have left themselves open for attack from the Vatican’s Black Knight who is riding upon his winged steed, Aragorn.[3] Luckily, the Black Panther arrives on the scene to stop him. He quickly snares the Knight with a chord and yanks him off his horse. T’Challa then threatens to have his fighters blow Aragorn out of the sky. Not wanting his steed to be killed, the Black Knight surrenders by dropping his Ebony Blade to the ground below.
As this is going on, T’Challa’s cousin T’Shan has just been appointed as the Wakandan diplomat to the United Nations. At the UN Building in New York, T’Shan hears about the attack back home and immediately believes that the United States is somehow behind it. His advisor cautions him not to make any accusations to the General Assembly before they have some evidence. That’s when they are interrupted by an attractive blonde woman who asks if she can speak to T’Shan in private. She claims to have information that can help stop the invasion of Wakanda. She claims to be the wife of the Radioactive Man, saying that she was told by Russian officials that he died years earlier in Chernobyl. She explains that he had recently been in contact with her, claiming that he would soon have enough money for them to build a new life for themselves. Learning that he was involved in the invasion, the woman claims to have been horrified and claims to have the key to stopping her hubsand. What T’Shan doesn’t realize is that this is all a lie and that this woman is actually the current host body for a criminal known only as the Cannibal.
While off the African coast, Everett Ross arrives aboard an American battleship to assist the Naval officers there. They are to respond to the situation in Wakanda as gingerly as possible. To that end, the vessel has been carrying over a dozen coffins of deceased soldiers. However, Ross explains that the military hates waste of any kind and these soldiers are not quite dead. That’s when the soldiers — converted into cyborgs — emerge from their coffins. After loading up with gear, over a dozen cyborgs, part of the Very Special Forces, leap into the ocean.
Back in Wakanda, the Black Panther arrives at the border with Niganda. He is contacted by W’Kabi who warns him that his sister Shuri is trapped in the Vibranium Mound with the Radioactive Man. T’Challa deduces that they will try to use the mound to destroy his land, but refrains from going to save his sister. He tells W’Kabi and S’Yan to prepare his armor as he will be back as soon as he has killed Klaw and M’Butu. Flying straight for the Nigandan capital, the Panther blasts his way into the royal palace. There he confronts M’Butu and offers to spare his life if he reveals where Klaw is hiding.
Meanwhile, Queen Ramonda gets an update on the situation from security. She is unhappy to hear that T’Challa is taking a personal hand in repelling the invasion and rescuing Shuri. She intends to give him a stern lecture on delegating his duties once the crisis is over. That’s when her security detail is taken out by Batroc the Leaper. This is followed by Klaw using his sonic horn to blast his way into her quarters.[4] As Wakandan security scrambles to deal with this new wrinkle in the invasion, the American cyborgs arrive on Wakandan soil and are awaiting further orders.
Recurring Characters
Black Panther, Klaw, Rhino, Black Knight, Radioactive Man, Batroc the Leaper, the Cannibal, S’Yan, Shuri, Ramonda, W’Kabi, T’Shan, Everett Ross, M’Butu
Continuity Notes
Ulysses Klaw famously murdered T’Challa’s father, as was first told in Fantastic Four #53.
This, Igor Stancheck is the Radioactive Man. He should not be confused with Chen Lu, the original Radioactive Man, who first appeared back in Journey into Mystery #93.
This Black Knight is obviously not Dane Whitman, who was operating as the Black Knight at the time of this story. His real name is revealed to be Augustine du Lac in the Black Knight appendix added to the softcover edition of Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #1. The Ebony Blade in his possession is the real deal though, and how he got it is a bit convoluted:
The root of the problem is that while the Ebony Blade appears in the pages of this volume of Black Panther, it will also simultaneously appear in the pages of New Excalibur series that will start up a few months later. In New Excalibur #14-15 would identify the Ebony Blade used by Dane Whitman during this period is a fake.
However, it’s not until Captain Britain and MI-6 #7-10 that it is explained that the Blade was swapped out with the fake by Dracula as part of some convoluted plot.
For clarity, the swap out happened sometime between Dane Whitman’s appearances in Avengers (vol. 3) #37 and New Excalibur #1.
For some reason, during Black Panther (vol. 4) #1-6, Klaw appears human form. As of this writing (January, 2024), there has yet to be an explanation for this. One could assume that Ulysses temporarily lost his powers.
Topical References
In her made up backstory, the woman the Cannibal is posing as states that Igor Stancheck was reportedly killed at Chernobyl by Soviet authorities and that she believed him to be dead for 10 years. There are issues here (other than timing). They are:
I believe she is evoking Chernobyl referring to the nuclear disaster that happened there between 1982 and 1986, leading to the world’s most catastrophic nuclear accident to date (time of this writing in Jan, 2024). Those events would have happened twenty years rather than 10, and I figure this discrepancy is an error that wasn’t caught before publication. That said, this should probably be considered a topical reference because:
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Ukraine became an independent state following the USSR’s dissolution.
It could be possible that Stancheck was involved in the Soviet clean-up efforts after the disaster, however, the idea that he’d have a young and attractive wife who was married to him before the disaster becomes increasingly impossible as the Sliding Timescale bumps the Modern Age forward in time. Stancheck’s “wife” was a young prostitute before she was possessed by the Cannibal, so claiming that she is a Chernobyl widow would be unbelievable nearly 40 years later (time of this writing).
As Marvel has yet to address this issue it could be interpreted a few different ways by modern readers:
The first would be modernizing the context of the backstory presented. Rather than Soviet officials, one could assume that it is Ukranian officials instead and that Igor’s accident happened more recently during the ongoing efforts to clean-up and mitigate the damage in Chernobyl as it is still highly radioactive.
The other is to accept that he was turned into a Radioactive Man during the Chernobyl disaster. This would assume that his aging process would have to have been slowed down (which is not that stretch given other long lived characters). This interpretation would have to change the made up story he tells T’Shan. Rather than claiming to be Igor’s wife, they would have to claim to be some direct family relative instead of something specific.
Everett Ross states that he doesn’t want the conflict in Wakanda to become “another Mogadishu”, this is reference to the capital city of Somalia. This African nation has been in a civil war for over 40 years. The United States has been involved in this conflict in varying degrees, particularly around the time this comic was first published in 2005. This is due to the fact that Somalia, a predominantly Muslim nation, became a safe harbor for terrorist cells such as al-Queda, who were America’s number one enemy following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. This wouldn’t necessarily be considered a topical reference as one could assume that Ross is referring to this conflict in a historical context rather than a present day one.
One of the soldiers aboard the American ship asks one of his colleagues if he’s watched the “new Pirate movie released by Disney”. He is referring to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, released in 2003, the first of a 5 film franchise (to date). While a reference like this would be considered topical, now that Disney owns Marvel this would be an instance of brand synergy. The only real topical thing about it is that there is a new Pirates movie, which could be true or false at any given time depending on what year it is.
