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Don’t Miss This: “Black Panther” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Daniel Acuna

By | October 31st, 2018
Posted in Columns | % Comments

There are a lot of comics out there, but some stand out head and shoulders above the pack. With “Don’t Miss This,” we want to spotlight those series we think need to be on your pull list. This week, we take a look at Ta-Nehisi Coates’s continuing work on “Black Panther” along with artist Daniel Acuna.

Who Is This By?

“Black Panther” continues to be written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and currently features art by Daniel Acuna. Previous artists on this title have been Brian Stelfreeze, Wilfredo Torres, and Karl Story. Laura Martin was often the colorist on this period of the book.

What’s It All About?

Revealed in the pages of “Marvel Legacy,” Wakanda had a long hidden intergalactic empire, “Black Panther” picks up those threads and things get spacey as T’Challa journeys the stars and finds himself involved in some “Star Wars.”

What Makes It So Great?

Simply stating that this current run of “Black Panther” is as if it were mixed with a Star Wars AU, and letting that mic drop, seems all that is necessary to describe the books quality. However, my editors inform me that is not enough.

Remember when Black Panther came out in theaters and it felt like a new Star Wars, more so than new Star Wars? The films use of popular storytelling conventions mixed with being the first major Afrofuturist film made for a very Star Wars like cultural moment. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s current volume of “Black Panther” takes that a bit more literally, plot wise the first half of the ‘Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda’ is very A New Hope, as a rag tag band of rebels fight against the titular Empire and Emperor N’jadaka.

The arc also introduces a slew of characters with familiar names like Nakia and M’Baku. These aren’t the old characters but much like the treatment of this arc as something of a “Black Panther” meets Star Wars AU, it uses readers extra textual knowledge to build and narrate character in a way that the younger Coates wouldn’t have been able to. All of these things make it sound like a fan mashup dream, and to a degree it is, however, the core storytelling and use of references makes this one of the better reads currently published by Marvel. Much like Coates’s run on the title overall it has so far been an island to itself and unaffected by the other meta-narratives going on, allowing it to exist and payoff on its own without the need for pulling other titles.

For all the Star Wars of it all, “Black Panther” is still clearly a Ta-Nehisi Coates’s comic and one that exists within his overall run on the character. ‘Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda’ reads like a thematic Black Mirror for his earlier terrestrial exploration of Wakanda as a culture and the potential contradictions that exist in a utopian, unconquered, futurist African nation that still functioned as a monarchy. By giving Wakanda an Empire, Coates is able to phatastically explore the justifications and processes of imperialism, and less benevolent dictatorship, within an unexpected narrative space.

While Coates’s exploration of Wakanda as a cultural space is what draws me to the title, his continued exploration of T’Challa’s character has given this book a strong emotional spine to carry everything. Without the full political power associated with kingship, T’Challa becomes lost with who he is. The ‘Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda’ gives us T’Challa at his most lost, toiling away a slave in the Vibranium mines, but slowly and surely who T’Challa is at his very core begins to come out.

One of the joys of reading “Black Panther” has been seeing Coates grow and adapt to writing for comics as a medium and experiment with form with some of the best artists Marvel could offer. Daniel Acuna’s art is spectacular his aesthetic choices give the book an old school “Flash Gordon” feel mixed with the naturalism associated with Wakanda. The sense of vibrancy that comes through in his work is due in no small part to their framing, but how he paints and punches in the color gives the book a very Pop Pulp feel. With Acuna’s art, “Black Panther” is one of the best looking books on the shelves.

Continued below

How Can You Read It?

Issue #5 of ‘Intergalactic Empire Of Wakanda’ comes out this week. The first trade, “Black Panther Book 6: Intergalactic Empire Of Wakanda Vol. 1,” collecting issues #1-6 is due out February 5, 2019. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates previous work on the title is already collected in books 1-5.


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Michael Mazzacane

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