With its Fresh Start initiative, Marvel is relaunching Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Black Panther” series with a new #1. Bring on Daniel Acuña as the artist, this series promises to deal with the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda teased in the Marvel Legacy one-shot last year. Check out our thoughts on “Black Panther” #1 in our review!
Written by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Illustrated by Daniel Acuña
Lettered by VC’s Joe SabinoA bold new direction for the Black Panther! For years, T’Challa has fought off invaders from his homeland, protecting Wakanda from everything from meddling governments to long-lost gods. Now, he will discover that Wakanda is much bigger than he ever dreamed…Across the vast Multiverse lies an empire founded in T’Challa’s name. Readers caught a glimpse of it in MARVEL LEGACY #1. Now find out the truth behind the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda! Ta-Nehisi Coates welcomes aboard fan-favorite artist Daniel Acuña for a Black Panther story unlike any other!
When Marvel relaunches a book with a new #1 but keeps either the whole or part of the creative team, there is usually no logical reason to think the book is going to be easy to jump into. Most of the time, it feels like this is just a tactic to raise sales for a book lagging behind, with no actual break in continuity between the old issues and this new #1. This has led a lot of readers to distrust Marvel’s new #1, for understandable reasons. It makes it hard even for those of us that spend far too much time thinking about comic books to follow along with certain series, with all of their renumbering and renaming, even when they are clearly one continuous story. However, I am happy to report “Black Panther” #1 does not fall into any of these traps. Despite Ta-Nehisi Coates staying on from the previous volume, “Black Panther” #1 actually feels like a clean break and a fresh start for the series.
In this first issue, “Black Panther” is a super hero book in name only. Instead, it feels more like a sci-fi epic that we are being thrown into head first. “Black Panther” #1 doesn’t provide too many answers to the questions posed by its setting, giving just enough information so that readers don’t feel lost, but leaving many questions to still be answered. What the series does have, in lieu of answers, is action. Daniel Acuña’s fight choreography makes the action pack a certain amount of punch behind it. He is able to capture movement in such a way that certain panels feel like they have these fast, quick movements, but at the same time focus on the most important, impactful hits.
Acuña brings a ferocity to the character of T’Challa. His use of shadows on T’Challa’s face mean that most of the issue, even though he is the center of action, T’Challa is hidden from us. His eyes covered by deep shadows from his brow, the hard lines that Acuña gives him on his face made even harder and deeper by the heavy black shadows used to accentuate them. “Black Panther” #1 gives us a version of T’Challa that is at distance from the reader, haunted by something that neither the reader, nor T’Challa knows.
The distance between T’Challa and us readers is also heightened by the fact that, for the majority of this issue, T’Challa is a silent protagonist. Coates takes a step back in this issue, allowing Acuña to do most of the storytelling simply through the action being presented. There are pages at a time where the only word are shouts of pain or sound effects. Keeping T’Chall at arms length from the reader give the sense that he is someone we cannot really know, and all of it plays into a revelation that comes toward the end of the issue that I’d rather not spoil.
These silent pages and focus on action are a real difference form the last volume of “Black Panther.” When I said this is a good jumping on point, I don’t simply mean that story wise. The style of writing in “Black Panther” #1 feels different from the beginning of Coates first volume on the title. In that book there was a reliance on text boxes and narration, but here Coates seems to have grown more comfortable in writing comics, using fewer words and allowing the Acuña to show more of the story rather than tell it.
Continued belowThe real continuity between the previous volume and this one, besides the simple fact that Coates is continuing to write it, is the thematic heart of the series. While the setting, the characters, and almost everything else about the series has change, at its core “Black Panther” is still examining the heart of what Wakanda is, what it represents and what it means. Coates is unwilling to let Wakanda’s mythos and politics go unquestioned just because they are the way they’ve always been. In the previous volume of the series, Coates questioned the monarchy that is at the heart of the “Black Panther” mythos. In this volume, it’s sights are set on the Wakandan ideas of isolation and self-defense, taking both of these notions and expanding them in ways one might not expect.
Like all the best science fiction, what “Black Panther” #1 does is ask questions about the now. At what point does looking after your own people turn into actively hurting others? If there is a class of people who are told they are better than the world around them, what are those people likely to do when put into a place of power? There are big questions at the heart of “Black Panther” #1, big ideas about both Wakanda, and the actual world that we are living in. These big ideas are the backdrop to an exciting, pulse pounding story of sci-fi action. This is an exciting new chapter in “Black Panther,” and it’s one that I cannot wait to read more of.
Final Verdict: 9.5 – “Black Panther” #1 lives up to the promise of a new volume, taking the series in an exciting and completely different direction.
