Captain America / Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers by Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan, Klaus Janson, et al.

Once again, I went into a Black Panther miniseries with low expectations, and once again, I was pleasantly surprised. Captain America / Black Panther is a "flashback" story set during World War II, showing how Captain America and the Howling Commandos came to Wakanda to stop the Nazis from stealing vibranium, meeting the then-current Black Panther. This was something we originally learned about in a brief flashback story during Christopher Priest's run, here expanded to four issues. Though I think in that story, the Black Panther was T'Challa's father T'Chaka, whereas here it's T'Challa's grandfather... whose real name I'm pretty sure we never actually get now that I think about it. The Marvel web site tells me his name is Azzuri, which sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't remember in which previous story we learned that.

from Captain America / Black Panther #2

Anyway, this might be branded as a Captain America / Black Panther story, but I actually felt like neither man was the protagonist. Black Panther, as my comments above indicate, is a largely mysterious presence here. More of a heroic ally than a hero, he doesn't make any big decisions or choices, just assists the the other characters in doing what needs to be done. Captain America's role is pretty straightforward heroism, punching Nazis, etc. I did wonder if there was space to do more with him confronting racism, but there are a couple nice touches there, as Black Panther asks him to imagine what race will look like in the country the Captain goes back to after the war.

No, the real protagonist is one of the Howling Commandos, Gabe Jones. Gabe is a black man in an otherwise white unit almost a decade before the American armed forces were integrated in real life. Gabe narrates the series, and finds his loyalties tested—does he owe his allegiance to the nation that discriminates against him because of his race, or to the country where people who look like him can live in utopia? Hudlin gives us a number of interesting sequences where he weighs up the ways different people react to him, from Steve Rogers to his fellow commandos to Black Panther to the Nazis. His decisions are the most significant ones of the story, and I really enjoyed what writer Reginald Hudlin did with him, giving a real heart and emotional core to what otherwise might have been a generic superhero punch-up.

from Captain America / Black Panther #1

Denys Cowan pencils; he's done a number of Black Panther stories, and I've enjoyed his work on them, especially the 1988 miniseries, as well as elsewhere in DC series like All-Star Comics and Convergence: Detective Comics. He does great here as well, with good character focus and decent action.

I thought this would probably be generic punch-up, and based on Hudlin's other writing (which tends to neither be hit nor miss, if that makes sense), I wasn't expecting much. But this is certainly the best Black Panther comic I've read from him, with solid superheroics and using the framework of black utopianism to tell a story with surprising depth.

Flags of Our Fathers originally appeared in issues #1-4 of Captain America / Blank Panther (June-Sept. 2010). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin; penciled by Denys Cowan; inked by Klaus Janson (#1-2), Tom Palmer (#3-4), and Sandu Florea (#4); colored by Pete Pantazis; lettered by Joe Sabino; and edited by Axel Alonso.

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