Black Panther: Klaws of the Panther by Jonathan Maberry, Gianluca Gugliotta, et al.

In Doomwar, T'Challa destroyed all Wakandan vibranium worldwide in order to prevent Doctor Doom from using it for nefarious purposes. Of that move, I wrote, "this happens at the very end of the story, so we get no implications of his choice. This isn't so much an issue for Doomwar itself [...] but one that I am afraid future Black Panther stories will not really engage with. I guess we'll see!" Well, I was wrong, because the very next in-continuity Black Panther story is all about the worldwide vibranium shortage.

Klaws of the Panther continues writer Jonathan Maberry's focus on Shuri as the new Black Panther; in this story, she travels to the Savage Land to obtain some vibranium to replace Wakandan stocks. (Apparently "S.L.V.", an abbreviation you will read way too much in this series, is different from Wakandan vibranium.) What she finds, though, is that someone got there ahead of her—longtime Black Panther nemesis Klaw (he killed her dad) has teamed up with the mad scientists of A.I.M. to do... um, something vaguely nefarious with vibranium and sound.

from Klaws of the Panther #2

While I enjoyed Maberry's Doomwar, this miniseries continued some of the trends I didn't enjoy from Maberry's run on Black Panther volume 5. A bit too much going on about Shuri's inexperience and anger and propensity for using violence. This bothers me for two reasons. The first is that it feels like the kind of thing you do with a female hero specifically; I don't think men are as likely to continually get storylines about how they are bad at superheroing because they are inexperienced and their emotions get in the way. Second, I just don't think the character of Shuri from the comics is (thus far, anyway) as interesting as the one played by Letitia Wright in the movies! Give me the warrior-scientist who can bring her brother up short. I am wondering if at some point the comics character will become more like her film counterpart.

Anyway, as my brief synopsis above perhaps hinted, I didn't care much for the story here. I don't really care for Klaw—no offense, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but what does it mean for a person to be made of living sound... especially if they just seem to be a person still?—and all the stuff about "S.L.V." got too abstract and complicated. On top of this, each issue sees Black Panther teaming up with a different hero: Shanna the She-Devil, Wolverine, Spider-Man, and the Black Widow in turn. The team-up with Shanna is natural enough given the plot, and the meet-up with Wolverine is fun enough (and also makes sense if you buy the series's conceit about Shuri needing to manage her anger better), but the inclusions of Spider-Man and the Black Widow seem kind of pointless and random.

from Klaws of the Panther #4

On top of all this, I didn't care for the art by Gianluca Gugliotta with assists from Pepe Larraz. Like too many superhero artists drawing stories about women, he always makes sure to include perfectly round breasts and butts even if he has to contrive the angles to make it happen... but weirdly his faces are kind of ugly. The action is decent enough if you ignore that, and I do find José Villarrubia an above-average colorist.

Unfortunately, though the story's events spin out of the choices T'Challa made in Doomwar, I don't think the implications are meaningfully explored here; there's little from Wakanda in this story. The hunt for "S.L.V." could basically be any maguffin. The strength of Black Panther as a concept is in Wakanda itself and its politics, both internal and international, and Klaws of the Panther doesn't have that. I'm curious how the loss of vibranium and Shuri's tenure as Black Panther will both shake out in the long term, because while this series finished in 2011, there wouldn't be another Wakanda-focused Black Panther run for another five years! That's an eternity in comics time, and I feel pretty certain the changes set up in Reginald Hudlin and Jonathan Maberry's runs will be forgotten by then.

Klaws of the Panther originally appeared in four issues (Dec. 2010–Feb. 2011). The story was written by Jonathan Maberry, illustrated by Gianluca Gugliotta (#1-4) and Pepe Larraz (#3-4), colored by José Villarrubia, lettered by Albert Deschesne, and edited by Lauren Sankovitch.

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