Shuri: A Friend in Need and Other Stories by Nnedi Okorafor, Rachael Stott, et al.

The second half of the Shuri series continues the story of what Shuri is up to on Earth, acting as Black Panther while T'Challa is missing in space. First there's a two-issue fill-in by Vita Ayala and Paul Davidson about Shuri going to New York City tracking down black holes, where she ends up working alongside the Miles Morales Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel. I was a little skeptical of this going in, to be honest, but I ended up enjoying it a fair amount. Ayala (mostly) has a good command of Ms. Marvel, and the story does some interesting, nuanced things that stop it from being just another generic superhero punch-up. (I did find it weird that Kamala said she was a science person, though.)

from Shuri #9

The last three issues bring back series writer Nnedi Okorafor, alongside a new artist, Rachael Stott, to wrap up the series's various ongoing threads. Stott was one of the regular artists on Titan's Doctor Who work, where she did great stuff particularly on their twelfth Doctor series, and I was glad to see her making the jump to one of the "Big Two" publishers here.

I did think that the three issues here struggled a bit to get everything together; in particular, Shuri's friendship with the mysterious anonymous hacker Muti ultimately seems pretty underdeveloped. Yes, Muti plays a role in wrapping up the ongoing crisis with the music-loving black-hole-generating space bug that threatens to eat Wakanda's memories, but I felt like there was more to do here in terms of characterization with the idea that Shuri's only real friend was someone she never saw or met! In the end, it feels like Okorafor bit off slightly more ideas than than she could chew in a ten-issue miniseries; Wakanda's growing connection to other African nations is just a random bit of flavor rather than something dealt with substantively.

from Shuri #7

It does have some good touches; I liked the inclusion of a made-up piece of Wakandan dance music, and I was pleasantly surprised that the story ended with Shuri still having access to the powers of ancient Wakanda memory, since I figured the point of the series was to remove them to more closely align the comics version of the character with the film version.

So ultimately I found the first half of this series stronger than the second... but it is definitely the best showing from Okorafor on a Black Panther-adjacent comic and, other than Rise of the Black Panther, probably the best Black Panther comic of the whole "Coates era."

Issues #6-10 of Shuri originally appeared from May to September 2019. The stories were written by Vita Ayala (#6-7) and Nnedi Okorafor (#8-10), illustrated by Paul Davidson (#6-7) and Rachael Stott (#8-10), colored by Triona Farrell (#6-7) and Carlos Lopez (#8-10), lettered by Joe Sabino, and edited by Wil Moss.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE