Ultimate Black Panther: Peace and War by Bryan Hill, Stefano Caselli, and Carlos Nieto

Ultimate Black Panther: Peace and War

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 2024
Read: December 2025

Writer: Bryan Hill

Artists: Stefano Caselli & Carlos Nieto

Color Artist: David Curiel

Letterer: Cory Petit

Since the end of Eve L. Ewing's Black Panther run, there has been no ongoing Black Panther series... sort of. Though the "616 universe" Black Panther lies fallow, there is an ongoing set in Marvel's alternate continuity, the "Ultimate universe." I don't know much about the broader continuity of the Ultimate universe, so I can only judge the comic on its own merits, as a reboot of the Black Panther concept. We're back to the beginning here, with Wakanda in splendid isolation from the rest of the world, a Black utopia cut off from the rest of Africa. At the start of the series, T'Challa is already king of Wakanda, though his father T'Chaka is still alive, having stepped down. But pressures are conspiring to bring T'Challa and Wakanda into the outside world; two mysterious godlike figures are taking over Africa, and they are not going to leave Wakanda alone.

I thought this started strongly, with well-defined characters in interesting configurations. T'Challa is actually married to Okoye, former head of the Dora Milaje; I felt like there was sexual tension between Shuri and Okoye; Killmonger is romantically involved with Storm and T'Challa is sympathetic to his arguments. Wakanda is being rocked by terrorism, and the new king does not know who to trust.

Unfortunately, what is the status quo at the end of the second issue is pretty much still the status quo at the end of the sixth, the last one collected here. It seems to me that T'Challa mostly sits around and thinks a lot about what he should do; more than once I turned a page on my Fire tablet and was surprised to discover I had finished an issue, thinking there was no way that twenty pages could have gone by. I don't mind comics without nonstop action; in fact, I wish more superhero comics writers would spend time on character and dialogue and mystery. But the attempts at such here by writer Bryan Hill (Killmonger: By Any Means) go in circles without interest. 

T'Chaka always gotta die, I guess.
from Ultimate Black Panther #1
(art by Stefano Caselli)

Partially I think the issue here is that (if I am correct) the series is being told in real time, with a month passing between each issue. But that means not much of significance can happen between issues, so T'Challa can't do much between them... but then he doesn't seem to do much in issues, either, and thus he ultimately spends six months dithering. Potentially interesting conceit but poorly implemented. Such an approach requires a lot of done-in-one issues, I think, more plots shaped around individual issues. This is very much a "written-for-the-trade" plot. Well, except that even by the end of the trade little has happened. Written for the omnibus?

I enjoyed the art of Stefano Caselli, who draws the first four issues. It was much better than his work on Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways... but then that was twenty years ago! I found the work of new-to-me Carlos Nieto on the last two inferior; an artist for a series with this much dialogue needs to have a better command of facial expressions, and some of the compositions were confusing. (When Storm and Killmonger make out in issue #6, I at first thought it was Storm and Shuri!)

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