Black Panther: Wakanda Unbound by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Daniel Acuña, et al.

Black Panther: The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, Part Four

Collection published: 2021
Contents originally published: 2020-21
Read: October 2025

I finally made it to the end of all the Black Panther comics I got in a comiXology sale to commemorate the death of Chadwick Boseman, but those only go up to 2020... and obviously there are five more years of Black Panther comics after that! So I'll be continuing to discuss them, switching from single issues on comiXology to collected editions on Hoopla. That begins with the fourth and final part of The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, branded as "Wakanda Unbound" on the original issues, though not in the trade.

Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Artists: Ryan Bodenheim, Daniel Acuña & Brian Stelfreeze*

Color Artists: Michael Garland, Daniel Acuña, Chris O'Halloran & Laura Martin

Letterer: Joe Sabino

Anyone who's followed my reviews of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther run will not be surprised to hear that it fizzles out instead of coming to any kind of interesting climax. Part one of this storyline was gripping if confusing, part two raised lots of interesting ideas, part three returned to the meandering slow style that is Coates's typical approach... and then part four throws away any interesting ideas in favor of endless superhero punchups. I think the idea of Wakanda as an empire in itself is one that could have really had T'Challa questioning his own principles, but we just get a big battle here. Wakanda is a byword for freedom across the galaxy now! But how can it be that easy? Can a formerly oppressive regime just become a force for good? Interesting questions that a writer could ask, but this story just dodges them all in favor of a totally unearned Big Win.

For some reason, a bunch of non-Wakandan superheroes show up for the final battle, but I think only Black ones.
from Black Panther vol. 7 #24 (art by Daniel Acuña)

In the end, I think Coates bit off more than he could chew time and time again. These are superhero comics, fundamentally they must be about punching bad guys in the face, but the very best superhero comics manage to do more than that. Coates was interested in Big Ideas, which I appreciate, but his run consistently failed to marry those Big Ideas to the conventions of the superhero genre, meaning almost every arc had Big Ideas that were discussed a bit but went nowhere, and boring, tacked on action. (Particularly tedious here is the largely dialogue-less, all-action issue.)

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

* Note that the cover gives credit to Chris Sprouse and Karl Story, but they have no work collected in the volume. I'm assuming someone copied over the cover template of part three, which they did contribute to, and failed to change the names.

Black Panther: Two Thousand Seasons by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Daniel Acuña, et al.

The previous installment of The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda ended with T'Challa finally getting his memory back; the third and penultimate sees him reestablishing (first) contact with and (then) transportation to "Wakanda Prime" (e.g., the original Wakanda on Earth). We get to see T'Challa interact with his supporting cast again; we discover more about the origins of "Intergalactic Wakanda" and about how T'Challa ended up there; and the emperor of the empire is seemingly defeated... but secretly continues to lurk in the background.

Who among us hasn't forgotten we're a supergenius?
from Black Panther vol. 7 #15

I was hoping that this installment would see the story kick into gear, but overall, it's pretty slow; reflecting back over it, I realized that very little had actually happened across the first five issues. (The sixth is a flashback establishing how T'Challa first came to the Intergalactic Empire and ended up a mind-wiped slave.) It's nice to get some answers, but mostly it seems to be moving pieces into position rather than telling its own story. I suspect that, once again, Ta-Nehisi Coates has bitten off more than he can chew, and whatever remains of this story will not be able to satisfactorily tie up all the interesting themes and ideas he has introduced.

In particular, T'Challa is wrestling with his sense of responsibility toward the Intergalactic Empire. It is going around committing crimes in the name of his country. Does he need to stop it? The story indicates this is complicated by the fact that, since he left, Wakanda has entered its first period of prosperity and peace in a long time. Dare he disrupt this? That's an interesting idea, but it's one I found hard to buy into, because we haven't actually seen this new, supposedly peaceful Wakanda. The main Black Panther series hasn't shown us Wakanda Prime for a dozen issues; our visits to Wakanda in the parallel Shuri miniseries didn't indicate that things were going that well. If this dilemma is going to drive the rest of this series, we need more reason to believe in it.

from Black Panther vol. 7 #18

There are nice touches, though. I thought the character stuff between T'Challa and Storm was probably handled better than at any previous time in Coates's run, particularly in the last issue here, where they discuss the invisibility of oppression to those who benefit from it. The reunion between T'Challa and his mother and sister was also well done. I think Daniel Acuña's art continues to improve; there are some real killer action sequences here. On the other hand, I am pretty unexcited to see that the villains of A Nation under Our Feet are making a reappearance.

So overall, this continues to be the best storyline of Coates's run on Black Panther, but it also doesn't read like the best comic someone could have written about these concepts and ideas. 

The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, Book 3: Two Thousand Seasons originally appeared in issues #13-18 of Black Panther vol. 7 (Aug. 2019–Jan. 2020). The story was written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, illustrated by Daniel Acuña (#13-17) and Chris Sprouse (#18), inked by Karl Story (#18), colored by Marcio Menyz (#18), lettered by Joe Sabino, and edited by Wil Moss.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Black Panther: Many Thousands Gone by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Daniel Acuña, et al.

After Avengers of the New World came to an end, Marvel did that thing that Marvel likes to do, which is that they started Black Panther over with a new #1... even though there was no gap in publication at all, and it was the work of the same writer! Ta-Nehisi Coates continues on, though the main artist of this new arc is Daniel Acuña, who is new to the character (other than a short story in Black Panther Annual vol. 1 #1).

from Black Panther vol. 7 #5

The first six issues of Black Panther volume 7 comprise a story called Many Thousands Gone, itself the first "book" of The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, a massive story arc that runs through all twenty-five issues of this volume of Black Panther. It seems to me that Coates must have taken some of the comments on his first couple story arcs to heart (though clearly not the one about how long his story arcs are!), because while A Nation under Our Feet in particular had lots of dialogue and seemingly little action at times, Many Thousands Gone has lots of action and little dialogue, and especially little exposition. 

from Black Panther vol. 7 #3

We're dumped into a new status quo in medias res: there's some kind of Wakandan intergalactic empire (you can tell Coates isn't a science person because he doesn't seem to know the difference between "galaxy" and "star system," much like Terry Nation), which is evil; there are a group of slaves, some of which become rebels, one of whom seems to be T'Challa. Many of the other characters share names with familiar Black Panther ones, but don't seem to be the same ones. Lots of time passes between some of the issues here—years, I think—and T'Challa is sometimes referred to as some kind of distant, historical, legendary figure, but also the T'Challa in the story dreams of Storm, indicating he's the regular T'Challa.

I appreciate the attempt to do something different and unusual—I appreciate it a lot. There's a very standard type of Black Panther story that's emerged ever since Don McGregor first wrote the character, and this is very much not it... but one can see how it might let Coates and his collaborators explore some issues that are often intrinsic to the character.

from Black Panther vol. 7 #2

On the other hand, I found this a bit too inscrutable at times: exactly who these characters were is so opaque, and the jumps between issues so large, that even though there's a lot of action, I didn't know why what the characters were trying to do mattered, and thus it was hard to glom onto.

By the end of these six issues, we don't know a lot about what's actually going on. Coates is clearly playing the long game here. He also did this on his previous two story arcs, but unlike on those... I kind of think it can work? A Nation under Our Feet didn't play any better with foreknowledge of where it was going, but I can imagine rereading this and getting it. Maybe I'm being naïve, but I have faith!

Unlike the editors of this run, I suspect. Each issue begins with a page that lays out some of the backstory, information that six issues in hasn't been otherwise revealed to the reader. It reads like someone chickened out of the in medias res approach to the series after it was written and illustrated and insisted this be stuck on the front. But it's not even that helpful, I was still confused! I wish they hadn't bothered, I felt like it showed a lack of confidence.

The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, Book 1: Many Thousands Gone originally appeared in issues #1-6 of Black Panther vol. 7 (July 2018–Jan. 2019). The story was written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, illustrated by Daniel Acuña (#1-5) and Jen Bartel (#6), with layouts by Paul Reinwald (#6), colored by Triona Farrell (#6), lettered by Joe Sabino, and edited by Wil Moss.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XXIX: Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters

Comic trade paperback, 208 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2006-07)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2014

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters

Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti

Art by Daniel Acuña
Colors by Daniel Acuña and Javi Montes 
Letters by Rob Leigh

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters is the sequel to The Battle for Blüdhaven, like it taking place during 52; in this case, Uncle Sam covers the presidential election and its aftermath, beginning during week 26. To its credit, it is better than Battle for Blüdhaven, though that's not really thus much of an accomplishment. Thankfully, the overly large cast of its predecessor is excised in favor of just a few Freedom Fighters, and despite myself I even came to become interested in some of them, especially Doll Man and the new Ray, the former of which is tragic and the latter funny. (The previous Ray appears, too, but as someone who coincidentally just read thirteen issues of Christopher Priest's run on The Ray, he's very generic here.) Like its predecessor, Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters tries to say something about America, but its villains are so ridiculously over-the-top it can't really be about anything meaningful. Perhaps I'm a fool to look for nuanced political commentary in a superhero comic, but I really think it is possible... but it definitely wasn't achieved here.