Previously, I reviewed the first nine issues of
Black Panther vol. 4 in two separate posts
here and
here. The series ran up to issue #41 (plus one annual), all of which except the last three (a
Secret Invasion tie-in) were written by Reginald Hudlin. There are a number of different artists, but Francis Portela, Scot Eaton, and Klaus Janson contribute the most.
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from Black Panther vol. 4 #28
(script by Reginald Hudlin, art by Francis Portela)
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I always like to title my blog posts about ongoings with whatever description of the premise is given in the comic itself (I don't know if there is a technical name for these things; I'm sure there is). As the one I picked for this post highlights, the big change in this comic is the marriage of Black Panther to Storm of the X-Men. Beginning with issue #10, T'Challa starts looking for a wife; in #18, he and Ororo are married. The rest of the run largely concerns how things are impacted by their marriage, though more the world at large than Wakanda itself. They go on a "world tour" honeymoon, they poke their noses in the American superheroes' "Civil War," they serve together on the Fantastic Four while Reed and Sue are on vacation.
Unfortunately, to me, the marriage was never totally successful. Hudlin tries his best, but the relationship is largely depicted as a preexisting one, which we the readers have never seen before. (Around the same time, a
Storm miniseries was published that layers in some of that backstory, but I haven't read that, though I intend to.) If it had just been a marriage of political convenience, I think I would have bought it, but the series tries to tell us it is both that
and a passionate, genuine romance, and I just never could believe it.
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from Black Panther vol. 4 #31
(script by Reginald Hudlin, art by Francis Portela)
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I also think the comic spends too much of its time being a generic superhero comic, not playing to the strengths of the
Black Panther premise. The overly long story arc about T'Challa and Storm being on the Fantastic Four is just a
Fantastic Four comic with some different leads; I'm sure this was a fun thing over in the actual
Fantastic Four, but fighting Skrulls and revisiting long-lost plot
FF plot points from the 1960s is not why I'm reading
Black Panther, you know? I also found the
Civil War crossover particularly tedious, jumpy, and incomprehensible.
Hudlin tries at time to make it work, such as giving up Skrull versions of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, or trying to focus on Wakandan politics during
Civil War, but it never did much for me. Too often, the unique selling point of this comic—one that Hudlin really emphasized during its opening story arc—was neglected, which was
Wakanda. Little of the action takes place there, unlike in Don McGregor's run, but in Christopher Priest's run, even parts of it set outside Wakanda never let you forget you were reading about a king doing statecraft.
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from Black Panther vol. 4 #22 (script by Reginald Hudlin,
art by Manuel Garcia and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons)
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Occasionally, Hudlin does do a good job merging social commentary on the African diaspora experience into superheroics, following in the footsteps of Don McGregor's Ku Klux Klan story arc; I particularly enjoyed the post-Katrina New Orleans story arc; I really liked Hudlin's take on Luke Cage, too.
Notably, this is the run where Shuri is introduced... in the films she's an intrinsic part of the Black Panther mythos, so I have been mildly surprised to realize how late she came to it. But Hudlin does very little with her here, also to my surprise. She would be easy to forget if this was all you ever read of her; after being set up for significance in the opening arc, she plays very little role until late in the run. I think she plays a bigger role in
Black Panther vol. 5, so we'll see.
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from Black Panther vol. 4 #14
(script by Reginald Hudlin, art by Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson)
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I was a bit apprehensive about the final story arc, seeing as it was a crossover
and by a different writer, Jason Aaron. But it had great art by Jefte Palo and even greater coloring by my fave, Lee Loughridge. It seems to me that Aaron does a Priest pastiche here, not a Hudlin one, largely depicting T'Challa from the outside as Wakanda fights off a Skrull invasion. The viewpoint characters are all Skrulls... and you actually end up feeling bad for them as they are yet another attempt to invade Wakanda that ends in failure. Well done, great stuff.
ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE
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