Black Panther: All This and the World, Too by John Ridley and Germán Peralta

Black Panther: All This and the World, Too

Collection published: 2023
Contents originally published: 2022-23
Read: December 2025

Writer: John Ridley

Artist: Germán Peralta

Color Artists: Ceci De La Cruz, Sebastian Cheng & Jesus Aburtov

Letterer: Joe Sabino

While I enjoyed the set-up of volume 1 of John Ridley's Black Panther a lot, I found what was done with that set-up in volume 2 pretty awful, to be honest. The third and final volume is better than volume 2, thankfully... but as it's a direct continuation, it's hard to move past how heavy-handed some of the plot turns in volume 2 were, as the story of volume 3 directly depends on them.

This volume opens with Black Panther operating as chairman of the Avengers, still no longer welcome in Wakanda. The world's Internet infrastructure is taken over, and when T'Challa goes to investigate, it turns out that it's one of his own people who's done it, the very friend whose death kicked the whole thing off in volume 1. His enemy has the power to neutralize the Avengers, so T'Challa must take him down on his own with his own allies.

It's fine. Some of the twists are good, some are heavy-handed; some moments feel earned, some do not. I think overall, Ridley's run had the core of a good idea, an interrogation of the extend to which T'Challa was willing to go to protect Wakanda, but it wasn't done in a good way, because far too many characters judge T'Challa by a weird standard of ethics. One of the best parts of Priest's run (with which Ridley's is very obviously in dialogue) was how it treated Black Panther a king, not a superhero—what would a superpowered king do in a world of superpowers? how would he act to protect his nation and its interests? Ridley's run wonders if there might be ways in which T'Challa thus might go too far... but it doesn't do this interestingly, because everyone judges T'Challa for his choices right away without considering the rationale or consequences of them. To say what T'Challa does is bad because it's not what other superheroes do is a really boring way to criticize T'Challa. At his best, T'Challa was a square peg in a round hole, but instead of exploring how that lack of fit plays out, Ridley's run just asserts he ought to have been a round peg all along. Why do I need to read a fifteen-issue run devoted to telling me the character I'm reading is bad? It's cynical and uninteresting, and I'm worried this all leaves the character in a bad place for future stories as well.

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Black Panther: Wakanda by Evan Narcisse et al.

Wakanda

Collection published: 2023
Contents originally published: 2022-23
Read: November 2025

Writers: Stephanie Williams, Evan Narcisse, Adam Serwer, Ho Che Anderson, John Ridley, Brandon Thomas

Pencillers: Paco Medina, Ibraim Roberson, Sean Hill, Julian Shaw, José Luís, Natacha Bustos
Inkers: Walden Wong & Elisabetta D'Amico, Ibraim Roberson, Le Beau with Keith Champagne, Julian Shaw, José Luís, Natacha Bustos

Color Artists: Bryan Valenza, Andrew Dalhouse, Jordie Bellaire

Letterer: Joe Sabino

During John Ridley's run on Black Panther, Marvel also published Wakanda, a five-issue miniseries of stories focusing on various non-T'Challa Wakandan characters; they seem to mostly be set between volumes two and three, while T'Challa is in exile.

The first is a Shuri-focused story (creatively titled "Shuri"), where she battles Spider-Man foe Rhino, who's been smuggled into Wakanda to take advantage of T'Challa's absence. The story itself is fine; I always like a bit of Shuri, and writer Stephanie Williams does a good job with her relationship with her mother. I also liked the vibrant, expressive art of Paco Medina (who I recollect from a good Young Avengers Presents story).

The second story focuses on M'Baku, the former rebel who is now the regent of the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda. I really enjoyed the previous M'Baku-focused story from co-writer Evan Narcisse, so I was pretty disappointed in this tale, which clearly suffers from trying to cram way too much into a single issue. Too much dialogue, too many characters, too much backstory, too many turns in the plot. The art struggles to get it all in. That said, Narcisse is always up to something interesting, and I really hope someday he gets to cook with a space-based Wakanda ongoing, because I think he could do some strong stuff with M'Baku and company.

Why does he think a whole country is going to be vulnerable because one guy is missing?
from Wakanda #1 (script by Stephanie Williams, art by Paco Medina and Walden Wong & Elisabetta D'Amico)

The worst story in the book is certainly the Killmonger-focused one, the only one to be set outside the timeframe of Ridley's ongoing; it covers a trial when Killmonger was a young member of Ulysses Klaw's criminal organization, where a bunch of recruits were made to climb a mountain together and also secretly kill each other off. Even in the realm of supervillainy, I'm not convinced this is a good way to create a secret organization, I don't think the story is very consistent with other depictions of Killmonger's youth (most recently the miniseries named after him, though admittedly, I thought that miniseries wasn't very good either), and the story has way too many characters who are hard to tell apart.

Was all of this backstory in Tosin's previous spotlight story? I don't remember it.
from Wakanda #4 (script by John Ridley, art by Julian Shaw)

There's then two stories, one about Tosin the angry young Wakandan from Ridley's run, and one about Okoye, the one remaining member of the Dora Milaje. These are both fine but not up to much; I didn't care for the art in the Tosin one, and while I appreciate the attempt to flesh out him and his world, it didn't really resonate with what we have already seen of him.

Like, who are these guys?
from Wakanda #3 (script by Evan Narcisse, art by Natacha Bustos)

Lastly, the end of the book collects a bunch of back-ups that originally ran in each issue, about the history of the Black Panthers. These are probably more interesting if you're more au fait with the continuity of the wider Marvel universe than I am. I did note that Jack Kirby's run has been retconned as happening to T'Challa's father, T'Chaka, when he was Black Panther. Boo! Why can't we have whimsy? I did really like Natacha Bustos's art, though.

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Black Panther: Range Wars by John Ridley, Stefano Landini, and Germán Peralta

Black Panther: Range Wars

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2022
Read: November 2025

Writer: John Ridley

Artists: Stefano Landini & Germán Peralta

Color Artists: Matt Milla & Jesus Aburtov

Letterer: Joe Sabino

I really enjoyed volume 1 of John Ridley's Black Panther run, finding it a return to form after Ta-Nehisi Coates's. It was interesting, from a character, action, and thematic perspective, surely the best work on the title since Christopher Priest.

So I was very much surprised by how much I thoroughly disliked this. The first few issues here wrap up the "Long Shadow" arc, and I found them dumb. I get that people might be mad at T'Challa having a secret plan of shadow agents... but I found the reactions here entirely disproportionate. The agents didn't even do anything. Can you get mad at the legitimate ruler of a country for having spies? Because that's literally all he did, yet everyone suddenly acts like T'Challa has committed the ultimate transgression. Yet he very much did "worse" things throughout Priest's run! And suddenly he's being deposed, being hunted by Wakandan police. Does it even make any sense? T'Challa is a popular ruler, you can't just politically turn on a guy like that. I didn't buy any of this at all, it made no sense. Clearly Ridley has a long game he's playing, and he's trying to get all the pieces into position for it, but the hand of the author is too obvious. To make all this work, you need to buy what Ridley is selling, and I did not.

A metaphor, you say? Surely not.
from Black Panther vol. 9 #10 (art by Germán Peralta)

The rest of the book contains another story that actually reads much more like an Avengers story in its features, even if I would say it's a Black Panther story in terms of its project. No longer king of Wakanda, a depressed T'Challa is focusing on his duties as chairman of the Avengers when Earth comes under attack by the "Colonialist," an entity from another dimension. This is science fiction in the classic tradition of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds: what if the aliens did to the Earth (i.e., specifically white people) what white people have been going around doing to other people? The idea is fun enough, there's a couple good jokes, but I didn't find the actual story did as much with it as you might hope for; there's not really any interrogation on the part of the white characters as to what this says about them. I did like the "Buffalo Soldier" character a lot, though.

I was also glad to see Germán Peralta graduate from one-shot/back-up artist to the series main artist. He's good at action and emotional expressiveness; clear composition and good storytelling.

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Black Panther: The Long Shadow by John Ridley, Juann Cabal, et al.

Black Panther: The Long Shadow

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2022
Read: November 2025

Writers: John Ridley & Juni Ba

Artists: Juann Cabal with Ibrahim Moustafa & Stefano Landini, Juni Ba & Germán Peralta

Color Artists: Federico Blee, Matt Milla, Chris O'Halloran & Jesus Aburtov

Letterer: Joe Sabino

After the long, meandering, dull narratives of Ta-Nehisi Coates's run, this volume felt like a return to form for Black Panther. Coates never figured out how to integrate story, character, themes, and action; in his work, you had long boring scenes of dialogue alternating with long boring scenes of action. I don't think I've ever previously read a comic written by John Ridley, but he clearly knows how to write a comic book, and how to do so in a highly effective way, to boot.

The basic premise here is that T'Challa had sleeper agents in other countries, living seemingly normal lives, but ready to be activated if the need came up—known only to him. Except, all of a sudden, they are being killed off... so he must spring into action to defend them, while making sure no one knows of yet another long-laid plan founded on a lack of trust. Ridley's characterization of T'Challa definitely owes a lot to Christopher Priest's; this is the master plate spinner, except this time the plates are crashing down.

The story isn't quite complete here; League of Comic Geeks tells me The Long Shadow ran eight issues, and this volume weirdly collects just five. So one doesn't know how it will all play out. But I liked almost everything here: the sense that for once T'Challa is on the back foot is well done, the action is strong (Juann Cabal is probably the best regular Black Panther artist in a long while), and the character interactions are sharp and interesting. If Ridley's subsequent volumes maintain this level of quality, this will be an all-time great Black Panther run.

We get some fun Shuri stuff, too.
from Black Panther vol. 8 #2 (script by John Ridley, art by Juann Cabal)

Issue #3 was a special double-length issue, celebrating Black Panther's 200th issue; it came with two bonus stories. (Weirdly, the collection sticks them in the middle by publication order, interrupting the ongoing story; it would surely have made much more sense to put them at the end!) One, "The Wakandan" by John Ridley and Germán Peralta gives a backstory for a new character, Tosin, an angsty resident of Wakanda's "mute zones" with vibranium superpowers. Meh. The other is a tale of T'Challa being eaten by the panther god to go on a mystical quest; I really enjoyed the unique writing and art of Juni Ba.

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