Captain America / Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers by Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan, Klaus Janson, et al.

Once again, I went into a Black Panther miniseries with low expectations, and once again, I was pleasantly surprised. Captain America / Black Panther is a "flashback" story set during World War II, showing how Captain America and the Howling Commandos came to Wakanda to stop the Nazis from stealing vibranium, meeting the then-current Black Panther. This was something we originally learned about in a brief flashback story during Christopher Priest's run, here expanded to four issues. Though I think in that story, the Black Panther was T'Challa's father T'Chaka, whereas here it's T'Challa's grandfather... whose real name I'm pretty sure we never actually get now that I think about it. The Marvel web site tells me his name is Azzuri, which sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't remember in which previous story we learned that.

from Captain America / Black Panther #2

Anyway, this might be branded as a Captain America / Black Panther story, but I actually felt like neither man was the protagonist. Black Panther, as my comments above indicate, is a largely mysterious presence here. More of a heroic ally than a hero, he doesn't make any big decisions or choices, just assists the the other characters in doing what needs to be done. Captain America's role is pretty straightforward heroism, punching Nazis, etc. I did wonder if there was space to do more with him confronting racism, but there are a couple nice touches there, as Black Panther asks him to imagine what race will look like in the country the Captain goes back to after the war.

No, the real protagonist is one of the Howling Commandos, Gabe Jones. Gabe is a black man in an otherwise white unit almost a decade before the American armed forces were integrated in real life. Gabe narrates the series, and finds his loyalties tested—does he owe his allegiance to the nation that discriminates against him because of his race, or to the country where people who look like him can live in utopia? Hudlin gives us a number of interesting sequences where he weighs up the ways different people react to him, from Steve Rogers to his fellow commandos to Black Panther to the Nazis. His decisions are the most significant ones of the story, and I really enjoyed what writer Reginald Hudlin did with him, giving a real heart and emotional core to what otherwise might have been a generic superhero punch-up.

from Captain America / Black Panther #1

Denys Cowan pencils; he's done a number of Black Panther stories, and I've enjoyed his work on them, especially the 1988 miniseries, as well as elsewhere in DC series like All-Star Comics and Convergence: Detective Comics. He does great here as well, with good character focus and decent action.

I thought this would probably be generic punch-up, and based on Hudlin's other writing (which tends to neither be hit nor miss, if that makes sense), I wasn't expecting much. But this is certainly the best Black Panther comic I've read from him, with solid superheroics and using the framework of black utopianism to tell a story with surprising depth.

Flags of Our Fathers originally appeared in issues #1-4 of Captain America / Blank Panther (June-Sept. 2010). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin; penciled by Denys Cowan; inked by Klaus Janson (#1-2), Tom Palmer (#3-4), and Sandu Florea (#4); colored by Pete Pantazis; lettered by Joe Sabino; and edited by Axel Alonso.

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Black Panther: Dark Reign / Prelude to Doomwar by Reginald Hudlin, Ken Lashley, Paul Neary, et al.

After Black Panther volume 4 came to an end in 2008, it was almost immediately followed by volume 5. This was a twelve-issue series; I don't know anything about the behind-the-scenes of the era, so I don't know if it was planned as a maxiseries, or if it was supposed to be an ongoing that got curtailed or what. Maybe it was even planned as a six-issue miniseries and expanded?

from Black Panther vol. 5 #4

It has two distinct halves. The first six issues are a Dark Reign tie-in (I don't remember what Dark Reign was even though I have the Young Avengers installment) called The Deadliest of the Species that focuses—in theory, anyway—on Shuri becoming the Black Panther. The series opens with T'Challa injured and missing; in flashbacks, we find out he had encounters with both Namor and Doctor Doom. In the present, T'Challa has abandoned his responsibilities because of his injuries, meaning his mother and wife have to step in as rulers of Wakanda while his sister Shuri has to assume the mantle of the Black Panther. Of course, there's some kind of threat to Wakanda, some kind of ancient mythical bad guy.

To be honest, I never figure out what the bad guy was or why I should care. The story is supposedly about Shuri but I didn't feel we learned anything interesting about her, and the beats of the story are kind of tired. She's too cocky and has to learn to dial it down to be worthy... this seems to me to be the kind of thing that is more often associated with female superheroes than male ones. Has T'Challa ever been rejected by the panther god for his confidence? The charming character of the films has yet to emerge in the comics... if, indeed, she ever will. The rest of the story is pretty forgettable stuff, super-terrible bad guys defeated in super-terrible fights.

from Black Panther vol. 5 #2

The Deadliest of the Species was written by the same writer as volume 4, Reginald Hudlin; Hudlin cowrites the first issue of the second story, Power, with Jonathan Maberry, who then takes over as writer for the remainder of the series. Power jumps ahead a bit, with Shuri now installed as ruler of Wakanda, on a diplomatic mission to the United States, where she's also investigating a threat to Wakanda, particularly whatever injured T'Challa. Meanwhile, there's economic and agricultural failures in Wakanda, and a resurgent nationalist movement that will be familiar to anyone who's paid attention to politics over the last decade. The last three issues of Power are branded as a "Prelude to Doomwar" tie-in, Doomwar being a crossover miniseries that apparently picks up right from the end of Black Panther vol. 5. (It's the thing I will read next in this sequence.)

Anyway, I found this muddled and hard to care about. Maberry gives Shuri a team of advisors, but it's a lot of characters who I didn't really care about, and I don't see why she needs this kind of supporting cast when T'Challa didn't. It takes the characters far too long to figure out that Doctor Doom is responsible, given the readers learned this way back back in issue #2. And I am tired of stories where the people of Wakanda rise up against their rulers for seemingly stupid reasons. (Though I guess this is realistic! And to be fair to Maberry, though this is a story that seems to happen a lot in Black Panther comics, I think it had actually been a fair amount of time since it was last done when he wrote this in 2008. Did it happen during Priest's? If not, then it hadn't happened since the 1990s.)

from Black Panther vol. 5 #11

But really I didn't find a lot to grab onto here as a reader. Probably my favorite part were the two talking heads from Wakandan media that we cut to occasionally. One of the really interesting things Don McGregor set up way back when was the conflict between traditional Wakandan values and the modernizing influences T'Challa was importing, and most subsequent writers haven't done a ton with this.

The majority of the art for this series is done by penciler Ken Lashley and inker Paul Neary. I am a fan of Neary from his Marvel UK days, but here he's just inking over pretty standard 2000s superhero pencils from Lashley. That said, I found them better than Will Conrad, who does the rest of the series and whose art is kind of confusing and does a bad job of depicting Shuri in particular.

The Deadliest of the Species originally appeared in issues #1-6 of Black Panther vol. 5 (Apr.-Sept. 2009). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin, penciled by Ken Lashley, inked by Paul Neary, colored by Paul Mounts, lettered by Cory Petit, and edited by Axel Alonso.

Power originally appeared in issues #7-12 of Black Panther vol. 5 (Oct. 2009–Mar. 2010). The story was written by Jonathan Maberry (#7-12) & Reginald Hudlin (#7), illustrated by Will Conrad (#7-10, 12) and Ken Lashley & Paul Neary (#11), colored by Pete Pantazis, lettered by Cory Petit (#7-10, 12) and Clayton Cowles (#11), and edited by Axel Alonso.

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"Unfettered by the yoke of colonization, the African warrior nation of WAKANDA flourished and became a high-tech, resource-rich, ecologically-sound paradise—one that makes the rest of the world seem primitive in comparison. Ruling over this kingdom are the BLACK PANTHER and his queen, STORM."

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.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #28
(script by Reginald Hudlin, art by Francis Portela)

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.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #31
(script by Reginald Hudlin, art by Francis Portela)

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.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #22 (script by Reginald Hudlin,
art by Manuel Garcia and Jay Leisten & Sean Parsons)

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.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #14
(script by Reginald Hudlin, art by Scot Eaton & Klaus Janson)

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.

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X-Men / Black Panther: Wild Kingdom by Peter Milligan, Reginald Hudlin, Salvador Larroca, David Yardin, Jay Leisten, et al.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #9

After its opening story arc, Black Panther vol. 4 was immediately involved in a crossover with X-Men. In this project, I've mostly stayed away from crossovers—but in the comiXology sale where I got all these Black Panther issues to begin with, they considerately put the relevant X-Men issues on sale as well. 

Wild Kingdom sees Black Panther and the X-Men responding to the same crisis in the African nation of Niganda. After Niganda's abortive attempt to invade Wakanda, a number of genetically altered animals end up on the loose, attracting the attention of Black Panther because of the danger to Wakanda and the X-Men because they show up on Cerebro (in this story called "Cerebra" for some reason). Some third-rate supervillains called Dr. Paine and the Red Ghost are trying to use enhanced primates to take over Niganda... and then, of course, the world!

from Black Panther vol. 4 #8

I like a few of the X-Men movies (i.e., X-Men, X2, First Class), but I don't think I've ever actually enjoyed an X-Men comic, and this didn't change my mind. There's not much for them in this story, just people with phonetically rendered accents bickering a bit. The only exception is Storm, as Wild Kingdom's purpose mostly seems to be to delve a bit into the T'Challa/Ororo relationship. Coming off the back of Priest's run (which is where we first learned they had a thing), I didn't find this totally convincing; I don't think Priest's Black Panther was incapable of being awkward, but I do think he would be much better at confining and controlling his awkwardness than this stammering schoolboy.

I do think David Yardin and Jay Leisten did some solid work art-wise on the two Black Panther issues; hopefully they do more work on the series. But the story here is pretty goofy on the whole, and it feels weird to go from the entire history and an invasion of Wakanda being told in six issues to this mediocre threat being stretched out to four. I'll be curious to see how Hudlin's Black Panther develops when he just gets to do his own thing.

from Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #10

I also read "Law of the Jungle," a one-part story from Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four, which retells the story of the FF's first meeting with Black Panther. In this version, Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four are taking receipt of a shipment of vibranium for science purposes—but what they don't know is that this isn't a legitimate export, but smuggled out of Wakanda. Black Panther attacks them, but the FF soon realizes what's up and travels to Wakanda to make amends and help defeat the smugglers. I haven't read much of Jeff Parker's comics work, but I always enjoy what I read; this has a good sense of fun to it, lots of little touches in terms of characterization and comedy that really elevate it. (My favorite is the Thing and the Human Torch playing good cop/bad cop.) My main complaint would be that it's very much a Fantastic Four comic, not a Black Panther one; the trip to Wakanda and battle there is over pretty quickly. But this isn't really a complaint about the story, more a complaint about the decision to reprint it in Marvel-Verse: Black Panther. (But I guess it makes sense; it's a nice one-issue version of the FF/Black Panther meeting, as opposed to the original 2½-issue one.)

Wild Kingdom originally appeared in X-Men vol. 2 #175-76 and Black Panther vol. 4 #8-9 (Nov.-Dec. 2005). The story was written by Peter Milligan (#175-76) and Reginald Hudlin (#8-9); penciled by Salvador Larroca (#175-76) and David Yardin (#8-9); inked by Danny Miki & Allen Martinez (#175-76) and Jay Leisten (#8-9); colored by Cory Petit (#175-76), Dean White (#8-9), and Matt Milla (#9); lettered by Randy Gentile (#8-9); and edited by Mike Marts (#175-75) and Axel Alonso (#8-9).

"Law of the Jungle" originally appeared in Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #10 (May 2006). The story was written by Jeff Parker, penciled by Manuel Garcia, inked by Scott Koblish, colored by A. Crossley, lettered by Dave Sharpe, and edited by Mark Paniccia. It was reprinted in Marvel-Verse: Black Panther (2020), which was edited by Jennifer Grünwald.

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Who Is the Black Panther? by Reginald Hudlin, John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, et al.

While there have been some long gaps between Black Panther runs, that was not true once Christopher Preist's came to an end. Less than two years after Black Panther vol. 3 #62, Marvel debuted a new Black Panther title with Reginald Hudlin as writer. The opening story arc, Who Is the Black Panther?, carefully reintroduced the character and his setting, evidently aimed at a readership who had not previously read any Black Panther comics or only had a vague awareness of the character.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #1

Honestly, it is a bit jarring to read this coming off of Priest's run. While in Priest's run, Wakanda was a major, active force in international geopolitics, here the NSA doesn't even know that Wakanda is anything other than a "primitive" African nation. I get that a bit of a soft reset is often needed when comic titles start over, but it's made particularly jarring here by the fact that the person who delivers all of the exposition about Wakanda is Everett K. Ross, a character introduced by Priest! How can you carry over him but not the fact that Wakanda prominently annexed part of Canada and was involved in an international war with Atlantis and the United States? (Maybe a lot of time has passed? Everett K. Ross seems to be drawn about two decades older here!)

These aren't the only changes Hudlin introduces to the Black Panther mythos. This story retells how Ulysses Klaw killed T'Challa's father, the previous Black Panther, but now instead of it happening in Wakanda when Klaw stumbles in, here it happens at an international summit. (This is clearly the inspiration for T'Chaka's death in Captain America: Civil War.) It also seems that Queen Raimonda was around T'Challa's entire life; as McGregor told it, she would have been back in South Africa for some of the events Hudlin places her at here. T'Challa also suddenly has an uncle we've never seen before, who in fact acted as Black Panther when T'Challa was a child. Where was this guy during, say, all the trouble with Killmonger?

from Black Panther vol. 4 #6

The biggest change is probably the introduction of Shuri, Black Panther's sister. Since I knew the character from the movies, I've long been wondering when and how would she be introduced. Would she have been sent overseas for her own protection and brought back home? Would she be a long-lost half-sister that T'Challa suddenly learned about? Would she suddenly be added to the cast as if she had been there all along? The last one is the approach that Hudlin opts for. In some of the flashbacks this story shows us, Shuri is present at key moments in T'Challa's past, including when T'Challa ascended to the throne.

That said, of course the test of a retcon isn't how much the new continuity is different from the old, but how good the story is being told with it is. We don't get a lot of Shuri here, but what we do get is solid and interesting, as she tries to prove herself in a world that doesn't have a lot of space for her to do so, and I look forward to seeing what Hudlin does with her during the rest of his run. As for the rest of the changes, I am agnostic on them, and I will have to see how they continue to play out.

Okay, that was a lot on the continuity... what of the actual story? Well, it's okay. The first few issues alternate between exposition about Wakanda and the Klaw going around recruiting a team of villains to invaded Wakanda, along with the help of the neighboring country of Niganda. Ultimately, the problem is that the pacing seems off, there's about four issues of recruiting and two issues of invasion, meaning it seems a bit too simple and easy to fend off, and that many aspects of the story seeded in the first four parts ultimately don't really bear fruit. Why do we need to see all this stuff about recruiting the Black Knight when he barely does anything? Why all this stuff about the Radioactive Man's girlfriend when as soon as she gets to Wakanda she dies? (And grossly the male characters' reaction to her death is "at least we got to cop a feel!") Why spend so much time on the American military sending a force of cyborg zombies to "help" when all they do is show up and then T'Challa tells them to leave?

from Black Panther vol. 4 #3

Because of the structure of the story, we don't get a huge sense of Black Panther/T'Challa as a person; like in Priest's run, we mostly see him from the outside, if at all. However, in Priest's run, we often got a sense of his intelligence and canniness this way; that's not true here, where like in McGregor's run, Black Panther is often on the back foot up until he's not. Still, I'm not strongly judging here; this arc clearly had a purpose of introducing the setting and characters to an unfamiliar audience (and tweaking them for a familiar one), and there are thirty-five more issues of this series to come! Ongoing comics can't play too much of a long game, or the pleasures are eternally deferred (e.g., Marc Andreyko's Manhunter), but if we are in for the long run, I will grant you some slack to see how it turns out.

The art for this opening arc is by the famous John Romita Jr., and I think it is actually my first experience of his work.* I can't claim to be a fan of all of his people, especially their blocky noses, but his art has a strong dynamism and power that really carries you from the action on a panel-to-panel basis, so the more action there is, the better it works. The real artistic standout, though, is Dean White on colors. White's vibrant brights and lights, in particular, and strong contrasts really capture the energy and optimism of Wakanda in a world of darkness. I don't know if "JRJR" keeps contributing to this series, and I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I hope Dean White does.

from Black Panther vol. 4 #7

After the opening arc of Black Panther vol. 4 comes a single-issue story, part of the "House of M" crossover. I never read this crossover, but I think it involves an alternate timeline where Magneto rules the world? In this story, Black Panther and Storm rule Africa together, independent of Magneto, but Magneto begins to fear their power and tries to kill T'Challa; meanwhile, T'Challa recruits allies and makes his play. Probably if one read the rest of "House of M" one would care more, but parts of it were decently put together, though it seemed to me we saw more of Magneto and Quicksilver than we did of Black Panther. I did think Trevor Hairsine had some nice detailed pencil work that suited the tone of the story well.

Who Is the Black Panther? originally appeared in issues #1-6 of Black Panther vol. 4 (Apr.-Sept. 2005). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin, penciled by John Romita Jr., inked by Klaus Janson, colored by Dean White, lettered by Chris Eliopoulos (#1-2) and Randy Gentile (#3-6), and edited by Axel Alonso.

"Soul Power in the House of M" originally appeared in issue #7 of Black Panther vol. 4 (Oct. 2005). The story was written by Reginald Hudlin, penciled by Trevor Hairsine, inked by John Dell, colored Dean White, lettered by Randy Gentile, and edited by Axel Alonso.

* Actually, it looks like I have read exactly two DC books where he contributed a small amount of art, Detective Comics vol. 1 #1027 and Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 8 #9 (both 2020), but I have no particular memory of his contributions.

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