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Black Panther
Much to everyone's surprise, I know, I did not finish any more FMK books last week.
I did, however, see Black Panther! I don't feel like I can say much about it except that it was everything I hoped it would be, it was very pretty and also pretty great, and if you have any patience at all for Marvel superhero movies it's worth going to see.
(Also, even more than a week after it opened, all the theaters in Baltimore were sold out for their weekend matinees, and even the big suburban one we finally went to filled every seat, and there was a line out the door of the multiplex for the next showing by the time we got out. Just think, Marvel, you could have made this movie before Ant-Man.)
The other reason I can't say much about it is that I have been reading a lot of the comics, and everything I do want to say after seeing the movie turns into me being the annoying person who says, "--But in the comics--" (ESPECIALLY that post-credits scene, somebody who has read the Priest run in the comics COME TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT POST-CREDITS SCENE.)
So instead, here is A white girl's very incomplete guide to non-movie Black Panther canon.
If you want to get an idea of these stories without wading through the comics, though, I recommend looking up the Black Panther's appearances in the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon, which was my first real exposure to why I should like the character, and it adapts some of his early stories and adopts his role in the Silver/Bronze age team books. (EMH in general does a really good job of adapting classic Marvel comics for newer eyes, and if you want to get a roadmap of where you might want to go digging into older comics in general, it's only two seasons and pretty fun. Also I still want an EMH!Hulk vid to "Bluebird in your soul".)
It is the run that introduced both Agent Ross and the Dora Milaje and also has a lot of Killmonger and Ramonda in it (although that storyline ended on a CLIFFHANGER in #17 augh). It is very good and very readable and a very serious look at what Black Panther means and is a very good starting point that doesn't expect the reader to have any background knowledge at all. It is also batshit madcap in that 90s superhero comics way (to my detriment, I did kind of bond with those.) Recommended - as long as you mentally pretend none of the panels with Nakia in them ever actually existed or pretend it's all a cover for movie!Nakia off being a badass spy. (Queen Divine Justice, on the other hand, is the BEST).
It is also the run with the White Wolf as a major recurring character, which hit me out of nowhere. SOMEONE WHO HAS READ IT, COME BE VERKLEMPT WITH ME ABOUT WHITE WOLF WINTER SOLDIER.
In the 2000s Black Panther the character got very mixed into all the mess that has been the endless churn of ALL NEW ALL AMAZING CROSSOVER EVENTS WHOO! and there was a lot going on, but not only do I not know much about those, I very aggressively don't care about tracking them down. Sorry, Marvel. Sorry, readers. If you want more about where to look here, you will have to ask someone who cares more about crossovers and less about Wakandan politics than me. Part of this involved T'Challa's marriage to Storm, which I think is a lot of modern readers' main knowledge of the character, but as it was part of a massive pointless crossover I was boycotting I don't know much about it.
The first problem is that it has the *pacing* of a Silver Age comic - EVERYHING HAPPENS ALL AT ONCE! - but the style of a Modern Age Comic - EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY UNPACKED AND PART OF FIVE DIFFERENT PLOT THREADS AND WE MUST TALK IT OVER FOR TEN PAGES - so the effect on the reader is that EVERYTHING AND NOTHING IS ALWAYS HAPPENING and major plot-changing action sequences happen entirely off-screen, in-between two pages of talking heads. The other problem is that Coates is trying to take all the mess from all the crossover events and make it into something coherent that has logical consequences, and it expects you to know what happened in them, and it can't actually make it coherent and logical because that is not possible, and also it requires you to be willing to take all the recent crossover events seriously, which, all put together, is TOUGH.
So provisionally recommended, but not a great starting point.
World of Wakanda is the one-trade miniseries by Roxane Gay that covers the same events as "A Nation Under Our Feet" but covers them as background to the love story of a couple in the Dora Milaje and is SUPER GOOD IN EVERY WAY. If you just want something that really feels like the movie, I recommend that wholeheartedly. I am not sure how well the action plot stands on its own if you haven't read the Coates run, but it works fine as background to the romance, and it can hardly be *more* confusing, and I think reading World of Wakanda *first* might even make the main title work better. This is my rec for a starting point if you want something shorter, newer, and easier to get than Priest.
I just read the first trade of the second storyline of the main title, "Avengers of the New World", and I am finding that much easier going. Also it has a lot of Shuri and Storm in it; good. It's getting pretty deep into the more metaphysical parts of Marvel, though. And it's still not exactly tuning itself for people new to Marvel 616, but it's much easier on that front than the first storyline was, at least so far.
AS FOR THE FANFIC--
I wanted to do the 'ships meme for this that I did a few entries down, but there honestly isn't enough fic yet, only two weeks in.
But here are the pairings I am into:
M'Baku/T'Challa (really good fic quality so far too! Shadow of the Panther is WIP but very good and it's pulling from A Nation Under Our Feet);
T'Challa/W'Kabi or Okoye/W'Kabi(haven't read much yet though because it seems to be mostly pre-movie and I want post-movie);
basically anything with Wakandan tribal politics;
also Nakia/T'Challa if it was actually getting written much;
and also SHURI/MJ SHURI/MJ SHURI/MJ.
Pairings I am not into:
Anything involving Ross (Sorry, I have enough trouble seeing what's-his-face as a sex symbol anyway, and then meeting Ross in the comics - he was very well cast - has made it impossible for me to see any version of that character as a sexual being. I like what comics version does with American masculinity - *explicitly*, he's constantly commenting on it and also has a blatant 'no homo' crush on T'Challa which T'Challa is very kind about - it's super interesting and I'd love to see that moved into the movie fandom, but not via him actually getting any. He thinks the line "I'm wearing a two-piece outfit - my socks" is the ultimate in sexy;)
Anything involving Shuri/Any adult. (Sorry but she is a total sweetheart she needs a teenage girlfriend or two;)
T'Challa/Erik Killmonger - and I can't actually tell if I don't like this dynamic, or I just really really hate the idea of T'Challa/Erik Killmonger as opposed to maybe being theoretically interested in T'Challa/N'Jadaka. But unfortunately everybody on AO3 is tagging with just Erik Killmonger instead of his real name 'cause that's the canonical tag and somehow I can't get past that. (I want to wave a flag to fandom in general saying YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAG WITH THE CANONICAL IF THE CANONICAL IS BAD but nobody ever listens to me)
(I am totally there for White Wolf!Bucky/Killmonger, though. Or Winter Soldier/Killmonger, because you know they worked together at least once. Someone who has read the Priest comics come be verklempt about White Wolf!Bucky Barnes with me. I didn't want to be the person who comes out of Black Panther with white boy feels, but White Wolf! oh, Shuri, NO. Why would you--? Did nobody tell you either? Oh no, Shuri.)
My recommended starting points if you want more Black Panther, short version:
If you like badass lesbian warrior women in love, start with the "World of Wakanda" trade.
If you want to see current Comics!Shuri (and also Ororo/T'Challa), start with the first "Avengers of the New World" Coates trade.
If you like thinking about how comics canon works with the movie, start with the Christopher Priest run - in print issues, the "Complete Collection" trades are probably the easiest way at the moment.
If you want to learn about classic Black Panther stories from the silver/bronze age, watch the Black Panther episodes in Earth's Mightiest Heroes ("The Man In the Ant Hill", "Panther's Quest", and then as a recurring team member after that.)
Also I really hope they at least pipe N'Jadaka's tags on AO3 before they get too big to change.
I did, however, see Black Panther! I don't feel like I can say much about it except that it was everything I hoped it would be, it was very pretty and also pretty great, and if you have any patience at all for Marvel superhero movies it's worth going to see.
(Also, even more than a week after it opened, all the theaters in Baltimore were sold out for their weekend matinees, and even the big suburban one we finally went to filled every seat, and there was a line out the door of the multiplex for the next showing by the time we got out. Just think, Marvel, you could have made this movie before Ant-Man.)
The other reason I can't say much about it is that I have been reading a lot of the comics, and everything I do want to say after seeing the movie turns into me being the annoying person who says, "--But in the comics--" (ESPECIALLY that post-credits scene, somebody who has read the Priest run in the comics COME TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT POST-CREDITS SCENE.)
So instead, here is A white girl's very incomplete guide to non-movie Black Panther canon.
The 1960s-early 1970s/Jungle Action/Vol. 1 comics
The only ones I have read of these are the bonus stories included in the later trades and other scattered crossover appearances and things, here and there. They are. Well, they were ground-breaking for their time. They were mostly in a comic called "Jungle Action". They are probably better than the main run of Marvel comics of that era, but I think to actively enjoy them you have to already have some sort of emotional attachment to 60-early 70s Marvel comics, which I do not have (My silver age comics bonding experience was the funny animal and teen drama stuff I found in my grandparents' basement; it may be too late for me.) I understand they got better as you got farther into the 1970s and some of the later ones are total classics, especially the two-year run that introduced Killmonger; I may go looking for them when I run out of later stuff.If you want to get an idea of these stories without wading through the comics, though, I recommend looking up the Black Panther's appearances in the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon, which was my first real exposure to why I should like the character, and it adapts some of his early stories and adopts his role in the Silver/Bronze age team books. (EMH in general does a really good job of adapting classic Marvel comics for newer eyes, and if you want to get a roadmap of where you might want to go digging into older comics in general, it's only two seasons and pretty fun. Also I still want an EMH!Hulk vid to "Bluebird in your soul".)
Vol. 2/the 1980s
Was a set of miniseries that as far as I can tell were never reprinted and I know almost nothing about them, plus mostly-background appearances in teamup books.Vol. 3 and the 90s, the Christopher Priest run
This was the first time the character was given to a Black writer longterm, and from what I can tell it was the main inspiration for a lot of what the movie does (although only very very loosely). I have now read #1-17. No library in my state has the next part of the run; I have it on order with them, but I might have to give in and buy it first, because I really need to know what happens next.It is the run that introduced both Agent Ross and the Dora Milaje and also has a lot of Killmonger and Ramonda in it (although that storyline ended on a CLIFFHANGER in #17 augh). It is very good and very readable and a very serious look at what Black Panther means and is a very good starting point that doesn't expect the reader to have any background knowledge at all. It is also batshit madcap in that 90s superhero comics way (to my detriment, I did kind of bond with those.) Recommended - as long as you mentally pretend none of the panels with Nakia in them ever actually existed or pretend it's all a cover for movie!Nakia off being a badass spy. (Queen Divine Justice, on the other hand, is the BEST).
It is also the run with the White Wolf as a major recurring character, which hit me out of nowhere. SOMEONE WHO HAS READ IT, COME BE VERKLEMPT WITH ME ABOUT WHITE WOLF WINTER SOLDIER.
Vols. 4 and 5, 2000s
These were more-or-less one continuous run, from what I can tell, mostly by Reginald Hudlin. I haven't read much of it but it seems to get very mixed reviews. It *is* where Shuri came from, though, so there's that.In the 2000s Black Panther the character got very mixed into all the mess that has been the endless churn of ALL NEW ALL AMAZING CROSSOVER EVENTS WHOO! and there was a lot going on, but not only do I not know much about those, I very aggressively don't care about tracking them down. Sorry, Marvel. Sorry, readers. If you want more about where to look here, you will have to ask someone who cares more about crossovers and less about Wakandan politics than me. Part of this involved T'Challa's marriage to Storm, which I think is a lot of modern readers' main knowledge of the character, but as it was part of a massive pointless crossover I was boycotting I don't know much about it.
Vol. 6 to now
Now renumbered as part of Vol. 1, because why would you want to make it easy for your readers, Marvel? - This is the Ta-Nehisi Coates run. I have read the first storyline, "A Nation Under Our Feet", and have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the art and design and worldbuilding are amazing, the characterization is amazing, and the plot hits, like, three of my bulletproof plot kinks. On the other hand - it's what you get if you give Black Panther to an amazing writer who is a total comics geek but has never written a comic before, and it has some problems. This was my first dive into the Black Panther comics and I almost quit after the first trade because it is really, really not a good starting point.The first problem is that it has the *pacing* of a Silver Age comic - EVERYHING HAPPENS ALL AT ONCE! - but the style of a Modern Age Comic - EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY UNPACKED AND PART OF FIVE DIFFERENT PLOT THREADS AND WE MUST TALK IT OVER FOR TEN PAGES - so the effect on the reader is that EVERYTHING AND NOTHING IS ALWAYS HAPPENING and major plot-changing action sequences happen entirely off-screen, in-between two pages of talking heads. The other problem is that Coates is trying to take all the mess from all the crossover events and make it into something coherent that has logical consequences, and it expects you to know what happened in them, and it can't actually make it coherent and logical because that is not possible, and also it requires you to be willing to take all the recent crossover events seriously, which, all put together, is TOUGH.
So provisionally recommended, but not a great starting point.
World of Wakanda is the one-trade miniseries by Roxane Gay that covers the same events as "A Nation Under Our Feet" but covers them as background to the love story of a couple in the Dora Milaje and is SUPER GOOD IN EVERY WAY. If you just want something that really feels like the movie, I recommend that wholeheartedly. I am not sure how well the action plot stands on its own if you haven't read the Coates run, but it works fine as background to the romance, and it can hardly be *more* confusing, and I think reading World of Wakanda *first* might even make the main title work better. This is my rec for a starting point if you want something shorter, newer, and easier to get than Priest.
I just read the first trade of the second storyline of the main title, "Avengers of the New World", and I am finding that much easier going. Also it has a lot of Shuri and Storm in it; good. It's getting pretty deep into the more metaphysical parts of Marvel, though. And it's still not exactly tuning itself for people new to Marvel 616, but it's much easier on that front than the first storyline was, at least so far.
AS FOR THE FANFIC--
I wanted to do the 'ships meme for this that I did a few entries down, but there honestly isn't enough fic yet, only two weeks in.
But here are the pairings I am into:
M'Baku/T'Challa (really good fic quality so far too! Shadow of the Panther is WIP but very good and it's pulling from A Nation Under Our Feet);
T'Challa/W'Kabi or Okoye/W'Kabi(haven't read much yet though because it seems to be mostly pre-movie and I want post-movie);
basically anything with Wakandan tribal politics;
also Nakia/T'Challa if it was actually getting written much;
and also SHURI/MJ SHURI/MJ SHURI/MJ.
Pairings I am not into:
Anything involving Ross (Sorry, I have enough trouble seeing what's-his-face as a sex symbol anyway, and then meeting Ross in the comics - he was very well cast - has made it impossible for me to see any version of that character as a sexual being. I like what comics version does with American masculinity - *explicitly*, he's constantly commenting on it and also has a blatant 'no homo' crush on T'Challa which T'Challa is very kind about - it's super interesting and I'd love to see that moved into the movie fandom, but not via him actually getting any. He thinks the line "I'm wearing a two-piece outfit - my socks" is the ultimate in sexy;)
Anything involving Shuri/Any adult. (Sorry but she is a total sweetheart she needs a teenage girlfriend or two;)
T'Challa/Erik Killmonger - and I can't actually tell if I don't like this dynamic, or I just really really hate the idea of T'Challa/Erik Killmonger as opposed to maybe being theoretically interested in T'Challa/N'Jadaka. But unfortunately everybody on AO3 is tagging with just Erik Killmonger instead of his real name 'cause that's the canonical tag and somehow I can't get past that. (I want to wave a flag to fandom in general saying YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAG WITH THE CANONICAL IF THE CANONICAL IS BAD but nobody ever listens to me)
(I am totally there for White Wolf!Bucky/Killmonger, though. Or Winter Soldier/Killmonger, because you know they worked together at least once. Someone who has read the Priest comics come be verklempt about White Wolf!Bucky Barnes with me. I didn't want to be the person who comes out of Black Panther with white boy feels, but White Wolf! oh, Shuri, NO. Why would you--? Did nobody tell you either? Oh no, Shuri.)
My recommended starting points if you want more Black Panther, short version:
If you like badass lesbian warrior women in love, start with the "World of Wakanda" trade.
If you want to see current Comics!Shuri (and also Ororo/T'Challa), start with the first "Avengers of the New World" Coates trade.
If you like thinking about how comics canon works with the movie, start with the Christopher Priest run - in print issues, the "Complete Collection" trades are probably the easiest way at the moment.
If you want to learn about classic Black Panther stories from the silver/bronze age, watch the Black Panther episodes in Earth's Mightiest Heroes ("The Man In the Ant Hill", "Panther's Quest", and then as a recurring team member after that.)
Also I really hope they at least pipe N'Jadaka's tags on AO3 before they get too big to change.
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(I have a rule, see, that I can't buy any comics until I've read all the ones I own, which is probably never going to happen, but I'm allowed to cheat by using the library system, because that counts as "learning about my job".)
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My reaction to that awful Cap Generations book:
MARVEL: Sam Wilson is going back to meet the first Captain America!
MOI: :D
MARVEL: ....Steve Rogers!
MOI: D:
Then again, having Nick Spencer write Isaiah Bradley would have been....yeah, something.
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Yeah that just sounds like a lose-lose.
I think the difficulty of finding Truth in paper was a large part of why I gave up, yeah. (That really needs a reprint or two.)
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