@ - Coates's Black Panther is awesome! One of the best runs of 2016, one of the best Black Panther's runs of all time. Very well received by the public, fans and critics. Black Panther movie really should use some of it.
Black Panther (2016) Reviews
1/22/2017, 8:01 AM
@ - I'll defend this run forever. Its just what BP needed. I think some folks thinks its too opaque to love, but not me.
But what's most impressive about Coates' run is Black Panther’s heroism until this series has been measured by his success among the dominant cultural forces of the Marvel world, and not by how he treats his own people. This is Black Panther as nigh-dictator, not superhero.
So readers hoping for the traditional relationship between a comic book superhero and his title, moreover, might be disappointed to find the Wakandan king displaced and decentered in his own book. This series sees the Black Panther forced to deal with the consequences of his frequent trips to other nations and other worlds to participate in more typically superheroic activities. Coates seeks to make the complex political struggle of the Panther’s own nation compelling while questioning his usual superheroics. He's also made the women on Wakanda, the Dora Milaje to be exact, almost the most compelling part of the run.
Yes Coates is inexperienced as a writer of comic books, and as such, A Nation Under Our Feet can be too talky at times and awkwardly paced. But he also challenges the superhero genre to think in complex ways about nation-states, democracy, individual power, and autocrats.
- Who knows, maybe that will be a part of Wakanda's depiction, but I cant fault him for subverting expectations and the traditional. Wakanda has always been BETTER but I think like any great empire, it has its shortcomings. Its susceptible to the woes and issues any great nation faces.
Black Panther under Coates, is a layered, thoughtful work of science fiction that forgoes post-colonialist or post-slavery anxieties about Africans’ place in the world, presenting Wakanda as a paradise lost not by white subversion but by the divisions among its own people. That's never been done.
Also, WAKANDA has been recently decimated by everything from Skrull attacks to a tidal wave orchestrated by Namor. Wakanda was once an unbeatable nation, and now it’s a place that’s taken its fair share of lumps the past few years. Making Wakanda relevant again after such devastation, you've got to highlight the tough journey that would be. That includes some serious trials, so unrest and internal conflict is a natural progression after the nation was attacked. There's going to be a weakness.
The country has been attacked by the likes of Doctor Doom and conquered by Thanos’ armies. As a political figure, the Black Panther’s duty is to keep his people safe. He failed. What, then, is the country if it is as vulnerable as all others? What happens when a monarch can't fulfill the basic duty of protecting his people? When the people don't feel safe, social unrest follows.
I think what you're proposing, we were given a taste of in Civil War. Wakandans went to Lagos as a mission of outreach and aid. So by doing that, they're showing a clear interest in seeking to bring goodwill to the rest of Africa. Maybe we'll get more of that. Considering we've heard that the script thoroughly explores African and African-America identity, we could hopefully get an investigation into black folks feelings on Wakanda; those not within its borders.
Coogler has said Coates work has been something he's been reading and absorbing of late so I'm sure we'll get some influences there.
....but its got a shot.
