Category: Black Panther

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X-Men: Worlds Apart


By Christopher Yost, Diogenes Neves & Ed Tadeo; Priest, Sal Velluto & Bob Almond; Chris Claremont & John Byrne, & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4030-6 (HB) 978-0-7851-3533-3 (TPB)

In 1963 The X-Men #1 introduced Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl and the Beast: very special students of Professor Charles Xavier, a wheelchair-bound telepath dedicated to brokering peace and integration between the masses of humanity and the emergent off-shoot race of mutants – Homo Superior.

After years of eccentric and spectacular adventures the mutant misfits disappeared at the beginning of 1970 as mystery and all things supernatural once more gripped the world’s entertainment fields and triggered a sustained downturn in costumed hero comics.

Although their title was revived at the end of the year as a cheap reprint vehicle, the missing mutants were reduced to guest-stars and bit-players throughout the Marvel universe and the Beast was transformed into a monster to cash in on the horror boom, until Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas green-lighted a bold one-shot in 1975 as part of the company’s line of Giant-Sized specials.

Giant Size X-Men #1 detailed how the classic team had been lost in action, leaving Xavier to scour the Earth for a replacement team. Recruiting old foes-turned-friends Banshee and Sunfire and throwaway Hulk villain Wolverine, most of the savant’s time and attention was invested in newcomers. These comprised Kurt Wagner, a demonic German teleporter who would be codenamed Nightcrawler, Russian farmboy Peter Rasputin, who could transform into a living steel Colossus, embittered, disillusioned Apache superman John Proudstar who was cajoled into joining the makeshift squad as Thunderbird and a young woman who was regarded as an African weather goddess.

Ororo Munroe AKA Storm was actually the lost daughter of Kenyan royalty and an American journalist. On joining Xavier’s team, she spent years fighting the world’s most deadly threats as part – and eventually leader – of the outlaw, unloved, distrusted mutant hero horde, before eventually leaving her second home to marry a boy she had met whilst trekking across the Dark Continent decades previously.

In Fantastic Four #52 (August 1966) an incredible individual calling himself the Black Panther tested himself against the Cosmic Quartet and disclosed in the following issue how, as a child, he had lost his father to a ruthless scientist’s mercenary army when they invaded his hidden African homeland Wakanda.

Young Prince T’Challa had single-handedly avenged the murder of his father T’Chaka and driven off the raiders, inheriting the role of king and spiritual leader of his people. Eventually, he became a member of the Mighty Avengersand introduced his country to the world, with technologically-advanced Wakanda swiftly advancing to the forefront of nations by trading its scientific secrets and greatest natural resource – incredible alien mineral Vibranium.

Whilst a boy wandering the plains of Africa, he had encountered a beautiful young girl with incredible powers trekking from Egypt to West Africa. Years later he found her again as one the X-Men. Slowly rediscovering old feelings, the pair married and Storm became the First Lady of Wakanda…

This compilation collects 4-issue miniseries X-Men: Worlds Apart from 2008-2009, Black Panther volume 3, #26 (January 2001) and material from Marvel Team-Up #100 (December 1980), and follows the African Queen through her darkest hours even as it affords a little space to examine key moments in her tempestuous relationship with the earthly agent of the very-real, very paws-on Panther God.

The romance commences with the eponymous ‘Worlds Apart’ crafted by Christopher Yost, Diogenes Neves, Ed Tadeo & Raul Treviño, with the action opening in New York’s sewers where Storm and some-time comrade Cyclops seek to convince hidden Morlock refugees to join the West Coast mutant enclave and safe-haven known as Utopia. When she is suddenly called back to Africa, Ororo’s erstwhile friend contentiously questions her loyalties…

Even as august and elevated co-ruler of a fabulous kingdom, Ororo iq adi T’Challa is still painfully aware of humanity’s – and more specifically her own subjects’ – bigotry regarding the genetic offshoot politely dubbed Homo Superior. When one of her protégés – young Wakandan mutant Nezhno Abidemi – is accused of murder she rushes to defend him.

…But the evidence is overwhelming, incontrovertible and damning…

Nevertheless, she knows something is amiss and when she arbitrarily frees him, the entire country turns against her. Even her adoring husband wants her blood…

The cause soon smugly reveals himself as Amahl Farouk: a sinister, soul-corrupting telepath she and Charles Xavier killed years ago, when she was merely an orphan child-thief in Cairo. Sadly, the dying monster evolved into a malign body-stealing psychic force; an untouchable Shadow King feeding on hatred and polluting everything it touches…

Biding its time, Shadow King insinuated itself into Wakanda, stoking ill-feeling throughout. Now wearing her beloved T’Challa, it plans on extracting a much-postponed final vengeance…

As the poisonous presence gloats, Ororo realises it is not just her at risk: the Shadow King has simultaneously taken Cyclops in America and is using her fellow X-Man as a weapon to kill the only earthly threat to Farouk’s power – supreme telepath Emma Frost, who is also Scott Summers’ lover…

With an entire nation and the precious body of her beloved mercilessly hunting her and Nezhno, the wondrous weather-warrior must first direct her powers half a world away to stop Cyclops whatever the cost, before somehow destroying a foe no power on Earth can touch.

Happily, the Spiritual co-ruler of Wakanda has her own direct line to the country’s cat god – or is that goddess?

Short, sharp, spectacularly action-packed and wickedly satisfying – especially the climactic battles with the assembled X-Men and friendly rival Cyclops – this bombastic Fights ‘n’ Tights adventure is rather bafflingly complemented with ‘Echoes’ from Black Panther #26. Created by Priest, Sal Velluto & Bob Almond, it’s the opening part of a longer epic entitled ‘Stürm und Drang – a Story of Love and War’. Here T’Challa’s childhood friendship with Ororo is slowly and painfully re-cultivated during an incursion into Wakanda by alien-hunting US Federal Agents, and a barely-civil embassy from the secret race known as Deviants, all seeking possession of an unearthly parent and child. The untenable situation eventually forces a drastic reaction from the sympathetic African heroes…

As an orphaned part of an ongoing storyline, this interlude, although smart and pretty, is pretty baffling and aggravating too, ending as it does on an unsatisfying cliffhanger, and unless you already know the greater tale, is far more annoying than elucidating…

Still at least you can track down the entire tale in numerous Black Panther collections…

This intriguing safari into the unknown concludes with the far more pleasing – and done-in-one – story of Ororo and T’Challa’s first meeting as kids in the wilds of Africa. It first appeared as a back-up in Marvel Team-Up #100 in 1980, cleverly revealing how the kids enjoyed an idyllic time on the veldt (reminiscent of Henry De Vere Stacpoole’s 1908 novel The Blue Lagoon) until a South African commando team tried to kidnap the Wakandan prince as a bargaining chip.

Now, as adults in America they are hunted by the vicious Afrikaner Andreas de Ruyter who has returned, attempting to assassinate Ororo before seeking to exact final revenge upon the Black Panther. Cue long-delayed lover’s reunion and team-raid on an automated House of Horrors…

Clearly designed as an outreach project to draw in audience demographics perceived to be short-changed by mainstream Marvel, Storm and the Black Panther have proved to be a winning combination in terms of story if not sales, and Worlds Apart is the kind of tale that will please fans of the genre and followers of the film franchises.
© 1980, 2001, 2008, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Daredevil Epic Collection volume 4 1970-1972: A Woman Called Widow


By Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Gary Friedrich, Gene Colan, Don Heck, Alan Weiss, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bill Everett & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-2034-0 (TPB)

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him capable of astonishing acrobatic feats, a formidable fighter and a living lie-detector.

Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the roster of brilliant artists who had illustrated the strip. He only really came into his own, however, after artist Gene Colan signed up for the long haul…

The natal DD battled thugs, gangsters, an eclectic mix of established and new super-villains and even the occasional monster or alien invasion. He quipped and wise-cracked his way through life and life-threatening combat, utterly unlike the grim, moody quasi-religious metaphor he became under modern authorial regimes…

In these tales from the pivotal era of relevancy, social awareness and increasing political polarisation, the Man Without Fear was also growing into the judicial conscience of a generation turning its back on old values…

Covering May 1970 -April 1972, this trade paperback and digital compilation chronologically re-presents Daredevil #64-86 plus a crossover with Iron Man #35-36 and sees the once-staid and so-very Establishment Murdock move with the shifting cultural mores as scripter Roy Thomas hands over the reins to newcomer Gerry Conway in an increasingly determined move to make the Man Without Fear cutting edge and relevant… …

The action opens here with Horn-Head prowling the rooftops of Los Angeles. He’s there to find the love-of-his-life, who quit New York when the pressure of sharing DD’s secrets proved too much…

After trailing the star-struck Karen Page to Hollywood, DD gets to take out his bad mood on a handy hood in ‘Suddenly… The Stunt-Master!’ (Thomas, Gene Colan & Syd Shores) before eventually helping his old enemy (a petty criminal biker) get a TV show of his own…

Murdock remains in LA to oversee Karen’s first acting gig – a pastiche of then-hot spooky TV phenomenon Dark Shadows – and prevents her becoming part of a murder spree in ‘The Killing of Brother Brimstone’: a classy whodunit which cataclysmically climaxes one month later in ‘…And One Cried Murder!’

Still stuck on the West Coast, DD tackles another grudge-bearing villain as ‘Stilt-Man Stalks the Soundstage’ (Gary Friedrich, Thomas, Colan & Shores) with now-respectably reformed Stunt-Master ably assisting our hero. Matt eventually leaves Karen to the vicissitudes of Tinseltown, landing back in the Big Apple just in time to become embroiled in a plot blending radical politics and the shady world of Boxing – ‘The Phoenix and the Fighter!’

The Black Panther returns seeking a favour in ‘A Life on the Line’ as kid gangs and the birth of the “Black Power” movement leap from news headlines to comic pages. The same consideration of youth in protest also inspired the seditious menace of ‘The Tribune’ (written by Friedrich) as youthful ideologues, cynical demagogues and political bombers tear a terrified and outraged city apart.

The unrest peaks in Daredevil #71 as Thomas contributes his swansong script and concludes the right-wing manufactured anarchy in ‘If an Eye Offend Thee…!’

New find Gerry Conway assumed the scripting with #72, easing himself in with an interdimensional fantasy frolic wherein the Scarlet Swashbuckler encounters a strange rash of crimes and a mirror-dwelling mystery man named Tagak in ‘Lo! The Lord of the Leopards!’ before plunging readers into an ambitious cosmic crossover yarn which begins in Iron Man #35.

Here the Armoured Avenger, seductive, morally-ambivalent free agent Madame Masque and S.H.I.E.L.D. supremo Nick Fury all seek‘Revenge!’ (illustrated by Don Heck & Mike Esposito) for various vile acts, and specifically the near-fatal wounding of valiant young American agent Jasper Sitwell at the hand of the mercenary Spymaster.

Their efforts – and those of their assembled enemies – are somehow fuelling an alien artefact called the Zodiac Key and, when its creators suck Daredevil into the mix to battle Spymaster and a bunch of super-villains affiliated to the cosmic device, everybody is ultimately shanghaied to another universe for more pointless fighting in ‘Behold… the Brotherhood!’(Daredevil #73, illustrated by Colan & Shores with plot input from Allyn Brodsky) before the epic concludes with extreme briskness in Iron Man #36.

So brisk, in fact, that only the first 8 pages of ‘Among Us Stalks the Ramrod!’ (Conway, Heck & Esposito) are reprinted here, leaving this potent brew of action and suspense to wrap up with Daredevil #74: an impressive and mercifully complete conundrum with DD trapped ‘In the Country of the Blind!’ (art by Colan & Shores) and calling on a group of sight-impaired volunteers to help him thwart a criminal plot to cripple New York…

The social upheaval of the period produced a lot of impressively earnest material that only hinted at the true potential of Daredevil. These beautifully illustrated yarns may occasionally jar with their heartfelt stridency but the honesty and desire to be a part of a solution rather than blithely carry on as if nothing was happening affords them a potency that no historian, let alone comics fan, can dare to ignore.

The Sightless Swashbuckler makes a politically-charged appearance in Daredevil #75 (April 1971) in a drama of devious intrigue and kidnapping that begins as Murdock travels to the banana republic of Delvadia where ‘Now Rides the Ghost of El Condor!’ (Conway, Colan & Shores) offers a canny yarn of revolutionary fervour, self-serving greed and the power of modern mythology.

The saga concludes in ‘The Deathmarch of El Condor!’ – wherein inker Tom Palmer (perhaps Colan’s most effective inker) starts his long association with the penciller.

Guest stars abound in ‘…And So Enters the Amazing Spider-Man!’ when an uncanny artefact appears in Central Park, inviting DD, the webspinner and the Sub-Mariner to participate in a fantastic battle in a far-flung, lost world. The adventure concludes in the Atlantean’s own comic (#40) but as our hero didn’t join the quest, that sequel isn’t included in this tome.

Issue #78 returns to more traditional territory as ‘The Horns of the Bull!’ traces the downfall of petty thug Bull Taurusafter enigmatic mastermind Mr. Kline has him transformed into a savage beast and sets him upon the Scarlet Swashbuckler…

Friedrich scripted cataclysmic conclusion ‘Murder Cries the Man-Bull!’, but plotter Conway was back the following month to spectacularly reintroduce a vintage villain ‘In the Eyes… of the Owl!’: presaging a major format change for the series…

From issue #81’s ‘And Death is a Woman Called Widow’ (inked by Jack Abel), Soviet defector Natasha Romanoff bursts onto the scene as the ubiquitous Mr. Kline is finally unmasked and revealed to be behind most of DD’s recent woes and tribulations…

Sometimes called Natalia Romanova, she is a Soviet-era Russian spy who came in from the cold and stuck around to become one of Marvel’s earliest and most successful female stars. She started life as a svelte, sultry honey-trap during Marvel’s early “Commie-busting” days, battling Iron Man in her debut exploit (Tales of Suspense #52, April, 1964).

She was subsequently redesigned as a torrid tights-&-tech super-villain before defecting to the USA, falling for an assortment of Yankee superheroes – including Hawkeye and Daredevil – before finally enlisting as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., freelance do-gooder and occasional leader of The Avengers.

Throughout her career she has always been considered ultra-efficient, coldly competent, deadly dangerous and yet somehow cursed to bring doom and disaster to her paramours. As her backstory evolved, it was revealed that Natasha had undergone experimental processes which enhanced her physical capabilities and lengthened her lifespan, as well as assorted psychological procedures which had messed up her mind and memories…

Following a stunning pin-up of the bodacious Black Widow by Bill Everett, the conspiracy crisis continues with ‘Now Send… the Scorpion’, as Kline – AKA the Assassin – sets a manic artificial arachnid against DD and the Widow, even as his Machiavellian master attempts to suborn Murdock’s greatest friend Foggy Nelson.

At the end of that issue the Scorpion is apparently dead and ‘The Widow Accused!’ by Nelson of the villain’s murder. A sham trial intended to railroad and pillory the Russian émigré ensues in #83, (rendered by Alan Weiss, Barry Smith & Everett), with the Assassin subsequently dispatching brutish Mr. Hyde to ensure his victory.

Against all odds, however, Murdock exonerates Natasha of the charges, prompting the hidden mastermind to take direct action in ‘Night of the Assassin!’ (Colan & Syd Shores). After attacking DD and the Widow in Switzerland – whence the jetsetting former spy had fled to nurse her wounded pride – Kline at last meets final defeat in a stunning and baroque climax to the extended saga.

In the aftermath of that cataclysmic clash, the odd couple are stranded in Switzerland before #85 sees them tentatively beginning a romantic alliance and returning to America on a ‘Night Flight!’ courtesy of Conway, Colan & Shores.

Typically, the plane is hijacked by the bloodthirsty Gladiator, after which another long-forgotten foe resurfaces – for the last time – in ‘Once Upon a Time… the Ox!’ (with stunning Tom Palmer inks) culminating in the broken romantic triangle of Matt, Karen Page and Natasha compelling a life changing relocation for our players from the Big Apple to San Francisco…

The next volume heads even further into uncharted territory…

Rounding out the comics experience are bonus pages including the covers to all-reprint Daredevil Annual #2 and 3, a selection of house ads, unused cover pencils by Colan and his contribution to the 1970 Marvel Artist Self-Portrait project.

Despite a few bumpy spots, during this period Daredevil blossomed into a truly magnificent example of Marvel’s compelling formula for success: smart, contemporarily astute stories, truly human and fallible characters and always magnificent illustration. These bombastic tales are pure Fights ‘n’ Tights magic no fan of stunning super-heroics can afford to ignore.

© 2019 MARVEL.

 

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Black Panther: The Bride


By Reginald Hudlin, Scot Eaton, Klaus Janson, Dean White & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2107-7 (TPB)

If you’re still looking for a St. Valentines’ Day gift for your one and only (or one of many: I don’t judge even if I do reserve the right to scorn…), you won’t find much help here. At least you better not…

I do, however, have an intriguing, romantically-themed suggestion you can read for inspiration or, latterly, consolation…

Regarded as the first black hero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, Black Panther‘s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since July 1966 when he first attacked the Fantastic Four as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father.

T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose secluded kingdom is the only source of a miraculous alien metal upon which the country’s immense wealth is founded. Those mineral riches – derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland.

Moreover, the tribal resources and the people have been eternally safeguarded by a cat-like human champion deriving incredible physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb simultaneously ensuring the generational dominance of the nation’s Panther Cult.

In recent years that continuity-mythology was retooled to reveal that the “Vibranium” mound had actually made the country a secret Superpower for centuries, but now increasingly makes Wakanda a target for subversion and incursion.

This slim, unassuming but extremely engaging Costumed Drama – available in trade paperback and eBook editions – collects Black Panther volume 4 #14-18 (May – September 2006). Set during the first Superhero Civil War, it tackles a thorny, perennial political issue with earthy wit and wisdom as the Great King of Wakanda confronts the most contentious issue of his reign thus far…

Previously: the dutiful son of Queen Mother Ramonda at last accedes to her increasingly strident demands that the nation needs an heir, and goes looking for a suitable queen. That turned into a full-blown fiasco but the needs of State remain, so the drama here begins as 4-chapter quest ‘Bride of the Panther’ sees the Panther eschew new flames and set off to woo and win back the first girl he ever loved…

With streetwise Power Man Luke Cage as his smirking wingman, T’Challa recalls his early days and a certain something…

Ororo Munroe AKA Storm is actually a lost daughter of a Kenyan princess and an American journalist. She grew up an orphan in Cairo following their deaths in a war. After joining Charles Xavier‘s X-Men, she spends years fighting the world’s most deadly threats as part – and often leader – of the unloved, distrusted mutant hero horde.

As puberty triggered her mutant powers long ago, the wily thief left Egypt, walking across Africa, drawn by a yearning she could not explain. Eventually she settled with nomadic tribes, using her weather powers to ease their burdens. They called her “Goddess”. However, before she reached that part of her life, Ororo encountered a determined boy also trekking across the Dark Continent…

Young Prince T’Challa had single-handedly avenged the murder of his father T’Chaka and driven off the resource raiders of deranged scientist Ulysses Klaw, but before he could inherit the role of king and spiritual leader of his people there were certain trials and rituals to undertake.

Whilst wandering the plains of Africa in a walkabout manhood trial, he met a beautiful young girl with incredible powers trekking from Egypt to West Africa. Together they found love and survived a deadly attack by South African mercenaries. Ultimately, his sense of duty tore them apart. Years later, T’Challa found her again before once more rejecting her for the needs of Wakanda.

Now as she visits Africa, he has to make her forgive him, because no other woman can be his First Lady of Wakanda…

As Ororo makes him really earn her love, elsewhere malign forces gather. The possibility of a union between mutants and Wakandans is seen by many as a dangerous alliance. An Iraqi dictator creates his own super-powered Arabian Knight to attack them, Hydra attempts to abduct relatives Ororo doesn’t even know she has and even the Kenyan government are taking steps to maintain a status quo the gradually reunited couple couldn’t care less about…

Once Storm finally accepts the marriage offer, the insanity escalates. The Wakandans all adore their new queen-in-waiting and aren’t shy in letting her know it: the world’s fashion and media goes crazy at the prospect of a super Royal Wedding and become ultra-intrusive, and T’Challa’s old enemy Princess Zanda starts impersonating Ororo in the world’s most expensive boutiques, determined that only she shall have the Panther…

Ororo might be – grudgingly – okay with T’Challa’s old flames (the ladies in question, not so much), but tensions still abound. His formidable Dora Milaje bodyguards are imperiously withholding final judgement, SHIELD wants to take over security for the bride and groom and Cage is obnoxiously determined to organise the greatest Bachelor Party of all time…

The King only agrees after Invisible Woman Susan Richards pre-empts his stag debacle with a Bachelorette do unlike any other…

Eventually, the day arrives and a host of heroes and villains, politicos, family and journalists descend on Wakanda for the Wedding of the Century in ‘Here Comes a Storm’. It’s everything you’d expect from a ceremony packed with drunk and angry powered types, and a sinister psychic parasite hidden amongst the entourage and determined to possess the groom and rule the kingdom. Ororo is more concerned with last-minute detail. Wakanda’s god is the Panther Spirit: a live predator deity prone to eating anyone considered unworthy of joining the Royal family…

This deliciously light and frothy Fights ‘n’ Tights romp is perfectly balanced between suspense, comedy and brutal action (as all good weddings are) and also offers Jim McCann’s text feature ‘Diving the Design’ describing the creation of the wedding dress by Shawn Dudley.

What more could any True Romantic need?
© 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Fantastic Four Epic Collection volume 4 1966-1967: The Mystery of the Black Panther


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby with Marie Severin, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia and various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1556-8 (TPB)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Epic and Groundbreaking… 10/10

Concocted by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, with inks by George Klein & Christopher Rule, Fantastic Four #1 (bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961) was crude, rough, passionate and uncontrolled excitement unlike anything young fans had ever seen before.

Thrill-hungry kids pounced on it and the raw storytelling caught a wave of change starting to build in America. It and succeeding issues changed comicbooks forever.

This full-colour compendium – also available as a digital download – collects issues #52-67 and Annuals #4-5, plus material from Not Brand Echh #1 & 5 (spanning July 1966 to December 1967): an astounding progression of landmark tales as Stan & Jack cannily built on that early energy to consolidate the FF as the leading title and most innovative series of the era.

As seen in the ground-breaking premier issue, maverick scientist Reed Richards, his fiancée Sue Storm, their close friend Ben Grimm and Sue’s teenaged brother survived an ill-starred private space-shot after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding and mutated them all.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible, Johnny Storm could turn into living flame whilst tragic Ben shockingly devolved into a shambling, rocky freak. After the initial revulsion and trauma pass, they solemnly agree to use their abilities to benefit mankind and thus was born The Fantastic Four.

The FF became the indisputable central title and most consistently groundbreaking series of Marvel’s ever-unfolding web of cosmic creation: a forge for new concepts and characters at a time when Kirby was in his conceptual prime and continually unleashing his vast imagination on plot after spectacular plot whilst Lee scripted some of the most passionate superhero sagas that Marvel – or any publisher, for that matter – has ever seen.

Both were on an unstoppable roll, at the height of their creative powers, and full of the confidence that only success brings, with The King particularly eager to see how far the genre and the medium could be pushed…

Without preamble the wonderment commences with an actual social revolution as a new unforgettable character debuted. ‘The Black Panther!’ (Fantastic Four #52, cover-dated July 1966) was an enigmatic African monarch whose secretive kingdom was the only source of a vibration-absorbing alien metal. These mineral riches had enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland. Bold and confident, he lured the quartet into his savage super-scientific kingdom as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. He was also the first black superhero in American comics.

After battling the team to a standstill, King T’Challa reveals his tragic origin in ‘The Way it Began..!’, which also introduces sonic super-villain Klaw. In the aftermath Johnny and his tag-along college roommate Wyatt Wingfoot embark on a quest to rescue the Torch’s Inhuman lover Crystal (imprisoned with her people behind an impenetrable energy barrier in the Himalayas). Their journey is interrupted when they discover the lost tomb of Prester John in #54’s‘Whosoever Finds the Evil Eye…!’ and almost perish in devastating, misguided combat…

After aiding the FF against world-devouring Galactus, the Silver Surfer was imprisoned on Earth by the vengeful space-god. The brooding, perpetually moralising ex-herald had quickly become a fan-favourite, and his regular appearances were always a guarantee of something special.

‘When Strikes the Silver Surfer!’ sees him in uncomprehending, brutal battle with the Thing, whose insecurities over his blind girlfriend Alicia Masters explode into searing jealousy when the gleaming skyglider comes calling, after which business as unusual resumes when ‘Klaw, the Murderous Master of Sound!’ ambushes the team in their own home in #56.

Throughout all the stories since their imprisonment, a running sub-plot with the Inhumans had been slowly building, with Johnny and Wyatt stuck on the other side of the Great Barrier: wandering the wilds and seeking a method of liberating the Hidden City.

Their quest led directly into the spectacular battle yarn ‘The Torch that Was!’: lead feature in the fourth FF Annual (November 1966) in which The Mad Thinker recovers and resurrects the original Human Torch (in actuality the world’s first android and a major star of Timely/Marvel’s Golden Age) to destroy the flaming teenager…

The blistering battle briefly reunites the entire team and leads into an epic clash with their greatest foe.

Fantastic Four #57-60 is Lee & Kirby at their very best; with unbearable tension, incredible drama and breathtaking action on a number of fronts as the most dangerous man on Earth steals the Silver Surfer’s cosmic power, even as the Inhumans finally win their freedom and we discovered the tragic secret of mighty mute Black Bolt in all its awesome fury.

It all begins with a jailbreak by the Sandman in #57’s ‘Enter… Dr. Doom!’, escalates in ‘The Dismal Dregs of Defeat!’ as Doom tests his limitless stolen power; builds to a crescendo in ‘Doomsday’ with the heroes’ utter defeat and humiliation before culminating in brains and valour saving the day – and all humanity – in truly magnificent manner in ‘The Peril and the Power!’

Even though the team had just defeated cosmically-empowered Doom and returned to the Silver Surfer his purloined life-energies, there was never a dull moment: no sooner had the heroes relaxed than a new and improved foe attacked once more in Fantastic Four #61’s ‘Where Stalks the Sandman?’.

This began another explosive multi-part tale wherein Johnny and imprisoned beloved Crystal are reunited, even as Reed is beaten in battle and lost to the anti-matter hell of the Negative Zone’s sub-space corridor…

It’s Crystal to the rescue in ‘…And One Shall Save Him!’ as amphibious guest-star Triton (of the newly liberated Inhuman Royal Family) plucks the doomed genius from the jaws of disaster and inadvertently introduces another unique enemy. This diabolical monster follows Reed back from the anti-matter universe and straight into partnership with the still-seething Sandman. The resulting battle against ‘Blastaar, the Living Bomb-Burst!’ (FF #63, June 1967) wrecks half the city before some modicum of security is restored…

Looking for a little peace and quiet, the exhausted team then tackle ‘The Sentry Sinister’: a frenetic south seas adventure romp pitting the vacationing heroes against a super-scientific automaton buried for millennia by an ancient star-faring race.

This tropical treat expanded the burgeoning interlocking landscape to an infinite degree by introducing the ancient, imperial and alien Kree who would grow into one of the fundamental pillars supporting the vast continuity of the Marvel Universe.

Although regarded on Earth as a long-dead race, the Kree themselves resurface in the very next issue as the team is targeted by an alien emissary of vengeance ‘…From Beyond this Planet Earth!’

Pitiless Ronan the Accuser has come looking to see what could possibly have destroyed an invincible Sentry – and finds out to his great regret – but whilst the fight ensues Alicia is abducted by a super scientific stranger…

The mystery of her disappearance is revealed in #66 in ‘What Lurks Behind the Beehive?’ as the outraged FF trail the seemingly helpless artisan to a man-made technological wonderland. Here a band of rogue geniuses have genetically engineered the next phase in evolution only to lose control of it even before it can be properly born…

‘When Opens the Cocoon!’ exposes the secret of the creature known as Him and only Alicia’s gentle nature is able to placate the nigh-omnipotent creature (who would eventually evolve into doom-ridden cosmic voyager Adam Warlock), after which the tight continuity pauses to allow the Inhumans (time-lost race of paranormal beings long secluded from mortal men) and Black Panther to share the stage in 1967’s Fantastic Four Annual wherein sinister invader Psycho-Manattempts to ‘Divide… and Conquer!’ the Earth.

Frank Giacoia inked this tale, with the emotion-bending micro-marauder holding both the King of Wakanda and the Royal Family of Attilan at bay until the FF can pitch in, delayed as they were by the news that the Sue Richards is pregnant… and soon to be confined in the most appallingly sexist manner until the birth…

The Annual also includes another comedy insight into the creation of Marvel Epics as Stan, Jack & Frank ask ‘This is a Plot?’ and – after the now customary Kirby pin-ups (Inhumans Black Bolt, Gorgon, Medusa, Karnak, Triton, Crystal and Maximus, a colossal group shot of Galactus, Silver Surfer and others, plus a double-page spread of the quirky quartet) – a rapidly rising star-in-the-making gets his first solo appearance.

‘The Peerless Power of the Silver Surfer’ is a pithily potent fable of ambition and ingratitude reintroducing and upgrading the threat-level of the Mad Thinker’s lethal Artificial Intelligence murder-machine Quasimodo…

Ending on a comedic note, this enticing tome includes a brace of pertinent parodies from Marvel’s spoof title Not Brand Echh, opening with (#1 August 1967) Lee, Kirby & Giacoia’s reassessment of Doom’s theft of the Power Cosmic in ‘The Silver Burper!’) and ending in a blistering boisterous bout between ‘The Ever-Loving Thung vs The Inedible Bulk!’(courtesy of Lee, Marie Severin & Giacoia).

Art lovers and history buffs can also enjoy a boundless hidden bounty at the end of this volume as we close with fascinating freebies in the form of the initial designs for Coal Tiger (who evolved into the Black Panther), Kirby & Sinnott’s unused first cover for FF #52 as well as a dozen Kirby/Sinnott original art pages.

Also on show is a pencil rough for FF #64, an alternative cover to #65 plus a previous collection cover drawn by Kirby and painted by Dean White.

Epic, revolutionary and unutterably unmissable, these are the stories which made Marvel the unassailable leaders in fantasy entertainment and which remain some of the most important superhero comics ever crafted. The verve, conceptual scope and sheer enthusiasm shines through on every page and the wonder is there for you to share. If you’ve never thrilled to these spectacular sagas then this book of marvels is the perfect key to another – far brighter – world and time.
6© 1966, 1967, 2019 MARVEL. All rights reserved.

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Black Panther Epic Collection volume 2 1977-1988: Revenge of the Black Panther


By Jack Kirby, Ed Hannigan, Peter B. Gillis, Jim Shooter, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Jerry Bingham, Denys Cowan & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1542-1 (TPB)

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther‘s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first appeared in Fantastic Four. In fact, back then the cat king actually attacked Marvel’s First Family as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. He was also the first black superhero in American comics, debuting in summer 1966.

As created and realised by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee, T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose secretive kingdom is the only source of vibration-absorbing wonder mineral Vibranium. The miraculous alien metal – derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – is the basis of the country’s immense wealth, enabling Wakanda to become one of the wealthiest and most secretive nations on Earth. These riches allowed the young king to radically remake his country, creating a technological wonderland even after he left Africa to fight as one of America’s mighty Avengers.

For much of its history Wakanda has been an isolated, utopian technological wonderland with the tribal resources and people safeguarded and ruled since time immemorial by a human warrior-king deriving cat-like physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb. This has ensured the generational dominance of the nation’s Panther Cult and Royal Family.

Wakanda has never been conquered by outsiders. The primary reason is an unbroken line of divinely-sponsored warrior kings who safeguard the united, unified tribes. Another is that miraculous super-mineral found nowhere else on Earth. The top-secret “Vibranium mound” had guaranteed the country’s status as a clandestine superpower for centuries but in modern times has increasingly made Wakanda a target for subversion, incursion and even invasion as the world grew ever smaller…

In contemporary times the chieftain is T’Challa: an unbeatable, super-smart, feline-empowered strategic genius who divides his time between ruling at home and serving abroad in superhero teams such as The Avengers, Fantastic Force, The Illuminati and The Ultimates, beside the world’s mightiest costumed champions.

This trusty trade paperback (and eBook) gathers the entire blockbusting, mind-bending reinvention by Jack Kirby and others from Black Panther volume 1 # 1-15 (January 1977-May 1979), the continuation in Marvel Premiere #51-53 (cover-dated December 1979 to April 1980), material from Marvel Team-up #100 (December 1980) and a groundbreaking, 4-issue miniseries spanning July to October 1988.

Jack Kirby’s return to Marvel in the mid 1970’s was much hyped at the time but swiftly proved to be controversial. His new creations (2001, The Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man) found friends rapidly, but his tenure on established earlier creations Captain America and Black Panther divided the fan base.

Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on titles as a “Day One”. His commitment was to wholesome, eye-popping adventure, breakneck action and breathless, mind-boggling wonderment. Combined with his absolute mastery of the comic page and unceasing quest for the Next Big Thrill, it all makes for a captivating read, but will never satisfy those readers fully committed to the minutiae of the Marvel Universe.

Beginning here with Black Panther #1, what they got was a rollercoaster ride of classic Kirby concept-overload as the Hereditary King of a miraculous Lost Kingdom gallantly pursues fabulous time machines, fights future men and secret samurai clans, thwarts the plots of super-rich artefact stealers and foils schemes to nuke his hidden homeland, usurp his rule and even consume his faithful subjects…

This feline funfest is about frantic action and begins at full pelt with a re-introductory romp spotlighting diminutive treasure hunter Abner Little. This devious gentleman entices T’Challa into a search for ‘King Solomon’s Frog!’ after introducing himself as a friend and colleague of the Panther’s grandfather Azzari the Wise…

Soon, the mismatched pair are in hot pursuit of a historical wonder machine that sows death and destruction in its wake. The ancient brass amphibian has the ability to open time-portals, bringing lethal threats from other eras, but its real capacity for catastrophe comes from Little’s rival Collectors, who bring astounding ordnance and unsurpassed riches into play in their own efforts to possess the mystic time-machine.

Most ruthless and relentless is Queen Zanda of Narobia, who expertly ambushes the questers with a highly-skilled mercenary taskforce before accidentally triggering the frog into shanghaiing a hyper-evolved walking WMD from his own far-flung future era. She also assures T’Challa’s continued assistance by targeting Wakanda with atomic missiles…

Reluctantly uniting to sedate ‘The Six-Million Year Man’, T’Challa, Little and Zanda then race to uncover King Solomon’s tomb where a twin of the Brass Frog rests. This particular item possesses the most welcome function of returning objects and creatures to their point of origin…

Their ‘Race Against Time’ is exacerbated when the groggy tomorrow-man revives just as the searchers locate the tomb. He angrily unleashes psionic hell and awakens King Solomon’s formidable funereal guardian Ogar. Thankfully, reluctant teamwork saves them and the newly-found second frog restores order, if not sanity…

Tragically for the tomb-raiders, the time to determine if they are ‘Friends or Foes’ swiftly passes, since the calamitous clashes have destabilised the long-lost treasury trove. With mighty explosions wracking the site, it is all T’Challa can do to drag his artefact-lusting companions to safety before Armageddon occurs…

Unfortunately for the Panther, he has proved his worth and – with Wakanda still a nuclear target – ultimate ineffectuality. When the assembled Collectors – Zanda, Count Zorba, Colonel Pigman and withered coffin-dodger Silas Mourner – see the warrior king in battle, they determine he must win for them the ultimate prize…

The ‘Quest for the Sacred Water-Skin!!’ begins as T’Challa and equally reluctant Abner Little set off to find a fabled hidden land where a sect of Samurai warriors have dwelt for centuries; sustained by honour, their martial arts and a literal fountain of youth.

Overcoming monsters and warriors, T’Challa establishes a bond of honour with the last proponents of Bushido, but sadly his venal companion upsets the applecart by secretly stealing ‘A Cup of Youth’…

Meanwhile in Wakanda, internal trouble flares when the Panther’s half-brother General Jakarra makes a power-grab, bolstered by a sacrilegious utilisation of unrefined vibranium…

Black Panther #7 sees the hero and his scurrilous sidekick escape the Samurai city even as ‘Drums!’ sound across Wakanda and the incredible secret origin of Panther Cult and Vibranium Mound are simultaneously revealed.

When the awesome sky metal first crashed to Earth in primordial times, it transformed many men into monsters. Thankfully mighty chief Bashenga – taking the black cat as his totem – created a force to destroy the creatures and police the metal: preventing alien infection from spreading and forever after shielding his people through a line of dedicated defenders.

As his latest successor heads for a final confrontation with the Collectors, King T’Challa has no way of knowing his devoted regent N’Gassi has been captured or that Jakarra has gained deadly power through exposure to the gene-warping force of raw Vibranium…

Having battled his way free, T’Challa heads for home. His people, however, are already suffering the increasingly crazed depredations of a Jakarra no longer even remotely human.

Further delayed by a mercy mission – plucking dying men from the sea – the king bemoans his absence whilst half a world away, N’Gassi takes a desperate gamble and “requests” that the sedentary royal cousins – Ishanta, Joshua Itobo, Khanata and Zuni – step up to lead the fight against Jakarra. But are they ‘Panthers or Pussycats?’…

Surprising everybody with a show of solidarity and unconventional tactics, the ‘Black Musketeers’ manage to contain the monstrous usurper until T’Challa returns, but his arrival coincides with the loss of Jakarra’s last vestige of humanity. Now a shambling beast resolvs that ‘This World Shall Die!’ in an Earth-shattering detonation. The horrific abomination is barely defeated inside the Mound by a true Black Panther who does not escape the mineral’s mutagenic properties…

Issue #11 finds T’Challa recovering from his struggle against Jakarra and plagued by eerie recurring dreams of future battles. As citizens begin vanishing all over Wakanda – including Prince Khanata – the medical team reaches the conclusion that the king has developed some form of Extra-Sensory Perception.

This new gift – or perhaps curse? – promptly leads the Panther to the abductors’ HQ where phantasmal madman ‘Kiber the Cruel’ is converting abducted humans to energy and consuming them…

Following ‘The Kiber Clue’, T’Challa strives mightily to save his kinsman and subjects, but arrives too late for anything but vengeance…

As Jim Shooter, Ed Hannigan, Jerry Bingham & Gene Day take over from the abruptly departed Kirby, the saga swiftly wraps up with the true nature of Kiber grotesquely exposed and the Panther’s judgement delivered in #13’s ‘What is… and What Should Never Be’…

With Hannigan scripting, the Black Panther rapidly re-entered the mainstream Marvel universe in ‘The Beasts in the Jungle!’ (#14 March 1979): opening Wakanda’s first Embassy in New York City, applying to the United Nations and rejoining his former allies in the Avengers.

All too soon smothered in red tape and diplomatic hurdles, T’Challa welcomes working with his superhero guests but is quickly embroiled in a deadly scheme by old enemy Klaw, the Master of Sound, and blithely unaware that other relationships are about to be renewed…

After the resurgent villain battles the World’s Mightiest Heroes to a standstill, T’Challa manages to inflict the ‘Revenge of The Black Panther!’ in the final issue (May 1979), yet leaves everything on a cliffhanging note as former lover and consort Monica Lynne breaks into the Wakandan Embassy…

When Kirby took over the character, Black Panther had just ended a highly-acclaimed run in Jungle Action. Following the epic ‘Panther’s Rage’ saga, scripter Don McGregor began an even more groundbreaking saga in ‘The Panther Versus the Klan’.

That convoluted yarn had been abruptly cancelled before conclusion the previous year, but the contents of Marvel Premiere#51-53 provided an ending to the Klan clash as well as an acceptable in-universe explanation as to why wise and noble T’Challa abruptly dropped his hunt for answers and abandoned his adored beloved Monica…

Opening minutes after Black Panther #15 finished, ‘The Killing of Windeagle!’ sees T’Challa arriving back at his new American Embassy, only to be attacked by an unknown flying warrior who claims to be an old foe.

After subduing the assailant, the King experiences even more turmoil as Lynne and Georgia journalist Kevin Trublood accost him. Although his staff all seem familiar with the woman, T’Challa has no memory of either of them…

Granting an audience with the couple, the Panther hears how Monica’s sister Angela was murdered, and how the death seemed to involve both the Ku Klux Klan and rival offshoot the Dragon’s Circle. As he listens, T’Challa hears that for a time he was the prime investigator of the murder, but his mind is clouded and he recalls none of it. Suddenly Windeagle attacks again, but as the Panther fights back his opponent is assassinated by a sniper…

Working with the police, T’Challa uncovers the sordid history of a petty gangster who somehow became a flying fury and establishes links to yet another organisation: The Spiritual Light Society. At every turn, events seem to be pushing him towards one inescapable conclusion: Monica’s ridiculous, unbelievable story is true and someone has tampered with his mind and memory…

When they are ambushed again by armed thugs – later identified as Klansmen – their spirited resistance is supplemented by more sniper fire and the Panther’s ‘Journey Through the Past!’ impels him to invade a Klan gathering. This conclave is subsequently violently disrupted by a costumed maniac called Soul Strangler…

Despite not remembering, the Panther believes he’s deduced the nature of the contemporary civil war between KKK and Dragon’s circle, and more importantly, who killed Angela. With resignation and trepidation, T’Challa, Kevin and Monica head for a showdown in the Deep South…

Inked by Alan Gordon, Marvel Premiere #53 delivered ‘The Ending, In Anger!’ as T’Challa visits Monica’s family home and the dam in his memory finally shatters. Acting with clarity at last, the Black Panther tracks down the villains who captured and brainwashed him during his previous visit, exposes a tawdry truth behind all the death and intimidation and brings a kind of closure to all the innocents touched by the tragedy…

With the major story-arcs at last concluded it was back to relative obscurity and bit-parts for the Panther, with the exception of a short tale that would have huge repercussions on the hero’s life in the future.

‘Cry… Vengeance!’, by Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Bob McLeod, first appeared in Marvel Team-Up #100 and saw African X-Man Storm targeted by assassins. Easily defeating her attackers, she learns they were hired by Boer hardman Andreas de Ruyter…

This sends her mind winging back to her childhood journey across Africa as teenager: an arduous trek made easier after she linked up with a young boy on his own rite of passage ritual. His name was T’Challa and she learned that he was a prince only after South African mercenaries led by de Ruyter tried to kidnap the boy for political advantage.

After driving the thugs off, the youngsters spent a brief but idyllic time together before their paths diverged and duty pulled them apart.

Decades later, the villain is back and seeking vengeance, so Ororo reunites with the boy the world now calls Black Panther to end the maniac’s threat forever…

As the 1980s closed, the Panther made a dynamic comeback in 1988, courtesy of writer Peter B. Gillis and illustrators Denys Cowan & Sam DeLarosa…

The Black Panthers rule over a fantastic African paradise which isolated itself from the rest of the world millennia ago. Blessed with unimaginable resources – both natural and not so much – the nation of Wakanda developed uninterrupted into the most technologically advanced human nation on Earth, utterly unmolested by rapacious European imperialism. That did not mean that geographical neighbours were allies, however…

In ‘Cry, the Accursed Country!’ technologically-advanced white nationalist country Azania has subjugated and tormented its own black majority population for centuries whilst plotting the downfall of Wakanda. As global condemnation of the apartheid regime mounts, T’Challa learns that the Panther God has withdrawn his blessing and instead consecrated and empowered an imprisoned priest in Azania as a new Black Panther. When this savage avatar begins inflicting bloody retribution on the ruling class, the Azanians blame Wakanda…

Deprived of his feline gifts and herding war-hungry dissidents in his own nation, T’Challa faces a crisis of confidence – and faith – in ‘For Duty, For Honor, For Country!’ which is no help when Azania targets Wakanda with its own team of super-agents: The Supremacists…

Soon T’Challa’s people face international condemnation and nuclear Armageddon after ‘The Moorbecx Communique!’ adds layers of espionage to the escalating crisis, compelling the outcast king to risk his principles and challenge his god to regain his birthright in ‘A Cat Can Look at a King…’

Most tragically, the Panther must defeat his dark mirror image and knows that win or lose, nothing will ever be the same again…

This collection is also augmented by Kirby-era Editorial pages, house ads, a potted history of the Black Panther from #14, the Rich Buckler & McLeod cover to the never-released BP #16 and unused Bingham pencil pages. Also on show, are info pages and maps of Wakanda from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, featuring T’Challa, Klaw, Klaw’s Blaster, Vibranium, and Kiber the Cruel.

There are also text features from Marvel Age #20 and #63; covering the much-delayed Gillis/Cowan revival, plus a pinup by Bill Reinhold, and Kirby/Ernie Chan and Al Milgrom/Klaus Janson original art pages as well as unused Bingham pencils to feast your eyes upon…

An explosive rocket ride of thrills, spills, chills and too-long delayed gratification, these long-lost classics confirm the Black Panther as one of the most complex and versatile characters in comics and simply scream “Read me! Read me!” So you should and you must…
© 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1988, 2019 Marvel. All rights reserved.

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The Black Panther Epic Collection volume 1 1966-1976: Panther’s Rage


By Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Billy Graham, Keith Pollard, Klaus Janson & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0190-5 (TPB)

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther‘s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first appeared in Fantastic Four.

In fact, the cat king actually attacked Marvel’s First Family as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father. He was also the first black superhero in American comics, debuting in summer 1966.

As created by Jack Kirby & Stan Lee, T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose secretive kingdom is the only source of vibration-absorbing wonder mineral Vibranium. The miraculous alien metal – supposedly derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – is the basis of the country’s immense wealth, enabling Wakanda to become one of the wealthiest and most secretive nations on Earth. These riches also allowed the young king to radically remake his country, creating a technological wonderland even after he left Africa to fight as one of America’s mighty Avengers.

For much of its history Wakanda has been an isolated, utopian technological wonderland with the tribal resources and people safeguarded and led since time immemorial by a human warrior-king deriving cat-like physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb. This has ensured the generational dominance of the nation’s Panther Cult and Royal Family…

The top-secret “Vibranium mound” had guaranteed the country’s status as a clandestine superpower for centuries but in modern times has increasingly made Wakanda a target for subversion, incursion and even invasion as the world grew ever smaller.

This trusty trade paperback (and eBook) gathers the dynamic debut from Fantastic Four #52-53 (cover-dated July and August 1966) and the groundbreaking solo stories from Jungle Action volume 2 #6-24, spanning September 1973-November 1976.

Before that though, the innovative and unforgettable character debuted in ‘The Black Panther!’: an enigmatic African monarch whose secretive kingdom was the only source of a vibration-absorbing alien metal. These mineral riches had enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland before he lured the FF into his savage super-scientific kingdom as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father.

After battling the team to a standstill, King T’Challa revealed his tragic origin in ‘The Way it Began..!’, detailing how his father was murdered by marauding sonic science researcher Ulysses Klaw. As the monarch details how he took vengeance and liberated his people, word comes of incredible solidified-sound monsters attacking the region. Klaw has returned at last…

The cataclysmic clash that follows set the scene for the African Warrior-Chieftain to guest star with a number of Marvel superstars before breaking out into the wider world, but it would years before he finally won his own solo series…

After wandering around the Marvel Universe, enjoying team-ups and saving the world on a semi-regular basis as one the “Earth’s Mightiest Superheroes”, the summer of 1973 saw the Black Panther finally become a solo star in his own series.

Scripter Don McGregor opted to return the King to his people for an ambitious epic of love, death, vengeance and civil war: inventing from whole cloth and Kirby’s throwaway notion of a futuristic jungle the most unique African nation ever seen…

Jungle Action launched with an October 1972 cover-date, a cheap reprint vehicle for old Atlas-era Tarzan and Sheena knock-offs like Tharn, Jann and Lorna (…of the Jungle). The fifth issue (not included here) abruptly changed tack, reprinting the Black Panther-starring saga from Avengers #62 as prelude to the start of T’Challa’s own all new adventures, which open here with # 6 and the eponymous ‘Panther’s Rage’ illustrated by Rich Buckler & Klaus Janson.

The story opens with the Panther back in his contradictory African homeland, stumbling upon the torture of an elderly farmer. Despite T’Challa’s best efforts the victim dies in his arms, swearing he never lost faith in king or country…

Learning the attack is the work of brutal rebel leader Erik Killmonger, T’Challa sets all the resources of his inner court circle to finding the monster. With reports of further atrocities mounting, he leaves his American lover Monica Lynne to hunt the perpetrators and soon confronts his potential usurper at the potently symbolic Warrior Falls roaring above the life-sustaining River of Grace and Wisdom.

The barbarous-seeming giant is not cowed by the Panther’s power or prowess and easily wins the no-holds barred battle that follows…

The initial episode is supplemented by detailed maps of Wakanda (the first fans had ever seen) before JA #7 mobilises ‘Death Regiments Beneath Wakanda’. Barely surviving his fight with Killmonger, T’Challa is nursed back to health by Monica at the Palace even as hideously disfigured American Horatio displays his skill with snakes and poisons to his friend N’Jadaka.

Known to their recruits as Venomm and Erik Killmonger, these rebel leaders plot their next attack which results in the reptilian insurgent ambushing T’Challa when the king investigates an illegal mine. This shocking atrocity is being used to siphon off raw Vibranium to pay for Killmonger’s increasingly violent and widespread attacks on the outlying population centres…

Although triumphant this time, T’Challa realises this is a many-layered war: one he might not win…

Whilst the Black Panther renews his powers through ancient ritual, Jungle Action #8 introduces another super-powered rebel with ‘Malice by Crimson Moonlight’ revealing a spear-wielding wonder woman invading the Royal Palace.

Advisor Taku is interrogating Venomm – and gradually making inroads into turning the bitter outcast – when Malice attacks. Only the power of the Panther saves the servitor and prevents the brutal jailbreak from succeeding…

After more maps of the hidden country and detailed plans of ‘Central Wakanda’s Palace Royale’ the saga resumes in #9 with ‘But Now the Spears Are Broken’ (illustrated by Gil Kane & Janson) as T’Challa goes in-country to learn the effects of the power struggle on ordinary Wakandans.

After saving little boy Kantu from a rhino, the king is made painfully aware that the common people view his foreign woman Monica with as much suspicion as the constantly-raiding insurgents. That feeling even penetrates to the heart of the palace. When advisor Zatama is murdered, Monica is arrested for the crime…

T’Challa is not there to protest or defend her; he has returned to Kantu’s village to investigate strange disappearances, discovering a seeming mass-rising of zombies led by a skeletal maniac called Baron Macabre. Once more the Great Cat is forced to ignominiously retreat…

Supreme stylist Billy Graham takes over the pencilling with #10 as the Black Panther returns to the zombie nest, exposing a cunning charade beneath the deserted village as well as a super-scientific base run by a malignant, mind-warping mutant in ‘King Cadaver is Dead and Living in Wakanda!’

Accompanying the dark drama here are examples of ‘Black Panther Artistry’ – specifically, Kirby’s first designs for the hero back when he was going by the provisional title of ‘The Coal Tiger’ and Buckler and Janson’s first depiction of ‘Erik Killmonger’…

Due to an extremely unfavourable publishing schedule, Panther’s Rage unfolded with agonising slowness, but the lengthy wait between episodes allowed McGregor the latitude to pick and choose key events, with readers accepting that some stuff was actually occurring between issues.

In #11 (September 1974), the civil war had proceeded unchecked and ‘Once You Slay the Dragon!’ sees the Panther and his forces launching a long-awaited counterattack on Killmonger’s base in N’Jadaka Village. The battle is vicious and brief, introducing yet another powered lieutenant in the shape of pitiless high-tech armourer Lord Karnaj…

And on the home front, T’Challa finally clears Monica and captures Zatama’s killer…

With Killmonger temporarily pushed back, the Panther goes on the offensive, using the rebel’s most inconsequential converts – Tayete and Kazibe – as guides to follow his ultimate enemy to his most secret strongholds. Heading into the mountains and the fabled Land of Chilling Mists, the Panther discovers mutagenic temple the Resurrection Altar.

Used by Killmonger to create his grotesque super-warriors, it is presided over by scientifically-spawned vampire Sombre. When T’Challa confronts them, he is again overpowered by Erik and left for the wolves to devour in ‘Blood Stains on Virgin Snow!’

Craig Russell inked the next chapter as, enduring incomprehensible hardships in sub-arctic conditions, T’Challa perseveres to follow Killmonger into the temperate swamps of Serpent Valley in #13.

However, this is only after facing a pack of Wakanda’s white apes. To survive, the Panther must blasphemously ignore the sacred (to many of his subjects) religious aspect of the mighty carnivores and become ‘The God Killer’…

Following a Venomm pin-up, JA #14 then reveals that ‘There Are Serpents Lurking in Paradise’ (inked by Pablo Marcos) as T’Challa clashes once more with Sombre before encountering an affable forest sprite guarding Serpent Valley.

Pixie-like Mokadi asks difficult moral questions as T’Challa rushes towards his next battle with Killmonger, making him too late to stop the rebel capturing a legion of the valley’s awesome dinosaurs. The usurper even has time to leave one behind as a lethal parting gift for the embattled and exhausted Wakandan chieftain…

The endgame rapidly approaches in #15 as ‘Thorns in the Flesh, Thorns in the Mind’ (inked by Dan Green) finds T’Challa still tracking his nemesis only to be overcome by Killmonger’s archer assassin Salamander K’Ruel. Beaten and left to be dismembered by a ravenous Pterosaur, T’Challa incredibly overcomes every challenge before – against all odds – staggering back to Monica for another bout of recuperation…

Graham inked his own pencils for the beginning of the end in #16 as T’Challa and Monica’s time of idyllic passion culminates in catastrophe when ‘And All Our Past Decades Have Seen Revolutions!’ reveals the origins of Killmonger and sees the vast cast all converge for one final battle…

That comes in #17 as an army of war-trained dinosaurs invades Central Wakanda only to be finally crushed by the Panther’s forces and superior technology. The affair concludes as it began at Warrior Falls, but ‘Of Shadows and Rages’ also holds a shocking twist as the great game of kings is ultimately decided by a player no one considered of any relevance…

With its nuanced emotional interplay, extended scope and fiercely independent supporting cast, Panther’s Rage was a milestone in dramatic comics storytelling but it harboured one last punch in a gripping 18 ‘Epilogue!’ (Jungle Action #18, November 1975).

Bob McLeod inked McGregor & Graham’s forceful look at the repercussions of conflict as T’Challa and maimed security chief Wakabi are targeted by feral woman Madame Slay: Killmonger’s ardent and unsuspected lover who believes her loss can only be assuaged by having her pack of loyal leopards eviscerate the victorious Wakandans…

Cover-dated January 1976, Jungle Action #19 premiered McGregor’s most audacious and ultimately frustrating project, with T’Challa accompanying Monica back to America. The Panther versus the Klan shifted focus from war stories to crime fiction, replacing fabulously exotic Africa for America’s poverty-wracked, troubled, still segregated-in-all-but-name Deep South for a head-on collision with centuries of entrenched and endemic racism.

Illustrated by Graham & McLeod, ‘Blood and Sacrifices!’ sees Monica back with her family after her sister is murdered. All too soon T’Challa is ferociously battling a gang of purple-hooded killers who appear to have set up in opposition to the ancient white-hooded Ku Klux Klan.

Moreover, both sects seem determined to conceal the truth of Angela Lynne‘s death…

A break comes when bumbling, well-meaning reporter Kevin Trublood stumbles into an attack on the newcomers by the strangely multi-racial Klan sect calling itself the Dragon Circle…

With neither townsfolk nor lawmen offering any welcome, T’Challa faces unbridled hostility and suspicion at every turn. He is even attacked by cops and a mob of citizens when he thwarts a knife attack on Monica. Although Sheriff Roderick Tate makes all the right noises and seems helpful, in ‘They Told Me a Myth I Wanted to Believe’, the Panther opts to pursue his own investigation before being overwhelmed by an army of white-robed Klansmen who tie him to a burning cross and leave him to die…

As Monica and Kevin puzzle out the convoluted web of mysteries, the Panther exerts all his uncanny talents to escape becoming ‘A Cross Burning Darkly Blackening the Night!’ Later, as he slowly recovers in hospital, Monica’s family, Kevin and Tate review the few verifiable facts of Angela’s demise before patriarch Lloyd Lynne urges T’Challa to stop looking. He only has one daughter left after all…

Nevertheless, when the Panther and Trublood invade and disrupt a Klan rally, Lloyd is right there with them…

With Rick Buckler joining Graham on pencils and Jim Mooney alternating with McCleod on inks, Jungle Action #22 takes a bizarre turn as ‘Death Riders on the Horizon’ explores a Lynne family legend dating back to the formative days of the Klan in 1867 when old Caleb was targeted by the vile southern knights and their seemingly supernatural sponsor the Soul Strangler. As Monica listens to the ghastly, appallingly unjust tale, her mind fills in how T’Challa would have acted in such a hopeless situation…

Issue #23 (September 1976) was a deadline missed and a rapidly-sourced reprint from Daredevil #69 – represented here only by the pertinent cover and a Buckler pin-up – before this tantalising tale is unhappily cut short in final published instalment ‘Wind Eagle in Flight’ (by McGregor, Buckler & Keith Pollard).

The multi-layered, many-stranded plot suddenly expands as the Black Panther is almost killed by a mysterious new player who flies into the ever more bewildering clash between cops, Klan, Dragon Circle and Lynne family but, before the mystery could move any further, Jungle Action was cancelled…

A wholly different kind of Black Panther and utterly unrelated adventures would reappear two months later, under the auspices of returning creative colossus Jack Kirby. It would be years before the enigma of Angela’s death and the hero’s war against the Klan would be resolved…

So that’s what to look forward to in the next volume…

Here, however, bonus extras include Kirby & Sinnott’s unused original art cover for FF#52, John Romita’s cover for Jungle Action #5; McGregor’s correspondence with then-fan Ralph Macchio and the author’s original working notes, plot synopses and candid contemporary photos of the close-knit creative team.

Also on show: original cover art, pages and sketches by Buckler & Janson and Kane; pencils and layouts by Graham & Buckler plus a Steve Gerber ‘Jungle Re-Actions’ text feature from Jungle Action #7. Capping off the freebie joys are the un-inked Buckler story pages that would have been #25.

A truly groundbreaking classic of comics narrative, Don McGregor’s Black Panther is stark, vibrant proof that the superhero genre works best when ambitious and passionate creators are given their head and let loose to get on with it. Now, supported by a major movie, perhaps readers will finally see how the Fights ‘n’ Tights game should be played…

© 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2016 Marvel Characters Inc. All rights reserved.

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Black Panther: The Deadliest of the Species


By Reginald Hudlin, Ken Lashley, Paul Neary & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3342-1

Regarded as the first black hero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther’s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since July 1966 when he attacked the Fantastic Four as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father.

T’Challa, son of T’Chaka, is an African monarch whose secluded kingdom is the only source of a miraculous alien metal upon which the country’s immense wealth is founded. Those mineral riches – derived from a fallen meteor which struck the continent in lost antiquity – enabled him to turn his country into a technological wonderland.

Moreover, the tribal resources and the people have been eternally safeguarded by a cat-like human champion deriving incredible physical advantages from secret ceremonies and a mysterious heart-shaped herb simultaneously ensuring the generational dominance of the nation’s Panther Cult.

In recent years that continuity mythology was retooled to reveal that the “Vibranium” mound had actually made the country a secret Superpower for centuries but now only increasingly turns Wakanda into a target for subversion and incursion.

This slim, unassuming but extremely engaging Costumed Drama outing – available in trade paperback and eBook editions – collects the first six issues of Black Panther volume 5 (April to September 2009) and was originally part of Marvel’s company-wide “Dark Reign” publishing event.

‘The Deadliest of the Species’ begins as T’Challa’s new bride (and queen) Ororo nervously embarks on a goodwill tour. As a mutant – and far worse, an American – who has married the king, she is keenly aware of her tenuous position and potential for disrupting the ancient social order.

All thoughts of winning over the people are soon forgotten when her husband’s jet – which left only hours ago on a diplomatic mission – screams in and catastrophically crashes in the heart of the city despite all the weather goddess’ efforts to slow it down…

Unknown to all, five hours previously the Black Panther had secretly met with regal rival Namor the Sub-Mariner to hear an invitational offer from a Cabal of world-conquerors led by former Green Goblin-turned government operative Norman Osborn. Now the adored sovereign is near death.

His formidable Dora Milaje bodyguards are gone and, after being dragged from the wreckage burned and broken, T’Challa agonisingly reveals it was an ambush before lapsing into a coma…

As Queen Mother Ramonda and sister Shuri rush to the hospital, the ruling council are frantic; terrified that the assassination attempt is prelude to invasion. Wakanda has always been ready for such assaults, but that was with a healthy Black Panther. Right now, they are spiritually all but defenceless…

Even though the king is not quite dead, the Ministers advocate activating the protocols to create a new Panther warrior… but the question is who will succeed?

Hours ago, after Namor departed, a far less friendly potentate accosted T’Challa as he left the conference. Dr. Doom is also a member of the Cabal and took the Panther’s refusal to join the club very, very badly…

Back in the now, desperate meetings and Ororo’s refusal to undertake the mystic rituals result in Princess Shuri being reluctantly assigned – over the strenuous protests of her own mother – the role of Black Panther Apparent. As T’Challa’s older sister it’s a role she was destined for, but one her brother seized decades ago.

At that time, she was away being schooled in the West when an invasion by American adventurer Ulysses Klaw claimed her father’s life. With cruel circumstance demanding nothing less, the boy took the initiative, the role and the responsibility of defending his nation…

Thus, after years as an irrelevant spare, the flighty jet-setter is being asked to take up a destiny she now neither wants nor feels capable of fulfilling. She is especially afraid of the part of the ceremony where she faces the Panther God and is judged…

T’Challa cannot reveal how the battle with Doom ended in brutal defeat and certain death, or how his valiant Dora Milaje gave their lives to get his maimed body back in the jet and home via auto-pilot. He is unable to even stay alive and, as the world’s most up-to-date doctors slowly abandon hope, Ramonda convinces Queen Ororo to try something terrible and very ancient instead…

Despite a pervasive cloak of secrecy bad new travels fast. Across the continent adherents of the Panther Cult’s theological antithesis revel in Wakanda’s misfortune. Smug, gleeful worshippers of rival cults prepare arcane rituals to finally destroy their enemies and – in a place far removed from the world – T’Challa awakes to meet his dead bodyguards once more…

In an isolated hut Queen and Queen Mother are bickering with sinister shaman Zawavari. The wizard claims to be able to bring T’Challa back but gleefully warns that the price will be high…

Thanks to her years of constant training, Shuri is having no problem with the physical rigours of the Panther Protocols and foolishly grows in confidence. Far away, Wakanda’s enemies succeed in summoning terrible Morlun, Devourer of Totems, but are wholly unprepared for the voracious horror to consume them before turning his attention to more distant theological fodder…

And in Limbo, a succession of dead friends and family subtly and seductively attempt to convince T’Challa that his time is past and that he must lay down his regal burdens…

As Morlun ponderously makes his way to Wakanda, stopping only to destroy other petty pantheons such as the master of the Man-Ape sect, Death continues her campaign to convince T’Challa to surrender to the inevitable whilst Shuri faces her final test…

It does not end well. The puissant Panther God looks right through her and declares her pitifully unworthy to wear his mantle or defend the Wakandan worshippers. Despondent Shuri is ignominiously despatched back to the physical world just as her new sister-in-law arrives in Limbo, sent by Zawavari to retrieve her husband from Death’s clutches.

Ororo doesn’t want to tell her husband that this is their last meeting. The price of his safe passage back is her becoming his replacement…

In the world of the living, Morlun has reached Wakanda’s borders, drawn inexorably to T’Challa’s (currently vacant) physical form. The beast is utterly invulnerable to everything in the nation’s super-scientific arsenal and leaves a mountain of corpses behind him.

With Armageddon manifesting all about them, the Royal Family and Ruling Council are out of options until sly Zawavari points out an odd inconsistency: the price for failing to become Wakanda’s living totem has always been instant death, but Shuri, although rejected, still breathes…

Realising both she and her country have one last chance, the newest Black Panther goes out to battle the totem-eater whilst in the Country of the Dead T’Challa and Ororo resolve to ignore the devil’s bargain and fight their way back to life.

And as the two hopeless battles proceed, Ramonda and Zawavari engage in a last-ditch ploy which will win both wars by bring all the combatants together…

Fast-paced, compelling and gloriously readable, this splendid blend of horror story, action epic, political thriller and coming-of-age tale also offers an impressive cover-&-variants gallery by J. Scott Campbell, Edgar Delgado, Michael Djurdjevic, Ken Lashley and Mitch Breitweiser.

If you don’t despise reboots and re-treads on unswerving principle and are instead prepared to give something new(ish) a go, there’s lots to enjoy in this fantastic Fights ‘n’ Tights farrago, so why not set your sights and hunt this down?
© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Daredevil Epic Collection: volume 3 – 1968-1970: Brother, Take My Hand


By Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, Barry Windsor-Smith & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-0425-8

Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer whose remaining senses hyper-compensate, making him an astonishing acrobat, formidable fighter and living lie-detector. Very much a second-string hero for most of his early years, Daredevil was nonetheless a striking and popular one, due in large part to the roster of brilliant artists who had illustrated the strip. He only really came into his own, however, after artist Gene Colan signed up for the long haul and wunderkind scripter Roy Thomas added an edge of darkness to the swashbuckling derring-do…

The natal DD battled thugs, gangsters, mad scientists, robots and a plethora of super-villains, quipping and wise-cracking his way through life and life-threatening combat.

Covering July 1968 to April 1970 this third tumultuous collection (in both trade paperback and eBook formats) sees a radical shift in treatment and content after in Stan Lee surrendered the scripter’s role to Thomas and an aura of barely contained escalating madness begins permeating the now staid soap opera narrative beats, peerlessly pictured by the masterful Colan, and a promising British fill-in artist named Barry Smith….

Having killed off his fictitious twin brother Mike Murdock, Matt briefly considered hanging up his scarlet long-johns but eventually retained his secret other-life by revealing to his closest friends that Mike was only one of a number of Men without Fear in the first part of a prolonged battle with a new nemesis as ‘Nobody Laughs at The Jester!’ (by Lee, Colan and inker Dan Adkins).

The Malevolent Mountebank only wanted to be more successful as a criminal than he had been as a bit-playing actor, but his motivation changed when crooked mayoral candidate Richard Raleigh hired him to spoil incorruptible Foggy Nelson‘s campaign for the D.A. post.

The role grew, precipitating a protracted saga which kicked off with a temporarily befuddled DD ‘In Combat with Captain America!’ (inked by Vince Colletta) before Hornhead is framed for killing the Jester’s alter ego Jonathan Powers in #44’s ‘I, Murderer!’

Soundly defeated in combat by the Jester, our hero experiences ‘The Dismal Dregs of Defeat!’ and becomes a wanted fugitive. Following a frenetic police manhunt, he is finally arrested before snatching victory in thoroughly enthralling conclusion ‘The Final Jest!’ as inker extraordinary George Klein began a long and impressive association with the series.

With the Vietnam War raging, a story involving the conflict was inevitable but #47’s ‘Brother, Take My Hand!’ was so much more than a quick cash-in or even well-meaning examination of contemporary controversy as Marvel found another strong and admirable African American character (one of far too few in those blinkered times) to add to their growing stable.

Newly-blinded veteran Willie Lincoln turns to Matt Murdock and Daredevil for help on his return home. A disgraced cop framed by gang-boss Biggie Benson before joining the army, Lincoln is now back in America and determined to clear his name at all costs.

This gripping, life-affirming crime thriller not only triumphs in Daredevil’s natural milieu of moody urban menace but also sets up a long-running plot that would ultimately change the Man without Fear forever.

The return of Stilt-Man posed little more than a distraction in ‘Farewell to Foggy’ as Matt’s oldest friend wins the race for District Attorney but acrimoniously turns his back on Murdock, seemingly forever….

Stan Lee’s final script on the sightless crusader, ‘Daredevil Drops Out’ (#49), was illustrated by Colan & Klein, depicting Murdock as the target of a robotic assassin built by Mad-Scientist-for-Hire Starr Saxon. This tense, action-packed thriller grew into something very special with second chapter ‘If in Battle I Fall…!’ as neophyte penciller Barry Smith stepped in, ably augmented by veteran inker Johnny Craig.

Lee then left comics-scripting Boy Wonder Roy Thomas to finish up for him in ‘Run, Murdock, Run!’ (Daredevil #51, April 1969 with art by Smith & Klein): a wickedly engaging, frantically escalating psychedelic thriller which sees Saxon uncover the hero’s greatest secret after the Man Without Fear succumbs to toxins in his bloodstream and goes berserk.

The saga climaxes in stunning style on ‘The Night of the Panther!’ (Smith & Craig) as African Avenger Black Panther joins the hunt for an out-of-control Daredevil before subsequently helping contain, if not defeat, the dastardly Saxon.

The radically unsettling ending blew away all the conventions of traditional Fights ‘n’ Tights melodrama and still shocks me today…

Colan & Klein returned for #53’s ‘As it Was in the Beginning…’ wherein Thomas reprised, revised and expanded Lee & Bill Everett’s origin script from Daredevil #1, allowing the troubled hero to reach a bold decision, executed in #54 as ‘Call him Fear!’ featured the “death” of Matt Murdock and the triumphant return of long-vanished villain Mr. Fear.

‘Cry Coward!’ (beginning a superb inking run by legendary illustrator Syd Shores) reveals DD’s desperate reason for faking his demise (again!) and enacts the end of one of the Scarlet Swashbuckler’s greatest enemies.

‘…And Death Came Riding!’ then opens a tense 2-parter which forever changes Murdock’s relationship with the perennially loved-from-afar Karen Page whilst introducing a stunningly sinister new menace in Death’s-Head. By the end of ‘In the Midst of Life…!’ Matt and Karen are enjoying the most progressive and mature relationship in mainstream comics…

‘Spin-Out on Fifth Avenue!’ starts re-establishing some civilian stability as resurrected (again!) Matt Murdock becomes a special prosecutor for New York District Attorney Foggy Nelson and promptly goes after a mysterious new gang-boss dubbed Crime-Wave. As the fresh plot-threads take hold, new threats emerge, such as amped-up biker and reluctant assassin-for-hire Stunt-Master and #59’s far nastier hired gun who boasts ‘The Torpedo Will Get You if you Don’t Watch Out!’

‘Showdown at Sea!’ closes the career of the insidious and treacherous Crime-Wave, simultaneously signalling a return to single-issue action-based stories, starting with ‘Trapped… by the Trio of Doom!’ and spotlighting featuring a spectacular struggle against Cobra, Mr. Hyde and The Jester.

DD #62 features the nefarious Batman analogue from the Squadron Sinister who attempts to destroy the hero’s reputation in ‘Quoth the Nighthawk “Nevermore”!’ after which Horn-Head stunningly stops deadly psychopath Melvin Potter from busting out of jail in ‘The Girl… or the Gladiator’… but only at the cost of his constantly conflicted love-life…

To Be Continued…

Adding extra value to the proceeding are unused Colan cover pencils for #43, cover art for #44 and a delicious selection of original art pages concluding and complimenting a bonanza of bombastic battles tales that are pure Fights ‘n’ Tights magic in the grand Marvel Manner that no fan of stunning super-heroics can afford to ignore.
© 1968, 1969, 1970, 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Black Panther Adventures


By Jeff Parker, Marc Sumerak, Christopher Yost, Elliot Kalan, Roy Thomas, Manuel Garcia, Ig Guara, Scott Wegener, Christopher Jones, Chris Giarusso, John Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-1034-1

Since its earliest days Marvel has always courted and accommodated young comicbook consumers through various titles and imprints. In 2003 the company instituted the Marvel Age line to update and reframe classic original tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others for a fresh-faced 21st century readership.

The experiment was tweaked in 2005, becoming Marvel Adventures. The tone of all the tales was very much that of the company’s burgeoning TV cartoon franchises, in execution if not name. Titles bearing the Marvel Adventures brand included Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and The Avengers and ran until 2010 when they were uniformly cancelled and replaced by new volumes of Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes and Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man.

Most of those yarns have since been collected in digest-sized compilations such as this timely paperback (or eBook), which gathers a quartet of all-ages Black Panther tales and includes a brace of early1960s episodes from his first stint in the Avengers.

Acclaimed as the first black superhero in American comics and one of the first to carry his own series, the Black Panther’s popularity and fortunes have waxed and waned since he first debuted as a character in Fantastic Four.

In his 1966 debut, the cat king attacked Marvel’s First Family as part of an extended plan to gain vengeance on the murderer of his father, before eventually teaming up with them to defeat the malign master of sound Klaw.

This eclectic compilation – comprising Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #10, Marvel Adventures The Avengers #22, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1, Marvel Universe Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #8 (November 2012), plus Silver Age epics from Avengers #52 and 62 – begins by broadly reimagining that initial encounter in ‘Law of the Jungle’ by Jeff Parker, Manuel Garcia & Scott Koblish from Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #10 (May 2006) wherein the FF are suckered into buying smuggled Vibranium.

The miracle mineral is Wakanda’s only export and the illegal sale quickly brings the duped heroes into savage conflict with a mysterious cat-garbed super-warrior. Tracking the Black Panther back to his super-scientific jungle kingdom, the FF eventually convince the king of their innocence and good intentions before teaming up to tackle the true villains…

Two years later Marvel Adventures The Avengers #22 (May 2008) revealed the ‘Wakanda Wild Side’ (by Marc Sumerak, Ig Guara &Jay Leisten) as a sighting of murderous mutant Sabretooth in Africa draws Wolverine, Storm, Captain America, Spider-Man, Giant-Girl and the Hulk into an uncharted kingdom. They shouldn’t have bothered: Wakanda’s Panther chieftain was more than equal to the task of taking down the savage invader…

Following a page of comedic Marvel Mini Classics by Chris Giarusso, a short vignette from Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #1 (November 2010) as Christopher Yost & Scott Wegener reveal how rival heroes T’Challa and Hawkeye work out their ‘Trust’ issues whilst battling crazed villain Whiplash.

Never the success the company hoped, the Marvel Adventures project was superseded in 2012 by specific comics tied to those Disney XD television shows designated as “Marvel Universe cartoons”, but these collected stories are still an intriguing, amazingly entertaining and superbly accessible means of introducing characters and concepts to kids born sometimes three generations or more away from the originating events.

Another short yarn – this time from Marvel Universe Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #8 (November 2012) – unites the Panther with fellow Avenger the Hulk.

Crafted by Elliott Kalan, Christopher Jones & Pond Scum, ‘Mayhem of the Madbomb!’ sees the Green Goliath and Cat King bombastically battle Hydra to prevent the triggering of an insanity-inducing WMD cached in the Empire State Building…

Wrapping up the action is a brace of classic adventures from Roy Thomas & John Buscema.

On Captain America’s recommendation Black Panther joined the Avengers in #52’s ‘Death Calls for the Arch-Heroes’ (May 1968 and inked by Vince Colletta): a fast-paced murder mystery which also saw the advent of obsessive super-psycho the Grim Reaper who attempted to frame the freshly-arrived in America T’Challa for the murder of Goliath, the Wasp and Hawkeye.

Then ‘The Monarch and the Man-Ape!’ (Avengers #62, March 1969, by Thomas, Buscema & George Klein) offered Marvel fans the first real view of hidden Wakanda – and a brutal exploration of T’Challa’s history and rivals – as his trusted regent tried to usurp his kingdom and the state religion after declaring himself to be M’Baku the Man-Ape…

Augmented with a complete cover gallery by Carlo Pagulayan & Chris Sotomayor, Leonard Kirk & Val Staples, Scott Wegener & Jean-François Beaulieu, Khoi Pham & Edgar Delgado and John Buscema, this fast-paced, ferociously enthralling compilation of riotous mini-epics is extremely enjoyable and engaging, although parents should note that some of the themes and certainly the level of violence might not be what everybody considers “All-Ages Super Hero Action”…
© 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Avengers Epic Collection Volume 4: Behold… The Vision


By Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Barry Windsor-Smith, Sal Buscema, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, Howard Purcell & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9165-0

One of the most momentous events in comics history came in the middle of 1963 when a disparate gang of heroic individual banded together to combat an apparently out of control Incredible Hulk.

The Avengers combined most of the company’s fledgling superhero line in one bright, shiny and highly commercial package. Over the intervening decades the roster has unceasingly changed, and now almost every character in the Marvel multiverse has at some time numbered amongst their colourful ranks…

The Avengers always proved that putting all one’s star eggs in on single basket can pay off big-time. Even when all Marvel Royalty such as Thor, Captain America and Iron Man are absent, it merely allows the team’s lesser lights to shine more brightly.

Of course, the founding stars always regularly feature due to a rotating, open door policy ensuring most issues include somebody’s fave-rave. After instigators Stan Lee & Jack Kirby moved on, the team prospered under the guidance of Roy Thomas who grew into one of the industry’s most impressive writers, guiding the World’s Mightiest Heroes through a range of adventures ranging from sublimely poetic to staggeringly epic…

This fourth trade paperback compilation – also available in eBook iterations – collects Avengers #57-79, plus a solo saga starring a soon to be recruited addition from Marvel Super-Heroes #17 collectively covering October 1968 to August 1970.

This all-action extravaganza opens with the introduction of a new character with John Buscema and George Klein illustrating the 2-part introduction of possibly the most intriguing of all the team’s roster.

‘Behold… the Vision!’ and the concluding ‘Even an Android Can Cry’ retrofitted an old Joe Simon & Jack Kirby hero from the Golden Age (an extra-dimensional mystery-man) into a high-tech, eerie, amnesiac artificial man with complete control of his mass and density: playing him as the ultimate outsider, lost and utterly alone in a world that could never, never understand him.

After attacking the team but inexplicably stopping short of killing the human heroes, the then-nameless “Vision” led the Avengers into astounding adventure as the enigma of his creation unfolded.

It was revealed that he/it had been built by the relentless, remorseless robotic Ultron-5 to destroy the Avengers and especially his own creator Henry Pym. Furthermore, the mechanical mastermind had used the brain pattern of deceased hero and fallen Avenger Wonder Man as a cerebral template. Perhaps that was a mistake since the synthetic man apparently overruled his programming to help defeat his maniac maker…

Avengers #59 and 60, ‘The Name is Yellowjacket’ and ‘…Till Death do us Part!’ (the latter inked by Mike Esposito moonlighting as Mickey DeMeo) saw Goliath and the Wasp finally wed after the heroic Dr. Pym is seemingly replaced by a new insect-themed hero, with a horde of heroic guest-stars and the murderous Circus of Evil in attendance, followed here in swift succession by another of Marvel’s increasingly popular and commonplace crossovers.

‘Some Say the World Will End in Fire… Some Say in Ice!’ concluded a storyline from Doctor Strange #178 wherein a satanic cult unleashed Norse demons Surtur and Ymir to destroy the planet, with occasional ally the Black Knight adding his recently acquired mystic prowess to the defence of the realm.

He hung around for ‘The Monarch and the Man-Ape!’ in Avengers #63; a brief and interlude in hidden nation Wakanda and a brutal exploration of African Avenger Black Panther‘s history and rivals – most notably a usurping super-strong trusted regent declaring himself M’Baku the Man-Ape…

The next issue began a 3-part tale illustrated by Gene Colan & Klein whose lavish humanism was intriguingly at odds with the team’s usual art style. ‘And in this Corner… Goliath!’, ‘Like a Death Ray from the Sky!’ and ‘Mightier than the Sword?’ (the final chapter inked by Sam Grainger) was part of a broader tale; another early crossover experiment intersecting with both Sub-Mariner and Captain Marvel issues #14, wherein a coterie of cerebral second-string villains combined to conquer the world by stealth…

Within the Avengers portion of proceedings, Hawkeye revealed his civilian identity to be circus performer Clint Barton and recounted his origins before forsaking his bow and trick-arrows to become a size-changing hero and subsequently adopting the now-vacant name Goliath. Along the way the team scotched a terror satellite scheme cooked up by Egghead and enforced by the sinister Swordsman…

Another triple-chapter story-arc followed; giving new kid Barry (Winsor) Smith a chance to show just how good he was going to become.

Inked by the legendary Syd Shores, ‘Betrayal!’ (#66) reveals how the development of new super metal Adamantium triggers a long-dormant back-up program in the Vision who is slavishly compelled to reconstruct his destroyed creator…

As ‘We Stand at… Armageddon!’ (Smith & Klein opens), adamantium-reinforced Ultron-6 is moments away from world domination and the nuking of New York when a now truly independent Vision violently intercedes before dramatic conclusion ‘…And We Battle for the Earth’ (illustrated by young Sal Buscema & Sam Grainger) sees the team – augmented by Thor and Iron Man – prove that the only answer to an unstoppable force is an unparalleled mind…

In Avengers #69 ‘Let the Game Begin’ (Thomas, Sal Buscema & Grainger) finds the team – Captain America, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Goliath, Vision and Thor – called to the hospital bedside of ailing Tony Stark just in time to prevent his abduction by the grotesque and gargantuan Growing Man. After battling boldly against the unbeatable homunculus, the team are summarily and collectively snatched into the future by old enemy Kang the Conqueror who co-opts the team to act as pieces in a cosmic chess-game with an omnipotent alien called the Grandmaster.

If the Avengers fail – Earth would be eradicated from the cosmos…

Issues #70 and 71 began a fertile period for writer Thomas as he introduced two new teams who would, in the fullness of time, star in their own stellar series: Squadron Supreme and The Invaders.

‘When Strikes the Squadron Sinister!’ sees the Avengers returned to their own time to battle a team of deadly villains (mischievously based on DC’s Justice League of America) before ‘Endgame!’ – guest-starring the Black Knight – finds the Vision, Black Panther and Yellowjacket dispatched to 1941 to clash with the WWII incarnations of the Sub-Mariner, Human Torch and Captain America…

After foiling Kang’s ambitions and surviving his betrayal the team victoriously return to the present where Avengers # 72 offered a guest-appearance from Captain Marvel and Rick Jones.

‘Did You Hear the One About Scorpio?’ also debuts malignantly menacing super-mob Zodiac, after which ‘The Sting of the Serpent’ (illustrated by Frank Giacoia & Grainger) pits the Panther against seditious hate-mongers determined to set New York ablaze, leading to a spectacular and shocking clash between Avengers and the Sons of the Serpent in ‘Pursue the Panther!’; the first in a string of glorious issues illustrated by the artistic dream team of John Buscema & Tom Palmer.

Long-missing mutant Avengers Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch resurfaced in #75, desperate to warn of and stave off extra-dimensional invasion and nuclear Armageddon by Conan prototype Arkon the Magnificent in ‘The Warlord and the Witch!’ before the staggering threat is finally extinguished in ‘The Blaze of Battle… the Flames of Love!’

As the tone of the times shifted and other titles entered a period of human-scaled storytelling dubbed “Relevancy”, a far more mundane and insidious menace manifested as billionaire financier Cornelius Van Lunt manoeuvres to bankrupt Avengers sponsor Tony Stark, compelling the team to become the mystery magnate’s ‘Heroes for Hire!’

With the end of the book fast approaching here, Sal Buscema popped in to pencil ‘The Man-Ape Always Strikes Twice!’ as the team are targeted by a coterie of vengeful villains competing to join a new league of evil, spectacularly culminating in a grand clash with the aforementioned anthropoid, Swordsman, Power Man, Living Laser and the Grim Reaper in ‘Lo! The Lethal Legion!’, which concluding chapter also heralded the artistic return of Big Brother John….

Chronologically adrift but adding plenty of bonus thrills, the comics adventures end for now with ‘The Black Knight Reborn!’ by Thomas, Howard Purcell & Dan Adkins from try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes #17 (November 1968). Here American part-time superhero Dane Whitman inherits an English castle and discovers through ghostly intervention that he is the last descendent of King Arthur’s trusty comrade Percy of Scandia – history’s first Black Knight and Merlin’s last resort against all forces of evil.

Gifted with a mystic ebony blade that can cut through anything, Dane readies himself to fight the good fight in modern times. He soon becomes painfully aware that the malign ghostly spirit of vile Modred is also abroad and empowering dupes such as French derelict Le Sabre with magical weapons to end his crusade before it can even begin…

Unceasingly enticing and always evergreen, these timeless sagas defined and cemented the Marvel experience and are a joy no fans of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction should deny themselves or their kids.
© 1968, 1969, 1970, 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.