Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther run has had a fascinating evolution since beginning in 2016, with a shaky first year that saw Coates still acclimating to comic-book storytelling. Eventually he got the hang of writing a superhero book and the series significantly improved, taking a massive leap for the second volume sending T’Challa deep into space to face off against the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda. The book maintains a strong throughline of socio-political commentary while delivering exhilarating sci-fi action, and the narrative has only gotten deeper since T’Challa’s return to Earth. The villainous N’Jadaka has followed T’Challa back and resurrected the body of Erik Killmonger with the help of a Venom-esque alien symbiote, and now the forces of Wakanda are trying to stop their cosmic brethren from invading Earth and making it a part of their empire.
This exclusive preview of next week’s Black Panther opens with the two opposing Wakandan armies battling it out in front of the stargate to Earth, highlighting the crispness of Ryan Bodenheim and colorist Chris O’Halloran’s artwork. Bodenheim has a starker art style than main Black Panther artist Daniel Acuña, whose lush painted visuals heightened the cosmic fantasy, and it makes sense to bring Bodenheim on board as the war for Wakanda’s future reaches Earth. O’Halloran’s coloring adds texture and dimension to Bodenheim’s strong inks, using a limited color palette so that specific shades gain more storytelling significance. One small but effective coloring moment is when N’Jadaka is about to start talking to the symbiote, and O’Halloran outlines N’Jadaka with the pale yellow that glows from alien’s mouth and eyes, indicating how the symbiote has fully consumed the man’s body and mind.
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I might be the outlier here, but I found this “space-empire vs. space-rebels” run just exhausting. I can’t deny that the art, layout,, et al. is top-notch, but it’s a little too much to contain in a (relatively) contained comic. I’m sure it’ll work better when I go back and read it all at once.
yeah, I’m with you. I wanted to like it, too, for whatever that is worth. I love a lot of Coates writing, but his comics are tough. There’s something off about them thats hard to put a finger on, but they never seem to coalesce in the way the best hero comics do. I was especially disappointed in his Cap run, where I thought he could have a real chance to do something different and impressive. Instead its the same old baloney, dwindling returns on art, and unfulfilled potential.
Coates exemplifies, along with authors like Jodi Picoult, China Mieville, and Margaret Atwood, that being a good writer of prose does not automatically make you a good writer of comics. Often other types of authors carry their more wordy tendencies into their comics (pleasant exception, Greg Rucka).
For me, it’s just the pacing of his stories. He starts by centering his big, major conflicts but then drags them out for ages with an exhausting number of sub-plots and cameos from characters that feel barely connected to either the main story or the main characters. I think his Cap run been one of his stronger ones, but rather than focusing on the fight with the Power Elite, we’ve gone down a rabbit hole with the Daughters of Liberty and the Scourge of the Underworld for a few issues now. Contrast that with Hickman or Ewing who have clear ideas for a bigger story in their books but tease that out gradually in the background while putting the smaller, more quickly resolved conflicts center stage in ways that can help build the foundation for some bigger event down the road.
I think the word “exhausting” is right. This run is just dragging for me and becoming boring. Where is T’Challa’s genius level intelligence being displayed? Nowhere, that’s where. And to be honest, the art isn’t doing it for me anymore. It’s not dynamic or captivating. It’s just…there.