BLACK PANTHER: THE BACKSTORY
Black Panther has been let loose in theatres to record-shattering critical acclaim, but the rare black superhero’s road to the top of the Marvel Universe was far from smooth.
Black Panther first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four in July 1966, during the very peak of the Civil Rights Movement and three months before the political activist group of the same name was founded.
In that issue, T’Challa— the hero’s real name—took on the Fantastic Four all by himself, making it clear that Marvel planned Black Panther to be a powerful figure to be treated with the utmost respect.
But the all-White New York creative team often seemed oblivious to the subtext they introduced to Black Panther. Legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby first unwittingly proposed calling the character “Coal Tiger”—a borderline racial slur. In the final concept, the creators insisted on setting Black Panther’s first solo series within the pages of the Jungle Action comic book series, though they did conceive the nation where Black Panther is king, Wakanda, as the most advanced civilisation on Earth, thanks to its valuable reserves of the precious metal, Vibranium.
In recent years, the comic book series has been written by renowned African-American writer and commentator TaNehisi Coates. But one can only imagine how James
Baldwin or Langston Hughes (who died a year after T’Challa was introduced) might have imagined Wakanda had they been tasked with creating the marquee hero.
It’s doubtful they’d have agreed to throw the Black-ruled world technology leaders “into the jungle”. Certainly, they would never have dreamed up M’Baku— Black Panther’s supervillain nemesis.
It’s still stunning that the actual image of a Black man in a white gorilla suit didn’t give Marvel’s editors pause. Racists have been calling Black people “monkeys” for about a thousand years in an attempt to promote White superiority. It’s a backhand way of saying that Blacks are not only inferior, they aren’t even human. Not surprisingly, none of Black Panther solo series sold very well.
Strangely, though, the silver lining in all this is that the character and his weird jungle world survived. T’Challa is still easily the most widely respected Black character on any comic book roster of any company that’s still printing comics. And with early reviewers calling Black Panther the greatest superhero movie ever made, he’s poised to become an even greater icon.
Long live the king.