Episode 1604 Talkback - Spotlight on the Black Panther
Adam_Murdough
Posts: 506
Fifty years after his daring debut, T'Challa, warrior-king of Wakanda, known throughout the Marvel Universe as the Black Panther, receives the royal treatment from CGS! Prof. Chris Eberle, holder of the T'Chaka Chair in History at Wakanda Polytechnic, outdoes himself in this episode, providing exhaustive background on the Panther's friends and foes, the culture and geography of his realm, and the narrative highlights of the past half-century of his adventures. Long Live the King! (3:30:45)
Listen here.
...Or, watch the video-enhanced version here!
Listen here.
...Or, watch the video-enhanced version here!
Comments
Three-and-a-half hours is a long enough spotlight that it took up the entirety of my morning work schedule. Well worth the wait, and an episode to go down in the history of the podcast. Well done, all.
@wildpigcomics outdid himself on this one. I only have a cursory knowledge of Black Panther, and am now in desperate need of reading the Priest run on the character. It sounds like everything I love about comic books rolled into one package: respecting the past, while crafting a new and intriguing story along the way, all while not being afraid to occasionally not take yourself too seriously.
But what was worth the price of admission (free) even more than that was @Adam_Murdough's mention of the Marvel Swimsuit Special of all things. OUTSTANDING. I still wish Kris Anka and Kevin Wada had gone forward with their plans to do an all male version of the swimsuit issue, because, after all, all's fair.
And Chris' Reginald Hudlin rant was as elegant as it was biting. The only issues of his run I read were when the book crossed over with The Fantastic Four during Civil War. They were okay, but still felt forced. The guy only cares about his own ideas, and legitimately believes he is reinventing the wheel whenever his ink hits paper. In actuality, all Hudlin creates are lesser versions of pre-existing stories and concepts. It's hard to believe he held on for 38 issues of the initial series, and then 7 of the new series with Shuri in the Black Panther role.
I'll also bring up that near the end of Hudlin's run, during The Initiative, Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue for a while in The Fantastic Four, and moved the US Wakandan Embassy to The Baxter Building. Fantastic Dwayne McDuffie work that often gets overlooked, even if there was also Hudlin stuff alongside it in the main Black Panther title.
Finally, on the topic of Genosha: it did indeed get blowed up. Right at the beginning of Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men, Cassandra Nova used her Sentinels to destroy it. The ruins of Genosha then played heavily into the Xavier and Magneto driven Excalibur series that Claremont worked on after Morrison's run concluded.
Job well done, gentlemen! Each and every Spotlight fills me with delight. This one most certainly did not disappoint.
I don't have too much BP experience- but I've enjoyed some of his appearances a lot over the years. I stuck with his takeover of the DD book when that happened, and I do have his notable appearances in the Daredevil title (including his first in DD #52), which are all issues I really enjoy. I have long wanted to dive in further because the concept is so important, and the supporting ideas with Wakanda being unconquered, largely isolationist, and technologically superior, the politics of the different tribes, the costume, the herb granting BP heightened abilities & senses.. All totally awesome ideas.
I have heard so much praise for Priest's run that I finally picked it up digitally and I'm about 20 issues into it. I am actually a really big fan of some of Priest's work back when he was known as Jim Owsley- I have said on the forums before how awesome his run on Conan The Barbarian is. I really think that he's a bit overlooked in comics history. If it's still online, his website is fascinating- he has several entries where he candidly tells a lot of the inside scoop on several chapters in his career. His Marvel work from the 80s- Conan, his short run on ASM, his run on Power Man & Iron Fist- all awesome stuff. He filled in on other Marvel books as well and those are even good (DD 224 comes to mind and there were others).
That said, I haven't loved his Black Panther run so far on my first reading of it, especially the art. But @wildpigcomics ' enthusiasm is infectious, and I am really looking forward to hearing you guys dig into the Priest volume in the final hour of this episode, so I can go back to dig in again. I am on board with the new series too- wow is that Brian Stelfreeze art something.
Anyway, another awesome spotlight episode, and I'm not even done with it yet. Bravo.
I first encountered T’Challa, I think, with Black Panther #13—the first issue after Kirby’s run back in late 1978 (though it’s possible I'd seen him in a Marvel Triple Action reprint before then). So I never read the Kirby stories until after I started working for TwoMorrows back in 2000. And I read those issues in pencil form as I scanned the photocopies of Kirby’s pencils, which I think only added to the energy packed into that run. I have no evidence to back this up, but I like to think that Kirby’s Black Panther stories directly influenced Terry Gilliam in his creation of Time Bandits.
I pretty much agree with @wildpigcomics regarding Don McGregor and Billy Graham (and others) on Jungle Action. I bought all the back issues back in the early ’90s, and it had held up pretty well—particularly in its artwork, plots, and characterizations. McGregor was very good at dialogue, but his captions were wordy even by Chris Claremont standards, to the point of distraction for me. I don't mind a wordy comic, but at times McGregor went a bit overboard. Still, it was a high water mark for the era in which it was produced and well worth tracking down.
I bought the Panther’s Prey mini as it came out, and I was mildly disappointed with it. It had its moments, but it got a bit bogged down as neared the finale. The art was nice for the most part, but got a bit sloppy in places—perhaps Turner was having to rush to meet deadlines. Worth getting from the dollar boxes, but otherwise...
You pronounced Denys Cowan correctly.
Jusko is pronounced “JEW-skoh.”
And now we get to the Hudlin era. I completely agree with Chris as far as the artwork goes. It's probably my favorite thing JR’s ever done. That first issue was easily my favorite single issue of that year, and most of that was down to JR’s visual storytelling.
But I think Chris is letting his devotion to the Priest run taint his view of Hudlin’s run, despite his attempts to give it fair and due process. First of all, Hudlin didn’t write “six issues or how many ever,” he wrote 38 issues—a three-year-plus run. How many writers these days stick on a book for more than three years? At the same time he also wrote several issues of Marvel Knights Spider-Man, and later a four-issue Cap/Panther miniseries, and a Django Unchained miniseries. So let’s not dismiss him simply as some mere “dilettante.”
Personally I liked his run for the first year or so. After that it suffered the fate of many other low-selling books in that there were too many crossovers and guest-appearances, presumably to keep sales up. Was it the greatest comic series I've ever read? No. But it was better than most of the Marvel books at the time, particularly the first arc (which was all he was initially hired to write). Hudlin’s T’Challa was a man with flaws—especially when compared with Priest’s take—but I didn’t mind that. And I thought the interactions between T’Challa and Storm were generally well done.
I dropped the book during the Marvel Zombies crossover, which went on way too long for me. If not for the forced crossovers, I likely would have kept going with the book.
All that being said, I was never a devoted follower of the Priest run. I tried it at a couple of points, but I must have come in at the wrong times, because it didn’t really grab me (though I like Priest as a writer overall). And I’ve never read the backmatter essay Hudlin wrote for the trade paperback—though from what Chris paraphrased I didn’t hear anything I would classify as insulting. If anyone could provide some longer quotes, maybe I'd change my mind on that. As I said earlier, while McGregor provided some bold, innovative stories, he also tended to overwrite at times. And, let’s be completely honest, Man-Ape is kind of lame, and it could be argued that he plays into stereotypes as well. Also, I’m not a continuity fanatic. I appreciate it when it’s applied well, but I prefer a little bit of fluidity or gray space in that area.
But at least we can agree on the new series. Coates and Stelfreeze are off to a fine start, and I'm looking forward to seeing where they take it.
I recently bought Giant Size, Power Man #1. I opened the book and was stunned at the beauty of the illustration.
How is it that I've never heard of Billy Graham until now?
I've listened to about 75% of the episode. Great job!
I'm up to #11 on my "second run" through it. IMO Tex & Jusko's art is stronger than the artists that follow, but others may disagree.
*Note: That Epic collection will ship in mid-October
FWIW: That MMW #141 was on sale for $19 back in 2010. I totally dropped the ball on that missed opportunity.
Finally started in on volume one the other night, spurred on by this episode, the Captain America: Civil War movie (which I wasn't nearly as crazy about as most everyone else seems to be, but T'Challa was outstanding, as was Spidey), and finding a loose Black Panther Lego minifig of questionable legality from a Chinese seller on eBay (look, I refuse to buy a $30 when I only want one guy!). It all just seemed to come together.
Speaking of the Lego minifig, I had a black half-cape kicking around from some other figure, so I had to put that on T'Challa... it's what he was wearing in his OHOTMU entry, and if it's good enough for OHOTMU, it's good enough for me. :smiley:
Finally, when I was at the LCS today I found a couple issues of Jungle Action in the back issue bins, and given @wildpigcomics's passion for the MacGregor material I had to check it out. If this clicks, I'll have to get my hands on that Epic Collection when it comes out.