by Dan Moren
Ta-Nehisi Coates on reviving Black Panther
I’m really looking forward to reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s upcoming run on Black Panther. I recently read a bunch of Christopher Priest’s work on the title from the late ’90s and early 2000s, and I’m fascinated to see how Coates brings his unique perspective to bear on this iconic character:
Last year I was offered the opportunity to script an 11-issue series of Black Panther, for Marvel. The Black Panther–who, when he debuted in an issue of Fantastic Four, in 1966, was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics–is the alter ego of T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, a mythical and technologically advanced African country. By day, T’Challa mediates conflicts within his nation. By night, he battles Dr. Doom. The attempt to make these two identities–monarch and superhero–cohere has proved a rich vein for storytelling by such creators as Jack Kirby, Christopher Priest, and Reginald Hudlin. But when I got the call to write Black Panther, I was less concerned with character conflict than with the realization of my dreams as a 9-year-old.