Oh it totally is. It's a Black Panther # 1, and collectors care about that.
And yet it isn't his first solo series.
...wow. I truly didn't think
anyone felt that way about the series. It was an interruption and derailment from the Panther's first regular ongoing series that is still revered today, and rather than taking the Panther back to his roots, Kirby's series (while fun) was generic as Kirby adventures go, aligning far more with his other Bronze Age sci-fi adventurers and far less with the character he'd created a decade earlier.
It's a fun run, but if you respect Panther's first ongoing series, it's hard to see anything special about this second one beyond it being Kirbyesq.
Oh My God, I have opinions about this. I care so much about issues of representation in golden through bronze age Marvel comics, and Black Panther specifically. (This is just one of those things that doesn't come up on the board much!)
First up: If you move the goal-posts just a little I probably agree. The Panther Jungle Action strip was more
important in comics history.
Buuuuuut... Let's start with the relatively trivial part of my argument. I don't think Jungle Action quite counts as an ongoing Panther series in the same way a comic called "Black Panther" does. It was a long-running feature in an anthology book. In terms of
content this is unimportant.... But Black Panther # 1 means something that "Jungle Action # 5" doesn't. The product (for the first time) is the character rather than the genre. (Which reflected a larger shift in comics in general - in the '40s and '50s genre WAS the product*.) Sticking Black Panther in Jungle Action felt like putting Marvel's first ongoing black protagonist (Waku Prince of the Bantu!) in Jungle Tales back in the '50s. Giving the Black Panther his own book meant that Marvel trusted the character to move units on his own.
Plus collectors like # 1 issues. I sold Iron Man # 1 for more than Tales of Suspense 81-99 combined. I think this is dumb, but there you go.
Second: The Jungle Action strip was hugely important in terms of representation and storytelling structure. But it also really sucked.
Representation because it started with an all-black cast.
I'm not saying this is impressive for 1974. I am saying that is impressive for
right now. If something similar were announced today the "alt" "right" would be leaving their mom's basement to go to their local comic shop to loudly tell everyone they're not going to illegally download Marvel comics anymore. Fighting pressure from Marvel's higher-ups to set the Panther strip in Wakanda AND fighting to have only Black characters AND fighting not to have Iron Man (or whoever) guest star was really ballsy and admirable.
Also it had a gay antagonist, which miiiiiight be the first intended-to-be-gay character in mainstream comics. Or was that Killraven?
Structurally: The long form every-issue-of-the-story-is-part-of-a-larger-whole was ahead of it's time as well. McGregor's Jungle Action run was 19 issues and... two stories. This wasn't unknown - see Everett's Sub-Mariner for an example from older Golden Age Marvel Comics** - but it was definitely an out-of-favor approach when McGregor's Black Panther was launched. This Claremont's X-men and Levitz' Legion of superhereos and... well, 99% of all superhero comics published today followed their lead.
(Also - and this tends to get ignored - McGregor and Billy Graham (especially!) did some great Eisner-Esque design work. The '70sat Marvel had a lot of experimentation in content and tone, but not a lot of attention paid to formalistic design, and McGregor/Graham were probably the best of their generation.)
However the scripting was terrible. Really, really, really bad. It's not just that McGregor was wordy, but he was wordy without advancing the plot or defining the characters particularly well. The reason that McGregor doesn't have the reputation of Gerber or Monech or the other '70s auter-ish writers was that he was
spectacularly bad at the "using words" part of writing comics. Honestly the only characters McGregor created I get any sense of who they are AT ALL are Taku and Venomm. He used 1,000,000,000,000 words on every page but didn't add much (anything?) to Monica Lynne, and his T'challa just wasn't a strong or captivating character. Also the serial structure of the book - as important and groundbreaking and etc. as it was - didn't actually work very well. It felt like a Smallville-esque villain of the week than a building narrative. Credit has to be given because innovating is harder than copying, but credit has to be taken away if the finished product reads all herky-jerky. Which it did;
Now I don't think that being bad at writing makes him a bad comic writer. McGregor was a great VISUAL writer, and I'd argue that is more important.
Kirby's stuff was less groundbreaking and far less ambitious, but somehow, miraculously, the scripting was better and it made for a better pulp novel with stronger characters than McGregor's sprawling, ambitious, unbelievably wordy comic-novels. (This is the only time I will ever use the phrase "Kirby's scripting was better." )
Now I don't think either Kirby or McGregor's work harkened back to Lee and Kirby's Panther, much..
And keep in mind that the Afro-Futurist King who debuted in the Fantastic Four didn't have much to do with the Tarzan clone that appeared in the Lee/Kirby Captain America...
Or the not-very-well-conceived Black Panther as superhero from Roy Thomas Avengers (Kinda like Engelehart's Panther-centric lion God storyline)..
But Panther has always been one of those characters who was constantly re-invented. Until Christopher Priest synthesized all the previous takes (including Kirby's) and synthesized the blueprint that all later writers followed.
* Usually. Kind of. Generally.
** Marvel comics in general AND Marvel Comics as a proper noun.