Happy Valentine's Day!

The opening pages of Jungle Action #16

Panther vs the Klan

Jungle Action #19-22,24

Great basis for a story, great reason to bring Black Panther to America. Phenomenal art by Graham as posted earlier. And the story has an intriguing set-up. A murder mystery. Another Klan-like group. It doesn't go far enough to say whether it's a great story as it's cut off too suddenly.

A couple of notes.

The storytelling device that transported Black Panther back to the 19th century to battle early incarnations of the Klan was quite clever, I thought.

It was weird how often Black Panther was in costume. Eating dinner with Monica's parents, grocery shopping. Did he bring no other clothes to America? There are at least comments made about him wearing it to the grocery store. But wearing it at the Lynnes was even odder. He took his mask off to eat, then immediately put it back on after clearing his plate even though they were still sitting at the table talking.

The abrupt end to this story to make way for Kirby's run is definitely a loss.

Yep, I really wish McGregor, Graham & co. had been given the opportunity to continue on with Black Panther (the conclusion from Marvel Premiere #s 51-53 was really unsatisfying - although I can't completely pan it, since it prompted me, back in the day, to seek out the issues of Jungle Action cited in the editor's notes).


You're probably right about that, in that it seems like pretty much every writer and editor who followed seemed to do their best to ignore McGregor's run. However, McGregor did revisit a number of the characters and story elements from his first run in the mini-series "Panther's Prey" which, naturally, also has its many detractors but which I thought was pretty good, but which was, as far as i know, ignored by all the other later Panther writers.

Also, related to this topic, I was alerted to this rather infuriating tweet the other day:


Thankfully, there has been some push-back, most notably by a guy named Matt Kamen, who posted a series of tweets correcting the error and explaining the respective roles of Kirby and McGregor in BP's publishing history.

When Kirby left the series, Ed Hannigan took over as writer, and he basically tried to integrate the Kirby run with the McGregor/Graham material that preceded it - and he really wasn't successful in my opinion. Although to be fair, that was a (to use some florid Marvelesque vocabulary) nigh impossible task, and he was probably doing it under editorial (read Shooter's) dictate.
The art in those stories, i.e., the last three issues of the Panther solo series and the three Marvel Premiere issues I mentioned above, is really very nice: all by Jerry Bingham, and all except MP #53 inked by Gene Day.

For those who are not reading modern comics, Black Panther annual #1, on sale this week, contains 3 new Black Panther stories, including a story by Don McGregor about T'Challa and Monica Lynne (it's an alternate history story, but I thought it was pretty good). I don't think this was the direction McGregor was going for at the time though, so don't see it as the missing piece of his original run.

(The other two stories are by Christopher Priest and by Reginald Hudlin, both tying into their own runs of Black Panther, though Priest's story is the only one that takes place during Coates' current run, even if it deals with characters from Priest's run.)

Did the Phantom have anything like that?

You'd also think the idea might have popped up in Tarzan at some point, whether in the ERB books or the movies, but I can't say I remember anything of the sort.

Looking up Afrofuturism on wiki led me to the Black Science Fiction entry, on which I found a few books to add to my to-read list. One of them, Of One Blood, by Pauline Hopkins, is about "a hidden civilization with advanced technology in Ethiopia". I'm interested in early science fiction in general so I'm pretty excited to read it. It was published in 1902, so I should get to it in the next year or so (I'm just getting into the early 1890s right now). Looks like archive.org might have it if I can't find a printed edition.

Black Panther by Jack Kirby

Black Panther #1-12

And now for something completely different. Kirby showed no interest in acknowledging any prior work on the character. Though it doesn't necessarily contradict anything. But familiar faces are absent. Monica Lynne? W'Kabi? Instead, we see someone named N'Gassi as regent in T'Challa's absence.

Kirby wanted to tell a sci/fi adventure story. And did. Black Panther is traveling the world in search of treasures that unlock the power of time travel, which brings him into conflict with people from the ancient past and distant future.

We then visit Wakanda again, as a rogue general is staging a military coup. Which seems at first to be more familiar territory. But he quickly gets turned into a vibranium monster who Black Panther has to fight.

And, of course, contact with vibranium gives Black Panther telepathic powers.

As far as what Kirby was doing at the time, I prefer his work on Eternals and Devil Dinosaur. As far as Black Panther goes, I was preferring the McGregor/Graham stuff.

I could perhaps see someone liking this. If you just get swept up in the batshit craziness of it all.

Here's an old Brian Cronin article on Black Panther's psychic powers.

www.cbr.com/the-abandoned-an-forsaked-the-black-panther-has-esp/