Marvel Unveils 10 Facts About Black Panther
We've got another two years until Ryan Coogler's Black Panther hits the big screen, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the coolest superhero of all time's resurgence, starting with Chadwick Boseman's turn in Captain America: Civil War and continuing with award winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates writing an 11-issue series for Marvel. As Coates writes in The Atlantic, scripting a Black Panther comic series was a dream come true:
"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."
The Black Panther, and his home country of Wakanda, have featured heavily in The Avenger series and the Marvel canon. Before he showed up in Civil War, there was a major set piece in Avengers: Age of Ultron in Wakanda, where their abundance of vibranium (the stuff that Captain America's shield is made out of) is a highly coveted material for good guys and bad. Thanks to the renewed interest in all things Black Panther, Marvel has released this video about ten facts surrounding the superhero.
We'll have to wait two years to see what Coogler has cooked up for him (perhaps he'll bring Coates in to help write the script?), but until then, we've got the new comic and Civil War to enjoy.
