Ta-Nehisi Coates Previews Highly Anticipated ‘Black Panther’ Comic Book
April 6 will surely be a holiday for black nerds as the first issue of Marvel’s latest run of Black Panther, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, will be released to the public. Like a dream come true, the best black comic book character ever will be in the care of a highly esteemed writer on black identity in the modern era.
Coates writing the series was announced months ago, which has mostly just given fans more time to realize how much they wanted it. With a couple of weeks left to wait until the first part of A Nation Under Our Feet hits store shelves and online servers, Coates offered an exclusive look into the process of making the comic and a preview of what the final product will look like, via Variety.
Here is the first rough draft page I wrote for Marvel. And here is where we ultimately went. pic.twitter.com/jLuLPakOpj
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) March 12, 2016
A number of variant covers are expected to also come out with the issue, which is a sign that it’s going to be worth buying multiple times. This is surely going to be an important moment in T’Challa’s publishing history.
Once the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) started to solidify around the time of the first Avengers film, fans started to ask for more diversity. To be fair, all of the first batch of Avengers, save for one, were white men. That’s when the Black Panther movie campaign started to pick up steam.
To be fair, not many people know much about the Black Panther outside of him being black, a king of a fictional African country and a superhero. I’ve been a fan of the character since I woke up one night in high school and saw the BET series on. I didn’t have a clue what I was watching, but I couldn’t look away. Then I started actually buying comics and it was all over.
Given the recent casting of Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa and Marvel tapping Ryan Coogler to direct, this series is lined up to be the definitive Black Panther run for a while. All the stars are aligned, now it’s just a matter of being good fans, consistently buying the books (which means don’t just wait for the hard cover volume to come out in six months) and share out approval where Marvel can see it.
Photo Courtesy: Twitter