As written by Priest, the Black Panther is an enigmatic genius who maintains a careful remove from the Western world. Christopher Priest, who broke barriers as the first black editor at Marvel and was part of the group that established Milestone, would go on to rejuvenate Black Panther, writing an acclaimed series from 1998 to 2003 that lifted the character from obscurity to the A-list of comics. Dwayne McDuffie, one of its founders, defined traditional characters like Batman for a generation of new audiences and brought original creations like the black superhero Static to the screen. Milestone set a new standard for black characters, while serving as a talent incubator for writers and artists who would go on to influence the entire industry. There, he takes the form of the first person he sees: an enslaved African American. The comic Icon, for example, presents a Superman-like alien who arrives on Earth to find himself in the antebellum South. Founded by black artists and writers, Milestone devoted itself to black and multicultural stories. Nubia, introduced in Wonder Woman #204 in 1973, was just a palette-swapped version of the title character.īut in 1993, the black superhero saw a new dawn with the arrival of Milestone Media. Luke Cage, for example, first appeared in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1 in 1972, the height of the blaxploitation movement, as a jive-talking hustler who fought crime for money. Still, most comics creators of the period-including the two men who launched Lobo-were white, and like the Black Panther, who was something of a token, most black characters who followed in his path over the next two decades would find themselves in a similar role. In 1965, the now-defunct Dell Comics published two issues of Lobo, a western starring a heroic black gunslinger. In 1947, a group of black artists and writers published All-Negro Comics, a collection of stories featuring black characters. In the 1940s and ’50s, however, depictions began to change. They were “largely relegated to background and secondary roles and characterized primarily through their figurative embodiment of racist stereotypes,” Kevin Strait, a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, says in an interview. Right, In 2016, MacArthur genius and National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates began a celebrated Black Panther series for Marvel.Ĭhristopher Priest (writer), Mark Texeira (cover artist) / © Marvel Ta-Nehisi Coates (writer), Brian Stelfreeze (cover artist) / © Marvelīlack characters have had a fraught history in comic books from the outset. Left, Christopher Priest, the first black editor at Marvel, wrote a groundbreaking Black Panther series from 1998 to 2003, ushering the character into the elite tier of beloved American superheroes. “And I wanted to get away from a common perception.” Thus, Lee decided to make T’Challa “a brilliant scientist” living in a secret, underground African technoutopia, “and nobody suspects it because on the surface it’s just thatched huts with ordinary ‘natives.’” “At that point I felt we really needed a black superhero,” Lee recalled in a 2016 interview. Following some of the most important moments of the civil rights movement, the comics pioneers wanted Black Panther to break stereotypes and embody black pride. Her emphasis on the essential dignity of the character captures the ambition of his originators, the writer Stan Lee and the artist Jack Kirby, who debuted Black Panther for Marvel Comics in Fantastic Four #52 in 1966. Carter, the film’s costume designer, who built on the work of Ryan Meinerding, a Marvel artist and character designer.Ĭarter embellished some versions of the costume with raised triangles, which she has called “the sacred geometry of Africa,” given the shape’s long significance to the continent’s art and culture. And the character’s essential qualities-his regal bearing and quiet determination-are captured in his costume, designed for the screen by Ruth E. T’Challa, king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, stood as a symbol of strength, honor and pride in one’s African ancestry. The title character, portrayed by the late Chadwick Boseman, became an inspiration to millions of Americans. It was clear from the moment it reached multiplexes in 2018 that Black Panther wasn’t just a hit it was a phenomenon.
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