





Fifty years ago, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby changed the face of comics when they introduced the first superhero of African descent, the Black Panther, in Fantastic Four #52. As the hereditary ruler and protector of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, the Black Panther is as accomplished a scientist as he is a strategist. Within the cloistered world of comics he’s long been a fan favorite—featuring, for example, in the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, alongside Daredevil, and as a central member of Marvel’s Illuminati—even if he’s had a lower profile than some of Marvel’s other heroes. This promises to change in 2016, thanks to the efforts of two Howard University alumni: Chadwick Boseman who plays the Black Panther this summer in Marvel’s latest blockbuster, Captain America: Civil War; meanwhile, Ta-Nehisi Coates—2015 National Book Award winner and MacArthur fellow—scripts a new comic with a dramatic character arc for the character that debuts on April 6. Pre-orders for the first issue of Coates’s Black Panther have already exceeded 300,000 copies at various retailers, a remarkable feat given that 50,000 preorders for a new comic represents a smashing success. (Top selling comics like Ms. Marvel and The Walking Dead move around 100,000 physical copies monthly.) One of the most celebrated writers and cultural critics of his generation, Coates’s work on Black Panther promises to energize the field while attracting fans old and new to the character; it’s the most anticipated comic debut since Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 in 1991. I called across the pond to Paris to speak with Coates, my old classmate at Howard, and chat about all things Black Panther.

Jonathan W. Gray: How did you come to comics? I know part of this story, obviously, but you were raised by your father, who at one point was Chairman of the Maryland Black Panther Party. Why do you think he allowed you to read something as ‘frivolous’ as comics?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Well, my dad loved comics, he read them when he was a kid. In my household we were urged to read black writers but my parents didn’t care if we also read white writers. They were just happy that we were reading. My dad used to take me out to Geppi’s Comic World in Baltimore with my younger brother to pick up comics when I was a kid. Geppi’s back issue collection was overwhelming to me. I wanted to dig through them crates. When I would come across a footnote in an issue of Spectacular Spider Man referencing earlier events I would come back the following week and look for that issue.

Marvel

JWG: You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into developing the world of Wakanda, I think you are the first writer since Don McGregor in the 1970s to really take readers through the various regions of this fictional nation. Talk about your thinking behind that.

TNC: When I spoke with Marvel about this project, one of the things we decided was that Wakanda had to be real. We wanted readers to want to spend time there. While McGregor’s prose-heavy style doesn’t fit into the modern way we script comics, he was very Wakanda obsessed, as if the outside world didn’t exist, and I wanted to build on that. Of course, people are showing up to see T’Challa [the Black Panther], but I want to show more and more of Wakandan society and I will as my run on Black Panther continues.