Just catching up on things.
To go over recent topics, in varying levels of detail.
THE CIVIL WAR TRAILER
Yes, the trailer rocked. While I'm still not crazy about the detailing on the mask (too busy, IMO), it looks better in action than in stills.
No, I don't care who Natasha flirts with. ;)
THE COMIC
I'm cautiously optimistic about the new book. While Coates is a talented writer, most of his work has been non-fiction and autobiography. It remains to be seen if he can translate his skills to the comics medium (other novelists have tried and failed). I'm also not really crazy about the whole Wakanda-in-revolt thing, simply because it's pretty much the default plot-line for a comic book monarch. But he may have a new spin and/or perspective.
The force push and new toys are another possible pitfall. Not because they exist (T'Challa has had a bunch of gadgets over the years), but because I can see them becoming overused. I mentioned an old THOR run upthread, where the writer basically turned the hammer into a ray gun, and barely using the fact that it can be thrown or used to hit people. ;)
Am I the only person who noticed the introduction of another new power? If I read the preview correctly, Coates has merged T'Challa's superhuman senses with his occasional telepathy to give him the ability to track "souls". If so, that's actually a pretty nifty idea, and helps distinguish him from folks like DD or Wolverine.
SHURI
I'll confess, I'm a bit biased against her. Not because she's female, but because the writer who introduced her (Hudlin) stomped over continuity so blatantly in his first arc. As a big fan of the Priest run that preceded it, his choice to (apparently) adapt a movie script into canon rankled, and hence made it difficult to accept her. While other writers have introduced new elements of T'Challa's past before (Hunter comes up fairly often), most at least made an attempt to explain why they hadn't appeared before (in his case, he'd been exiled). Shuri... didn't have that.
That being said, while I wasn't crazy about her creation, and she did have a couple of bad stories (*cough*Doomwar*cough*), I can live with her existence. I can see several roles she could play, if Coates does not want to make her co-monarch at some level. She could even take over the Hatute Zeraze/Dora Milaje. One idea I like is making her a leader in another fashion, as the CEO of the Wakanda Design Group. She does have an interest in science, after all.
Anyway, that's how I see the state of the realm these days. How're you doing? ;)