Originally Posted by
LastManStanding
How did Wakandan society fall so low? The explanation given by Coates based on his interview with the writer of Rise of the Black Panther was that the attacks of Dr. Doom, Namor and Thanos damaged the psyche of Wakandans.
Except that:
1. The insurgents that Dr. Doom assisted into power encountered civil disobedience from a large section of Wakanda. That does sound like something a broken people will do.
2. After said insurgency was routed and Dr. Doom thwarted T’Challa went on a self-imposed exile to America. Shuri ran Wakanda in his absence and the country was more or less stable. Then when T’Challa returned to Wakanda he coordinated the reconfiguration of the nation’s financial stability and thereby the welfare of its citizens.
3. After Namor’s attack Wakanda destroyed Atlantis and in quick secession stopped an alien invasion. Thanos eventually came to Wakanda but through other events he became a secret prisoner of Wakanda. Wakandans whether they knew it or not got their just due.
4. After Thanos was broken out of prison the United Nations General Assembly sided with him in two ways. They allowed Thanos to set up base in Wakanda and they prevented a fugitive T’Challa through the efforts of SHIELD / Captain Rogers from taking back Wakanda. T’Challa eventually prevailed and restored his nation.
T’Challa did his job of protecting Wakanda in the end which to me meant that the years of deconstruction of the character would be have reached the end of its cycle.
Now with regards of the concept of a ‘punchy story’ or a story that does not have enough punching between bad guys and good guys, comics come from dime fiction/ pulp fiction books/magazines from the 1860s to 1940s thereabout. These pulp books were split into categories of adventure, western, aviation, mystery, scandal etc. So, if you were a writer for an aviation pulp book you would not shoehorn a western story into it.
Superhero comics as a sub genre of comics are generally written with good vs evil characters in whatever shade of grey you want to put them; the villains are so insurmountable that it takes a super human force to stop their nefarious intentions. Coates’ villains are not insurmountable hence a simple punch would be enough to topple them. That is the reason for the delays in action scenes between the main protagonist and the main antagonist which gives the illusion that the story does not need those ‘punchy’ elements. Normally rising tension, plot twists, mind games etc would be used entertain the reader during those intervals where the main characters don’t ‘duke it out’ ala David Liss’ BP run but Coates did not use those techniques in his BP run. Some might not be trouble by the lack of ‘punchy’ elements and might be what the heck.