T'Challa: The Black Panther Appreciation 2021

[skyvolt2000]

Celebrate Wakanda....

[MindofShadow]

spoilers:

Hopefully Zenzi becoming Bast means she died. No good reason why after spending most of her publication history slaughtering Wakandans she should actually be anything more than a vessel. It’d be a slap in the face if the people of Wakanda worshipped her. Her sacrificing herself after realizing she was wrong about T’Challa is far more fitting than her legitimately being a goddess. T’Challa becoming Emperor basically makes me think the democracy shit is dead and he has full authority now. The Constitutional Council is back to being a secondary body like the Tribal Council and they’ll mostly be sidelined in favor of royal power. That’s good to hear. Yeah I pretty much expected the Originators to get their own planet, that’s the closest to reparations they could’ve gotten. I’d be perfectly fine never seeing them again but if they do return it’d have to be with retconned origins and a new villainous turn. Maybe they turn to the worship of the Old Gods after realizing their true origins and become a marauding force in the Empire. Happy to see Storm was irrelevant here, she deserves nothing from BP. Looking forward to her being irrelevant in future books. I doubt she’s the love from Ridley’s first arc and going off spoilers from X-Men she’s gonna be in space with Ewing’s SWORD after X-Men #20. How prominent she’ll be after is anyone’s guess but her relationship with this franchise seems dead for now. Of course the Orisha did nothing lol. What constitutes a god is so arbitrary in the BP mythos that I would not be surprised at all if someone like Kokou or Ptah weren’t mentioned again and replaced with Ridley’s own pet characters like Anansi who was called out in KIB. The space Empire should be Serpent Valley or Western Foothills status, present but mostly ignored by writers unless you have a story to tell. I suspect Ridley will eventually want to at least do one story there but I hope he doesn’t try to turn BP into a cosmic title for several arcs like Coates. Overall like many theorized, Coates put several toys back in the box and the wider MU ensured his legacy would be limited. It’s open-ended enough we’re future writers can pick up on his plot points if they want or completely go in their own direction. Whether this run has any true relevance going forward has to do with the MCU and whatever synergy comes out of potential adaptations of his run. But in the immediate aftermath Coates’ run affects nothing substantial. Good riddance and my apologies to Superman fans in advance.

end of spoilers

Yeah, for Ridley, he can do what he wants at this point.

spoilers:

- Bast is back, and really, none of the orishas got any panel time, so he can go back to just having one god again - The MA are suddenly back in Dora armor. How convenient. And i tlooks like Okoye is leading them. How convenient. - T'challa has full authority again - Originators are off planet - Hell, there is even an avenue to revive Nakia if he wants

end of spoilers


Ridley essentially has a clean slate.


On another note... Holy crap does Stelfreeze draw the worst T'challa in the world. Bast have mercy

[MindofShadow]

Oh, and my nominee for the most ridiculous panel of the run....

(spoilers obviously, so just the link)

https://i.imgur.com/hwTeVFe.png

you are telling me...

spoilers:

T'challa is being crowned emperor... and Eden, a non wakandan is on stage? ANd closer to the emperor than his sister/former queen/next in line? Where is Ramonda? Who is hte second random Dora up there (that isn't ayo/aneka from the art anyway). Who the hell is the guy in green? is that Chang on the end there? Was is Stelfreeze art such shit? Why aren't they all in ceremonial attire?

end of spoilers

[Surf]

He did it. Cant take that away from him. Salute.

For clarity, the text from this post came from a Vulture article from 2016.

As an aside I don't know if this makes him sound any better even if this was closer to the start of this project. Dude's was a professional writer before taking the job and the first line of the article claims mans is/was a 'lifelong comic-book geek'. Which makes those two things incongruent if we are to take the rest of the article in consideration. Not piling on the man but that's just what it is.

Also,

“Some people get a level of fame and people give them the ability to do things that they probably should not be doing. That is exactly what I did not want to happen.”

Which is exactly what did happen btw, right?

That's an interesting point you raise about T'Challa as a revolutionary figure getting watered down into a "moderate" who consigns himself to upholding an increasingly evidently corrupt and untenable status quo, and I'd add that the same argument could be applied to the superhero genre as it currently exists on the whole. A number of characters in the genre did start off as somewhat revolutionary or even radical, only to then get "sanitized" by corporate ownership into something more "palatable" to the masses and, not-so-coincidentally, the same corporate ownership that would balk at those revolutionary or radical messages being applied against them in real life. It's not so much to excuse what Coates did with the Black Panther mythos, as more an explanation of the kind of creative environment that would ultimately yield something like this.

Agreed. Same time, if your going to take a job just to say 'It's all shit really' then why take the job? You (Coates) had an opportunity to be an example of the kind of ideology people might look for in a line of fiction. Even if you didn't want to keep up with any of the good cannon only to include some heinous shit. For many he sang a sour note for a medium that a lot of people likely didn't have much familiarity with before the movie. Only to squander it and talk down to it. Can't take that away from him is right.

[Dariel81]

I enjoyed the Issue I'll give it a 8/10 .
I did find a few panels badass and very powerful.
It's time to move on and I wish Coates Superman the best.

[BlackClaw]

spoilers:

Well I guess one good thing to come out of this is that T’Challa has a whole space empire at his beck and call in case he needs to bring in the big guns for a threat Wakanda or even the Avengers can’t normally handle.

end of spoilers

It just amazes me how Coates spent all that time tearing down Wakanda and T’Challa only to make it so that Ridley has a clean slate to work with. That’s not even getting into how he spent damn near this whole run propping up her only for it not to stick since it appears that once again, the X-Offices were bullshitting about “big plans” for her. LOL.

[Dariel81]

spoilers:

Well I guess one good thing to come out of this is that T’Challa has a whole space empire at his beck and call in case he needs to bring in the big guns for a threat Wakanda or even the Avengers can’t normally handle.

end of spoilers

It just amazes me how Coates spent all that time tearing down Wakanda and T’Challa only to make it so that Ridley has a clean slate to work with. That’s not even getting into how he spent damn near this whole run propping up her only for it not to stick since it appears that once again, the X-Offices were bullshitting about “big plans” for her. LOL.

Yeah that is badass

[Agent Z]

It's also very telling about how these corporations operate. No lie, if Coates was a white male, this run and marvel would of been crucified. People would not be hailing this as some legendary run abd worshipping Coates. They would of cancelled this so hard and had a vet writer on so fast doing damage control and putting as much distance from the run as possible while trying their damnedest to bury it away.

Now take his Cap run. Way more restricted, way more oversight, he wasn't allowed to do whatever he wanted like T'Challa. Because Cap is protected and they would be Damned of they let Coates turn him into something even remotely similar to how T'Challa has been treated.

I'm not too sure about that. White creators who put out racist stuff still get away with it, either because most people don't call out their work as racist or because they have too many friends in the industry. Frank Miller still has a career after Holy Terror. Nick Spencer got to write Spider-Man despite some people accusing him of anti-Semitism because of the "Hydra Steve" thing and some even calling him anti-black because of certain things he did with Sam Wilson.

Coates is getting a pass just for different reasons.

[Ezyo1000]

This dude literally has no idea how to write fiction.

Zenzi has been absent for years. You cannot have a character who has BARELY SPOKEN, who's backstory was told in another book, suddenly become so important to the story. It makes no story telling sense.

AND WTF ARE ZENZIS POWERS lol??

Speaking of which... Bast makes no story telling sense. From beginning to end, she been... nonsensical. And Coates writes this off as "god doing what gods do, get over it"

Dude still never learned that the main character needs to be the main focus. This whole issue should have had T'challa narrating. The whole time. You are ending 5 years... and you chose Bast/Zenzi to narrate most of the book?

Coates said he had 5 stories in his head, but truth is, he had one. Season 1. The only season that had any sort of semi-coherent story telling involved.

He had one semi complete story and 4 years of bad fanfic. I'm dead serious, I wonder what sort of Vulcan death grip Coates had on everyone's nuts that they threw heaps of praise on this trashcan rune, or are they so desperate to see black people show up they accept any nonsensical convoluted story that rambles on but actually says nothing, and constantly contradicts itself.

[MindofShadow]

I enjoyed the Issue I'll give it a 8/10 .
I did find a few panels badass and very powerful.

The issue was solid when it just let Acuna draw fights lol

Take out the dynamic duo rambling the whole time and cut off Stelfreezes part and its fine lol

[Ezyo1000]

Oh, and my nominee for the most ridiculous panel of the run....

(spoilers obviously, so just the link)

https://i.imgur.com/hwTeVFe.png

you are telling me...

spoilers:

T'challa is being crowned emperor... and Eden, a non wakandan is on stage? ANd closer to the emperor than his sister/former queen/next in line? Where is Ramonda? Who is hte second random Dora up there (that isn't ayo/aneka from the art anyway). Who the hell is the guy in green? is that Chang on the end there? Was is Stelfreeze art such shit? Why aren't they all in ceremonial attire?

end of spoilers

LOL. Da fuq? This Seems most appropriate

[chief12d]

Speaking of Superman, you watching that CW Superman and Lois. The writing for that show is excellent.

I’ve been enjoying Superman and Lois it’s been really strong. Definitely one of the better approaches to the character as of late. Superman as a whole is seeing something of a renaissance with an improving comic line and an upcoming cartoon.

Coates is just gonna cause some groans for the fanbase on the big screen lol nothing too serious. I would not be surprised at all if after his Superman project fails they just reboot the character again in the Reeves Batman universe.

Yeah, for Ridley, he can do what he wants at this point.

spoilers:

- Bast is back, and really, none of the orishas got any panel time, so he can go back to just having one god again - The MA are suddenly back in Dora armor. How convenient. And i tlooks like Okoye is leading them. How convenient. - T'challa has full authority again - Originators are off planet - Hell, there is even an avenue to revive Nakia if he wants

end of spoilers


Ridley essentially has a clean slate.


On another note... Holy crap does Stelfreeze draw the worst T'challa in the world. Bast have mercy

Yea this run’s legacy was kneecapped by Coates’ own story directions, MCU synergy, and wider Marvel editorial ignoring his developments lol. Ridley has free reign to basically go in his own direction with the only hanging plot thread being the galactic stuff which he can easily treat like other Wakandan locations that have popped up and been forgotten in the past.

No more Storm, democracy, cosmic stuff, civil war, or god wars. That’s the starting point for Ridley and he sinks or swims on his own merits.

[KingNomarch]

I'm just glad this this is finally over.

spoilers:

I don't have much of a problem with T'Challa becoming Emperor unless it suffers the same fate of KOTD where it's just more wasted potential. So much for no one man lol. Zenzi/Bast thing I hate. After what she did and helped Nazis take over and gone after Wakanda how many times now? She becomes its god. Smh. I don't know which I hate more, this or Storm replacing the Orisha. The Orisha served no purposeand can be easily ignored by Ridley and other future writers. There was also no point in having NuKillmonger steal Bast's divine power if he never used it and it served no purpose other than to get that poor characterization and the nonsense with Zenzi. Did they kill off and lock up all the men in the Jabari lands? Is it just the Doras there now? The last timeI think we saw a guy there was when they were all being put on trial. At least NuM'Baku is still around so Ridley and future writers can give them a relationship similar to the onein the MCU. Don't know why Zenzi broke Tetu out of jail if Coates kept him a villain and then easily killed him off. Neither he or Zenzi make any sense. Wanted to bring down down the monarchy but served an emperor without hesitation. At least T'Challa got deal the finishing blow and the action during their fight went better than I expected.

end of spoilers

[Cville]

I'm just glad this this is finally over.

spoilers:

I don't have much of a problem with T'Challa becoming Emperor unless it suffers the same fate of KOTD where it's just more wasted potential. Zenzi/Bast thing I hate. After what she did and helped Nazis take over and gone after Wakanda how many times, she becomes its god. Smh. I don't know which I hate more, this or Storm replacing the Orisha. The Orisha served no purposeand can be easily ignored by Ridley and other future writers. There was also no point in having NuKillmonger steal Bast's divine power if he never used it and it served no purpose other than to get that poor characterization and the nonsense with Zenzi. Did they kill off and lock up all the men in the Jabari lands? Is it just the Doras there now? The last timeI think we saw a guy there was when they were all being put on trial. At least NuM'Baku is still around so Ridley and future writers can give them a relationship similar to the onein the MCU. Don't know why Zenzi broke Tetu out of jail if Coates kept him a villain and then easily killed him off. Neither he or Zenzi make any sense. Wanted to bring down down the monarchy but served an emperor without hesitation. At least T'Challa got deal the finishing blow and the action during their fight went better than I expected.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

As final blows go it was more like killing a wounded animal who was already on the ground and not moving.

end of spoilers

[MindofShadow]

spoilers:

As final blows go it was more like killing a wounded animal who was already on the ground and not moving.

end of spoilers

It was like a dad taking his kid to hunt and the dad has to force the kid to finish the animal off

It was pathetic. It is one of those things where only "true bp fanatics" will remeber the steps going into the killing blow, but come on? Why would BP hesitate at all lol?