Originally Posted by
Toonstrack
Thats all main characters in Marvel though... that's literally how they are all written because you need that to maintain a story and keep it interesting. This is a sentiment I see a lot but like... BP was a C tier character at best for majority of his existence. Now? He's a household name. Possibly top 15 recognizable Marvel characters in less than 5 years, especially in the west.
With that kinda recognition COMES the Flaws and all of it because that's literally all marvel even puts out.
Don't believe me? See any other character who has enjoyed a spotlight as a MAIN character in a solo, bigger than he has and longer than he has. If they are still being written, at some point they either, did something terrible, found out some dark secret about their past, found out something they believed in was a lie, made a crucial mistake, got killed off and replaced, etc etc etc. You can't escape that for a character like this.
There is not a writer at Marvel who is going to write this character without flaws poor choices, trials and conflict both internal and external ever again. Hes too big now. Because those things are inherent in a fully realized, leading CHARACTER almost every time. So you cannot really go back stuff like to the original when he wiped the F4 anymore. His stories cannot be that simple any more.
Because you cant make a story out of that. Not for long. You can do that when the character is a support role, one of 6 characters on a team so he's only there to do cool stuff. You can do that with an awesome one shot tie in where the story is is open and shut.. but if you're gonna have a character up there with Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Spidey with long runs and ongoings those flaws and conflicts are inevitable.
And its happened to all of those characters. All of them have that run that is controversial because it "ruined" the character for a time. The X Men too. DC too. Because its either do that or stop writing that character because you can't think of something else to do, or relegate the character to team books and minis. Again, you can get by when your character is a C tier characters who gets runs that don't generally affect the MU as a whole and are self contained but Black Panther is no longer that. There just isn't any going back to that.
Whenever characters get written like that, they live a very short life in the industry as in, eventually writers run out of things for him to beat and move on to other characters and he gets forgotten or you see him pop up as side stories or job to establish threats. This has happened to characters before. Look at Sentry. Look at Scarlet Witch. Even Wolverine for a few years, when they ended up killing him.
To juxtapose that look what happens to Venom in his most recent run. Venom is competent. Venom wins his fights. The run is great but look what they had to do to pull a story out of the character. Retconned in an abusive father story. Retconned in that his cancer was fake. Retcon in that thus guy had a SON the whole time. Failure. Conflict. Drama. All introduced in when it wasn't there before.
The only character I can think of who has a longevity even approaching most superheroes who DOESNT have these types of "conflict" is Goku. The most one note protagonists of all time, whose "character development" is a new hair color. He has no depth. He has no conflict or arc. His storylines are exactly as I described, which is bas guy shows up, uber powerful, beats everyone else until he beats em. This leads directly into the superman problem which is a bad place for any character to be.
BP shouldn't be Goku, I think we all agree on that. Hes the biggest he has ever been and he's a great character but I think great characters aren't determined by the strength of the guy they beat, its the conflicts they overcome and the full sum of successes and mistakes they make that lead them to that point, thats how they are made into characters people will continue to follow.
And this isn't even intended as a defense of Coates but rather the shift in the treatment of his character and the world he is from which i believe is going to continue. I know most everyone here is for TChalla but no writer is going to ignore the goldmine of stories that come from a fictional sci fi nation. This is why WAKANDA has become so dang front and center. Back when TChalla showed up in Earths Mightiest heroes he was given an episode or two of backstory. After that Wakanda is gonezo and hes back to a support.
Even with Redjacks one shot which was awesome, that story told in that issue, don't you think that could be stretched to a series? Maybe a 3 issue mini. Anything else? I doubt it. Because after you finish that the readers just say "now what? What does he do next?" Do you introduce a new threat and have him take that out in 3 issues too? I just don't think there's enough longevity there.
So yea, Black Panther IS a flawed character now. I dont blame Coates for that because that was always going to be the end result of this massive uptick in popularity. Whether or not he did that WELL, well thats another discussion entirely