YIBAMBE! T’Challa: The Black Panther Appreciation 2022

[MindofShadow]

High key, Evan is just trying to prepare yall. He has insight to whats going on with the film.

ol' dude rode those coattails to the right places.

[Ezyo1000]

And this is when the Dwayne McDuffies of the world need to step in.

We whine and cry about representation to other demographics YET when we look at who has done the most damage-it's US.

Let's be real though. WHO ate they hiring over at marvel to write these books? Why is it that we got 6 (Coates, Yona, Gay, Narcisse, Browne, and Nnedi) neophyte writers penning BP or related stuff, a unproven, yet given carte blanche to take a sledgehammer to the franchise when we got a proven Redjack who crushed it with BP quest, King on Black, and WANTS to write T'Challa and elevate HIM? He is proven yet he is still waiting to get that call. While Coates ruined the hype T'Challa generated, and Narcisse is out there making dumbass remarks as of he is "The Guy".

We don't control who Marvel hires, otherwise Redjack would of been on here a long time ago

[Ezyo1000]

High key, Evan is just trying to prepare yall. He has insight to whats going on with the film.

If he really believes that then he is an even bigger fool because it's been shown that time and time again that the interest is in T'CHALLA and Wakanda is just a unique concept but otherwise boring character

[Marvell2100]

High key, Evan is just trying to prepare yall. He has insight to whats going on with the film.

Prepare us for what? We already know T'Challa won't be in it so nothing else really matters.

[MindofShadow]

You know how depressing (as far as stupid comic book characters can make one "depressed") it is to always have people around the character not give two shits about the character?

At least when I read a bad run from other characters I like... it just is bad because the story is bad. Writers don't write the Punisher and go, "you know, he shouldn't kill people and what is really interesting is the world around Frank!" They are not trying to fundamentally change the character... the story just sucks. Which happens.

It is even more freaking weird that is it always the black writers doing this. T'challa is nothing but a stepping stone to these people.

[Marvell2100]

You know how depressing (as far as stupid comic book characters can make one "depressed") it is to always have people around the character not give two shits about the character?

At least when I read a bad run from other characters I like... it just is bad because the story is bad. Writers don't write the Punisher and go, "you know, he shouldn't kill people and what is really interesting is the world around Frank!" They are not trying to fundamentally change the character... the story just sucks. Which happens.

It is even more freaking weird that is it always the black writers doing this. T'challa is nothing but a stepping stone to these people.

It's usually the people who aren't comic book writers that fall into that last category. Some want to come in and write the next 12 Years a Slave or Roots or Color Purple when all we want is a good comic book story about our favorite character.

Why is that so frakking hard to do? Is it Marvel? Redjack and Priest seem to be doing pretty good over at DC and even Ridley gets to do his own Batman. I dunno.

[MindofShadow]

It's usually the people who aren't comic book writers that fall into that last category. Some want to come in and write the next 12 Years a Slave or Roots or Color Purple when all we want is a good comic book story about our favorite character.

Why is that so frakking hard to do? Is it Marvel? Redjack and Priest seem to be doing pretty good over at DC and even Ridley gets to do his own Batman. I dunno.

Things seem impossibly bleak if we are being honest.

The people at the right age to be "in power" should have grown up liking the character...

instead, they seem to hate him.

I don't get it.

[Frontier]

I feel like it shouldn't be that hard to have Wakanda and T'Challa just be cool and awesome together and in-synch, rather than Wakanda needing to drag T'Challa down or people acting like Wakanda or the mantle is more important than T'Challa, but maybe I'm too idealistic.

[Ekie]

If he really believes that then he is an even bigger fool because it's been shown that time and time again that the interest is in T'CHALLA and Wakanda is just a unique concept but otherwise boring character

Exactly. They can market Wakanda to all the black people of the world who will take a tertiary interest in it and that would be awesome to do! But the only character with a broader interest outside of just one particular race is t'challa. Plenty of white guys like him, black ppl like him (pre-Coats), and he other races as well. T'Challa is more then merely black centric entertainment, his appeal is broader than what this generic focus on Wakanda and representation brings in.

This next movie will hopefully prove that with middling success. I'm only wondering if Marvel is going to be satisfied with that level of success for this franchise versus what it could have been

[Ezyo1000]

Things seem impossibly bleak if we are being honest.

The people at the right age to be "in power" should have grown up liking the character...

instead, they seem to hate him.

I don't get it.

Honestly? I feel Coates brought in the hate on T'Challa era. Every writer who has been brought on with some connection to Coates writes the ishttiest BP because they are too busy inserting their OC mouthpieces. He is literally the biggest Black IP and folks are trying to use him to write x men or whatever other BS. He has the biggest potential to expand to Batman or Spiderman levels of success and growth, with a mythos big enough to support it, but no one wants to do anything with it.

He is one of the coolest heroes who can realistically fit into damn near any story and no one wants to tell anything outside "Wakandans are pissed at him again" and the big concept stories (where did Bast go, the secrets of vibranium, intergalactic Wakanda) where done by a amateur who utterly butchered to the point where it won't be revisited for atleast a decade.

Like how hard is it to screen these writers? Why can't RJ get a call back when he is killing it at DC?

It's ironic for all these writers coming in being more interested in writing a Wakanda story rather that a Tchalla one, they tend to do a very ishtty job at it

[Marvell2100]

Things seem impossibly bleak if we are being honest.

The people at the right age to be "in power" should have grown up liking the character...

instead, they seem to hate him.

I don't get it.

The Milestone stuff has been great and I wonder why can't Marvel just put the right person on BP.

Ridley has been okay on BP but the biggest thing missing and this goes way back is that BP has lost his edge. He used to be that unpredictable dude that would have people worrying. He'd be ten steps ahead while making his friends nervous.

Now he's just a man in a suit reacting to all the isht happening around him instead of handling business.

[Marvell2100]

I feel like it shouldn't be that hard to have Wakanda and T'Challa just be cool and awesome together and in-synch, rather than Wakanda needing to drag T'Challa down or people acting like Wakanda or the mantle is more important than T'Challa, but maybe I'm too idealistic.

Like I said, comic book writers know how to handle it(sometimes even the bad ones). It's all of these novelists and authors who come in and think they know what's best. And then you have some editors who don't seem to give a frak whether the character is being handled in the best way.

[chief12d]

It's usually the people who aren't comic book writers that fall into that last category. Some want to come in and write the next 12 Years a Slave or Roots or Color Purple when all we want is a good comic book story about our favorite character.

Why is that so frakking hard to do? Is it Marvel? Redjack and Priest seem to be doing pretty good over at DC and even Ridley gets to do his own Batman. I dunno.

It’s probably the profile of folks that apply to write BP content. The “Wakanda First” people on social media are the loudest in the room and generally speaking Marvel’s standards for black writers don’t seem to be that high if they’re letting folks with zero comic experience handle the main title. Sometimes you get someone half competent like Narcisse (despite my disagreements about T’Challa in relation to his own franchise) but you could easily get hacks like a Roxane Gay. I doubt there’s many dudes with Hudlin or David Walker’s mindset giving Marvel pitches and I doubt those guys have the “clout” of a journalist or social commentator that would compensate for the lack of experience. There’s a very specific segment of black folks that inhabits those spaces and that’s all imma say on that lol.

Priest always said he sees T’Challa as transcending race in that he didn’t reduce the character to caricature and he understood that servicing a black readership (or at least a disproportionately black readership) didn’t mean purely focusing in on how black everything about his world is.

Some black folks saw Wakanda and didn’t know how to act lol. They see one functional black civilization in sci fi and now every Wakandan has to be cool, and not just cool, but cooler than T’Challa. Everything about Wakanda has to be perfect and everything that’s wrong with it is T’Challa’s fault. Hell the commentator herself was heavily opposed to the idea of T’Challa even leaving Wakanda to join the Avengers in the 70s and seems more into how Wakanda represents “black excellence” than anything else. It’s a weird vibe but the impression I get is that folks want to smother T’Challa in Wakanda to act a vehicle for the C-list Wakandans or to get him out the franchise altogether.

[MindofShadow]

The Milestone stuff has been great and I wonder why can't Marvel just put the right person on BP.

Ridley has been okay on BP but the biggest thing missing and this goes way back is that BP has lost his edge. He used to be that unpredictable dude that would have people worrying. He'd be ten steps ahead while making his friends nervous.

Now he's just a man in a suit reacting to all the isht happening around him instead of handling business.

Man, im so low, i'd settle for him to be able to beat up a non enhanced combatant without getting tagged lol.



(i've not given up on ridley at all, his issues are more story related that "hate the character." but still)

[MindofShadow]

Some black folks saw Wakanda and didn’t know how to act lol. They see one functional black civilization in sci fi and now every Wakandan has to be cool, and not just cool, but cooler than T’Challa. Everything about Wakanda has to be perfect and everything that’s wrong with it is T’Challa’s fault..

Winner winner chicken dinner.


There is a part of me that WANTS them to kill off coimc T'challa, just so the whole franchise becomes irrelevant in less than a calendar year and these black folk maybe wake the F up.