I understand what your saying and truth be told. I don't want this to be a story were Ayo and Aneka are being propped up at the cost of T'Challa and Wakandan males being thrown under the bus. I think it's good to have the them doing things. But now the stories from now on should be 75% focus on T'Challa and 25% on the DM, the villains and whatever else. The first issue did a good job setting the tone. And in Priest's run it made sense for T'Challa to feel like a guest because it was to add to the mysterious feeling of no one, not ever the readers knowing what T'Challa is thinking, and readers and villains alike were surprised when he started closing trap door's. In this case we see T'Challas inner thought's and so we need to have a bigger focus, and I think we will. I don't think Ayo and Aneka are gonna become the stars of this story because it's a Black Panther story, not Wakanda or Dora Milaje. But it's still only the first issue so we will find out by issue 4 what kinda story it Is
I'm not as optimistic as you are. While reading your post the Blade television series from Spike came to mind. It was ostensibly a Blade series, that was supposed to be
about Blade, I mean he was in every episode (if I recall), right? However the series was really about a brand new, and white character, Krista Starr. All the personal stakes were for her. Avenging a lost brother, becoming a vampire, her romance with her brother's vamp killer. Blade became a co-star (at best), but really a supporting character in the series that bore his name. Blade was the wrapper, the branding for story about Krista.
This could very well be the case with T'Challa. I don't mind a bigger focus on the Dora Milaje as a whole, but I don't think we need a certain percentage of time given to them. I think it should be organic. And though I am concerned about how homosexuality
has to be in everything now like its an edict from on high, it's not a deal breaker to me because I watch shows with homosexual characters, I've read comics with homosexual characters. So having a lesbian couple in Black Panther, among the Dora Milaje, does make sense to me like one of the above posts said. I was reading recently that Grant Morrison's Wonder Woman: Earth One book will have Wonder Woman in a lesbian relationship and possibly an interracial relationship, and those two things alone will not stop me from purchasing that book.
But as I said before, and let me restate, I wish that more heterosexual, intraracial and positive, healthy romantic and sexual black relationships were portrayed in the media. Portraying otherwise seems to me to be saying that black men and black women can't get along, that black heterosexual love is impossible, that it encourages other kinds of relationships. Basically black men and women can't work and live together in peace and harmony, that we can't build together. So that kind of thinking weakens us as a whole.
I also don't assume that we will get an active T'Challa in this series. Maberry kept promising big things for Storm and T'Challa in DoomWar and it never materialized. So I don't assume, I'll just see what happens.
As for Priest's take on Black Panther, I see it differently. To me Priest was attempting to appeal to white readers by using Everett K. Ross as a point of view character, an audience surrogate, a white audience surrogate. If this white character could validate Panther (with some racial humor on the side), then maybe it would make white readers see the value in the character. So as others have pointed out, Panther has a white surrogate in Ross, he has an white ex-girlfriend, he has a white brother. Now as things went on I feel that Priest flipped it on them and did put T'Challa more front and center. For the most part I had no problem with his run. I did have some issues with his writing style, especially at first. I thought it was not a good way to get new readers involved, it was too non-sequential from what I recall. Hudlin eschewed that and gave you T'Challa directly, right from jump. I don't think everything worked in Hudlin's run, but I do appreciate that he did that and that he was determined to make T'Challa be seen as respected and relevant in the Marvel universe. Not all those attempts were as smoothly inserted as they could be, but still T'Challa was a player in big events. And I liked him as a character a whole lot more than what came after him.
Something I've been thinking about, regarding A. Curry's post. When Curry said that Coates book might draw in more female readership or at least appreciate his efforts. Does Curry feel that didn't happen with Shuri? I mean Shuri was the Black Panther for quite a time. And I actually thought handled well in Maberry's initial run, the "Power" arc. Why is the promotion of a lesbian couple more inviting than the elevation of Shuri to headline a Black Panther series, and even heading the "Klaws of the Panther" miniseries?