FEAR OF A BLACK PANTHER - New Black Panther Series by Eve L. Ewing & Chris Allen

[Ture]

This is what happens when a people live on borrowed culture with a mentality of lusting for inclusion and acceptance. Complicate matters with historical violence, prejudices and a precedent setting of self rejection and the resulting fiction more times than not will reflect such.   

This is why what Hudlin did with Black Panther was so ground breaking. While Priest cemented the most technologically advanced nation tag line as well giving the most definitive voice to T'Challa, it was Hudlin's declaration of Wakanda's ten thousand year history of never being conquered nor colonized that shook the comic book world to its foundations.

Certainly Hudlin had some faux pas but the implications of proclaiming Wakanda millenniums long sovereignty meant writing a series success stories with a victorious hero at its center issue after issue. Here are just a few examples.

T'Challa not needing to go to Oxford, he had the best education in Wakanda. T'Challa didn't need a super soldier drink to be among the world's best combatants. T'Challa loving and marring a very powerful, intelligent and "beautiful" Afrakan woman. A tale of a future in which T'Challa takes over the world while showing that throughout the centuries Wakanda and its Black Panther helped Afrakan nation resist enslavement and captivity.

Lessons to be learned. Future writers need to advance the Black Panther's agenda not their personal ones.








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[Ture]

Courtesy of CBR's Redjack

"realism" is a crutch used by people who are new to writing super-hero fiction.

Some fans think they want more realism but, invariably, too much of the real world in super-hero comics makes for some sh*ttier super-hero comics. What they want is to feel the actions of these heroes ring TRUE which is not the same as being REAL.

The base concepts of these heroes and their worlds are just too thin to support too much true realism.

Wakanda is a scifi secret monarchy.

EVERYONE is Wakanda is an olympic level athlete and a near genius level thinker. The ritual of ascension via combat is part faith (Bast smiles on whoever wins and thus is fated by the goddess to rule), part test of combat skills and part contest of wills to see who has the necessary grit to rule. This is why ANYONE is allowed to compete. It's egalitarian without being democratic. The council exists to ADVISE the ruler, not tell him what to do or fight his decisions.

it's not a democracy. they aren't Americans.

nor do they age, speak any real language or stay dead when they're killed.

big 2 super hero comics are about what can be made to seem plausible inside their own universes, not what can be made to match reality more closely.

reality, like nostalgia, kills them.


Redjack

This is an excellent summary of the Black Panther and probably why, under its current management, Marvel may not give Redjack an opportunity (which he earned) to write T'Challa the Black Panther. At least not for couple of years to come. Remember regime change do happen, trends play out and a failed A.G.E.N.D.A. is replaced with good old fashioned super hero comic book writing.

HEF Reply #5131 on: April 21, 2021, 10:26:45 pm

[Kimoyo]

Hear, hear! Excellent analysis, 100 percent on the beam!

As a society, the more we lean into gritty hyper realism and forsake imaginative, aspirational, sometimes “corny” or “sappy” storytelling, the more our innocence wanes, the harder it becomes for us to dream of let alone believe in heroes.

Redjack is right on the money! Thanks for sharing brother Ture!

Peace,

Mont

[Emperorjones]

The thing with realism is a tough balance. Perhaps the success of comic book films has exacerbated that demand or expectation from some for "realism". Whereas longtime comic book fans have long accepted the fantastical, and at times downright silly, aspects in comics, I have to wonder if this desire to appeal to the broadest audience possible (the "normies" as some call them), Hollywood has been trying to make things all 'work' in a real world to get "regular" people to be better able to buy into the stories and characters. Sometimes I think that's been pretty cool, but at other times (like with the ugly designs of the Nolan films) it's went overboard. I do think we need to have that space for the fantastical in comics. If we take that away, then we'll be losing something.

Though from the very beginning, heck, even predating comics, there were violent pulp characters/stories, and that carried over into comics. Also, there have long been salacious comics. As for the mainstream, we saw more acceptance of darker themes in the 80s with the embrace of Frank Miller and Alan Moore, among others, and then people went ham in the 1990s with blood, gore, and skin, and while not all of that was realistic, and some quite fantastical, it still fed a desire, while also creating or mainstreaming one that that kind of content was cool and desired (much like how kids wanted the music with the Parental Advisory sticker on it back in the day).

I thought what RJ wrote about the big 2 making comic stories plausible within their own universes was a very good point. I hadn't considered it like that before and it works for me.

[Ezyo]

I understand that you don't want to erase blackness from a character. But I'll give an example of what I mean by character first.

Take the show 24, in the original, we have Jack Bauer, a counter terrorist agent and the lead. He is allowed to just be that. Jack Bauer x the badass, the man who gets stuff done, his past haunts him but it's due to an affair with one of his agents, and on a later season he struggles with addiction for when he went undercover. Then take 24 legacy and with Eric Carter, he is a former army ranger which is fine. But then In typical fashion, they have his brother, whom he interacts with quite a bit in the show, as a gang leader. Granted his gang does some good in the show. It still falls back on whenever black characters are involved, their past either has gangbanging, Drug dealing, or incarnation tier to it. All . The. Time. They can't just be a character who was a former army ranger with a family of successful people like White characters. They have to have atleast 1 of the 3 mentioned above.

T'Challa can and should deal with some social issues. I don't mind him having a heart to heart with Luke or Miles about racial issues and how they deal with it in their lives, but I don't want that to be THE defining trait. Like how McGregor had crack show up in Wakanda or Coates rape treehouse nonsense.

Black characters are more than the stereotypes they get forced on them. It's okay if they are like John Wick, Jason Bourne, Master Chief, Neo, and the countless other heroes out there like white characters who aren't defined STRICTLY by their race. They have more depth than that. Show me a Black character that maybe goes back home and sees his community as a familial place, because they exist, where it at gang wars and drug slinging. Show them having a BBQ and everyone getting along, because there is unity in black communities despite what Media wants people to think 

I don't think were are seeing things all that differently, however I still believe you ascribe to the thinking/conditioning of race (i.e. Blackness) as being limiting, which is something Generation X was definitely taught when it came to entertainment. My generation got that message all the time. Even the great King of Pop once declared, "I'm not going to live or spend my life being a color" (paraphrasing) in the unsubtly titled song Black or White. I think Blackness can be a way to shape a character and the choices they make, that make them organic and stand out, and not be stereotypical. Stereotyping is a bad, poor, lazy, writing choice that people make because they don't do the work, don't know they need to, or at the end of the day don't really care about these characters; they are just checking a box.

I also keep in mind the context that these characters are created in. For 24, Jack Bauer was created by white people, and far as I know, so was Eric Carter, and so in the white imagination (IMO), they far, far too often can't conceive of a "Black" character without placing them in familiar to them (often stereotypical) trappings. Note as well how many Black characters are athletes or have some Church background or are pastors, if they don't go with criminals. There are also a lot of Black soldiers and police officers too. The one thing, beyond race, that often binds all these characters, is how little character development and promotion they often get compared to white characters.

24 also had the powerful Black Palmer family too, which produced two presidents (albeit neither were that successful, but both were depicted heroically. As was their sister, portrayed by Regina King). And Sherry Palmer was on of the best Lady MacBeth characters I've seen on television, a great villain. And Jack's longtime partner Curtis Manning was a pretty solid Black Best Friend character until he was killed off in a bit of awful, sensationalist writing. If I recall, that was in Season 6, the season which also exposed Bauer's father to be a criminal too; it's just he was not stereotypical, though his crimes were perhaps typical for the kind of series 24 was.

I never watched all of 24: Legacy, and one of the things that rankled was the gang leader brother. I didn't mind the corruption angle. They just could've made him a corrupt politician instead of the gang route. 

Black creatives are not above using racial stereotyping either. Though what I think is happening with Black Panther is more of an internal, psychological torment for some struggling over their masculinity, while others might want to impose their feminist beliefs about who black men really are onto the character. Black Panther just becomes the latest, and one of the highest profile, soapboxes to spread their new (old) religion that N's ain't s**t, even fictional African royal ones.

It's not a condition thing as I'm very protective of black characters when they are portrayed poorly because they get a TON of criticism when they aren't written right. I just want my character to define themselves more than just their race. Portray him like Hudlins T'Challa. He was unapologetically Black, but that's not ALL he was. He was more that than just a black man. He was a King, husband, friend, hero and all around the Cool badass you wanted in your corner. That's what I want

[Emperorjones]

The thing for me is that I don't see it as an ALL (or nothing) deal when it comes to being Black. We just are Black. It doesn't, and I don't think really can't, be separated from all the other identities we have (and if we do so, or others do it for or to Black characters) it does them a disservice.

I think being Black is set in opposition to being human (i.e., white) in large part because mostly white people have been the ones setting the terms of the discussion. IMO, for many white creators being Black is outside of their normal (human) reality so it can be set apart, and I think Black creatives and fans (myself included at times) have simply adopted this thinking.

Being Black doesn't mean that it has to be a kind of soapbox, performative, preachiness. I don't think many of us have soapbox moments every waking second, but for a white person who perhaps only has to interact with Black folks in limited, particular context, this is what Blackness means or symbolizes to them, and so that's how they envision and write characters. And that leaves fans to react to that, and sometimes there's an attempt to correct or overcorrect those limited-and at times stereotypical-portrayals by creating raceless Black characters that are "defined by their color". Yet these characters are not immune to still be marginalized.

All that being said, I don't think there's anything, short of imagination and effort, that stops creators from imbuing their Black characters with three dimensional human traits that Black and non-Black audiences can relate to; albeit they can do that from a Black perspective which gives the character (and hopefully the audience) a different perspective.

[Ture]

NEW!

Redjack

Thursday June 2, 2022

Here's how i would have handled the Skybreaker thing.

She knows they won't give it to her but the mutants NEED it. Using her EXCELLENT cat burglar skills and her knowledge of the palace, we see Storm Black Cats her way into the room where they keep the insanely powerful magic swords. Everything's going perfect until she actually touches it and lifts it out of its case.

Alarms go off and WAKANDAN defenses invoke. This is Wakanda and they had access to Ororo for a minimum of a year. They are prepared for what she can do (as they are with ALL the known Omega-level mutants). She smacks some of the defenses down easily (come on, it's STORM. she don't go easy) but the fight reaches a stage where she'd have to kill people to win or they'd have to kill her (which they absolutely can).

So far, she's been fighting security people but now she's letting them hold her with the big vibranium grapple things. She warns the captain she HAS to have this sword and, super sorry about the damage she's about to cause but she's taking it. The captain says HE is sorry for having to murder the King's ex-wife if she twitches one more little spark of electricity, but he absolutely will. It's about to get ill when SHURI enters.

SHURI: Yes. We could do all those things. Mayhem, destruction, blah, blah, blah. Or...

EVERYONE stops and watches Shuri calmly walk up to Storm (still held in the vibranium trap thing).

SHURI: You can tell me why you want the sword.

Storm tells Shuri about the contest and the stakes to mutant-kind and, maybe, the world. She says she's sorry but she knows how important Skybreaker is to Wakanda; there was literally no other way.

Shuri considers.

SHURI: Fate of the world? You will use it only to protect the innocent? You'll bring it back when you're done?

The answer is yes to all these.

SHURI: Release her. Take the sword. Win.

ORORO: Thank you. We will. I swear.

Before Storm leaves...

SHURI: Do you truly think so little of us, Ororo? You could have just asked.

As Storm flies away Shuri taps her earring.

SHURI: Good enough?

And we see that T'Challa has been monitoring this from wherever the hell he is with the Avengers the whole time.

T'CHALLA: For now. Keep me updated.

courtesy of CBR's Redjack

Satisfactory on all accounts. Clean and concise, the way the Black Panther should be.

Redjack should be writing the Black Panther because there is no logical reason based on his BP track record he doesn't out qualify Coates and Ridley combined on there best comic book Wednesday.

Redjack should be writing the Black Panther based on his credentials as a comic book writer especially when compared to Coates and Ridley's that is unless there is some A.G.E.N.D.A. whose criteria he doesn't meet.

[CvilleWakandan]

Isn't this basically what happened, but in reverse order and with fewer steps. Storm does ask for it when she gets there. It's just dumb that they couldn't contact Tchalla to get approval.

[Ture]

The basics are nowhere near enough. Black Panther requires subtlety, nuance, intrigue and intelligence.



In Redjack's rendition we get the following.

Storm doesn't confront T'Challa.
T'Challa doesn't deliver any cloying commentary.
T'Challa doesn't have head down eyes wide shut.
Shuri doesn't get defeated.
Confirmation on Wakandan intelligence preparation for wait for it... Omega level mutants.
Confirmation Wakandan security (without T'Challa) can defeat Ororo.
Confirmation that T'Challa the Black Panther is always steps ahead of his enemies, friends and ex-wife.

Basically, we didn't get all this.



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[CvilleWakandan]

But without the interaction we don't get the pre break up which leads to the full breakup I've been waiting for.

[Ezyo]

Redjacks version could still lead to it, it just doesn't come with the insanely toxic gaslighting BS that marvel seems to let Storm get away with, all the while T'Challa is hanging his head and talking about how he is holding her back and other nonsensical garbage.

For them to break up it requires a writer who actually has the guts to do it. Redjack would channel the alpha energy to do so, he has already said as much that he would have then go their separate ways.

Coates and Ridley are betas and their T'Challas come off as betas as well

[CvilleWakandan]

Redjacks version could still lead to it, it just doesn't come with the insanely toxic gaslighting BS that marvel seems to let Storm get away with, all the while T'Challa is hanging his head and talking about how he is holding her back and other nonsensical garbage.

For them to break up it requires a writer who actually has the guts to do it. Redjack would channel the alpha energy to do so, he has already said as much that he would have then go their separate ways.

Coates and Ridley are betas and their T'Challas come off as betas as well

Then Priest Panther is a beta as well. When hes around Storm he opens up too. It's the reason Monica knew their relationship was over.

[Ture]

We don't need a break as much as we need a true reconciliation and healthy relationship between two A level super heroes. T'Challa and Ororo are no more toxic than Bruce Wayne is gay or Bi. It just the whims of the company, editors and writers that make them such. We, the X factor (no pun intended) the fans and enthusiasts as primary consumers also have a major say with both our dollars and social media.

[Ezyo]

Redjacks version could still lead to it, it just doesn't come with the insanely toxic gaslighting BS that marvel seems to let Storm get away with, all the while T'Challa is hanging his head and talking about how he is holding her back and other nonsensical garbage.

For them to break up it requires a writer who actually has the guts to do it. Redjack would channel the alpha energy to do so, he has already said as much that he would have then go their separate ways.

Coates and Ridley are betas and their T'Challas come off as betas as well

Then Priest Panther is a beta as well. When hes around Storm he opens up too. It's the reason Monica knew their relationship was over.

No, Priest T'Challa opened up to Storm, but he still had bass in his voice, he Also didn't let her talk to him however he wanted and he hung his head low like a whipped dog.

The difference between Priest and Coates and Ridleys is that they are continuing the trend of Storm being toxic and T'Challa taking and accepting all the blame.

Priest had Storm show genuine concern for T'Challa and mutual respect and love for one another even if they couldn't be together

[Ezyo]

We don't need a break as much as we need a true reconciliation and healthy relationship between two A level super heroes. T'Challa and Ororo are no more toxic than Bruce Wayne is gay or Bi. It just the whims of the company, editors and writers that make them such. We, the X factor (no pun intended) the fans and enthusiasts as primary consumers also have a major say with both our dollars and social media.

At this point they need to break up for good. They have literally spent more years trash talking Tchalla about how terrible he is when he had legitimate reasons to end the marriage. Storm continues to take pot shots, be toxic as hell as shown on mauraders and on the recent BP issue.

This relationship has run it's course and marvel clearly doesn't care about making it better. Let him move on, Storm is nothing but a hindrance to T'Challas development as a character and she needs to just go back to x office full time