Scans_Daily

"The guy in the back of the Avengers class photo, whose main job was to point and cry out, 'Look— A BIG, SCALY MONSTER! THOR— GO GET HIM!!' That guy?!

"No, PANTHER was not the move. Panther was, by most any objective standard, dull. He had no powers. He had no witty speech pattern, bub. His supporting cast was a bunch of soul brothers in diapers with bones through their noses. King T'Challa is, by necessity, a man of secrecy and cunning, which is difficult to illustrate if he has thought balloons over his head telling the reader everything he's thinking. Or, worse, if he's narrating his own story and blathering on and on and on. Hard to convey cunning from a motormouth.

"Also, Panther was a black super-hero and, the most basic economic lesson this business can teach you is, minorities and female super-heroes do not sell (but, kudos to Marvel for trying to do both with the black female version of CAPTAIN MARVEL).

"But, Joe [Quesada] and his partner, inker Jimmy Palmiotti, were adamant: the book can work, they insisted. If we have a fresh approach, perhaps along the lines of Eddie Murphy's Coming To America, where the crown prince of an African nation comes to America in search of a bride. Given that kind of energy, taking Wakanda and the Panther seriously, and concentrating on how people react to him- that approach might have a chance in the market. Get him out of the jungle. Bring him to Brooklyn. Make him a night creature, a fearsome African warrior, a manner of black man most blacks in Brooklyn have never seen."

- Christopher Priest

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