Above we have a sketch of TChalla dabbin on dem folks courtesy of Brian Stelfreeze. Obviously, I cant really take much credit for this sketch. Brian has this great ability, not just to interpret script direction, but to actually add on and make something new and beautiful.
With that said Id like to talk some about TChallas major challenge in this first season of Black Panther. (Heres hoping there will be more.) When I accepted the task of writing the new Black Panther comic, I was faced with an obvious questionWho is this guy? There was the obvious and the knownTChalla is the ruler of the mythical African nation of Wakanda. But to write, I needed to develop a grounded theory of TChallas great loves, small annoyances and everything in between. The grounding came from past depictions of TChalla by writers like Don McGregor, Christopher Priest, Reginald Hudlin and Jonathan Hickman.
I also had to create some sort of working theory about Wakanda, and to the extent to which I came to one it is this: Wakanda is a contradiction. It is the most advanced nation on Earth, existing under one of the most primitive forms of governance on Earth. In the present telling, Wakandas technological superiority goes back centuries. Presumably its population is extremely well educated, and yet that population willingly accedes to rule by blood. TChalla descends from an unbroken line of kings, all whove taken up the mantle of the Black Panther. But if youve ever studied monarchy, it becomes immediately apparent that the aptitude, or even the desire, to govern isnt genetic.
Leaving aside the problems of reconciling absolute monarchy with ultra-modernism, there are the actual events in Wakanda which have happened previous writers. In recent years Wakandans have endured a coup courtesy of the villainous Achebe, another courtesy Dr. Doom, the murder of two of TChalla top lieutenants, a cataclysmic flood courtesy of Prince Namor, the subsequent dissolution of a royal marriage, and finally decimation and conquest at the hands of Thanos Black Order. Wakanda had always prided itself on having never been conquered. This is no longer true. What, then, is the country if it is as vulnerable as all others? And what happens to a state when its absolute monarch can no longer fulfill the base requirement of any governmentsecuring the safety of their people?
I tend to think war
