Black Panther is a 2018 American superhero film
based on the Marvel Comics character of the
same name . Produced by Marvel Studios and
distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion
Pictures , it is the eighteenth film in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film is directed
by Ryan Coogler , who co-wrote the screenplay
with Joe Robert Cole, and stars Chadwick
Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther, alongside
Michael B. Jordan , Lupita Nyong'o , Danai Gurira ,
Martin Freeman , Daniel Kaluuya , Letitia Wright ,
Winston Duke , Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker ,
and Andy Serkis . In Black Panther, T'Challa
returns home as king of Wakanda but finds his
sovereignty challenged by a new adversary, in a
conflict with global consequences.
Seeking to address the dearth of black
characters in comics, Lee and Kirby created
T’Challa, a member of the royal family of
the fictional African country of Wakanda.
Wakanda was depicted as a peculiar mix of
futuristic technology and traditional life, a
dichotomy produced by the presence in the
country of Vibranium, a rare and nearly
indestructible meteoric ore. After the death
of his father at the hands of the villainous
Ulysses Klaw, T’Challa claimed the throne
as well as the mantle of the Black Panther.
Upon becoming the Black Panther, T’Challa
was exposed to a mystical herb that
enhanced his strength and agility to near-
superhuman levels. After meeting the
Fantastic Four , T’Challa decided his powers
would be put to best use in the service of
all humanity, although Wakanda traditionally
had been closed to the outside world, and
so he flew off to New York, leaving his
people behind.
The Black Panther joined the Avengers in
1968, where he became a mainstay for the
next several years. Although the character
predated the revolutionary political
organization of the same name, Marvel
briefly changed the Black Panther’s name to
the Black Leopard in an attempt to
dissociate the two. A short time later he
was back to being the Black Panther again,
and in 1973 he headlined his own book for
the first time. The “Panther’s Rage” story
arc ran for two years in Jungle Action , a
series written by Don McGregor and drawn
for the most part by the African American
artist Billy Graham. Reflecting the times’
interest in African roots and black
consciousness in general, the strip returned
T’Challa to a Wakanda riven by infighting
and sedition, where he managed to balance
superheroics with musings on colonialism
and democracy. For the duration of the
tale, the strip featured an all-black cast,
something that had never before been
attempted in mainstream superhero
comics, and the innovations continued in a
later story, which saw the Panther take on
the Ku Klux Klan .
Poor sales prompted Marvel to cancel
Jungle Action before the Klan story was
finished, and it was replaced in 1977 with a
new Black Panther title by Jack Kirby. This
new direction was as far from the gritty
realism of McGregor’s tales as it is
possible to imagine, as it featured a time-
traveling frog statue said to belong to King
Solomon, the Yeti, and a group of
Wakandan nobles known as the Black
Musketeers. This title too was short-lived.
Sporadic appearances over the next two
decades kept the Black Panther in the
Marvel firmament, but he was increasingly
marginalized. Miniseries in 1988 and 1991
were solid, if unspectacular, attempts at
revitalizing what was effectively a lapsed
franchise. The first tackled apartheid , and
the second dealt with the Panther’s search
for his mother, but neither led to anything
substantial. With black characters no longer
a comics novelty and with role models such
as the characters of Milestone Comics—
which had more relevance to their readers
than a wealthy African king—it seemed as if
the Panther’s time had passed.
In 1998 writer Christopher Priest
reintroduced the hero as part of the slightly
more adult “Marvel Knights” line, in a
critically acclaimed series that continued
until 2003. For this reinvention, a now
aging T’Challa returns to the urban jungle of
New York in a deftly written political thriller
that balances intrigue with no small amount
of humour. Priest’s run on the comic
introduced the Dora Milaje, a team of
female bodyguards drawn from all the
tribes of Wakanda. Film director Reginald
Hudlin was the initial writer on both the
Black Panther series that ran from 2005 to
2008 and the next one, which ran from
2009 to 2010. During this time T’Challa
was briefly married to Storm of the X-Men ,
a union that joined Marvel’s most
prominent male and female African
superheroes. T’Challa also became a
member of the Illuminati, a secret group of
the brightest and most powerful members
of Marvel’s superhero community.
National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi
Coates was tasked with writing the
relaunched Black Panther comic, and the
debut issue was one of the best-selling
comics of 2016. The Black Panther entered
the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) later
that year in Captain America: Civil War, a
blockbuster that cast Chadwick Boseman
as the Wakandan prince. The character
subsequently experienced something of a
renaissance, with the success of Coates’s
flagship title leading to the release of Black
Panther: World of Wakanda, a series that
explored Wakanda’s other heroes, and Black
Panther & the Crew , a street-level story set
in Harlem. Each of those titles was
canceled after just six issues, however,
because of low sales. Director Ryan
Coogler helmed Black Panther (2018), a
dazzling spectacle that saw Boseman return
to the screen in the role of T’Challa.
Perhaps the MCU’s best-reviewed film to
date, Black Panther examined race, gender,
and power issues through an Afrofuturist
lens and featured an ensemble cast that
included Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o ,
Forest Whitaker , and Angela Bassett.