• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

12 McGregor’s Wakanda: Black Panther Volume 1 and the White Liberal Imagination By Matthew Sautman Abstract: Primarily comprising Black Panther Volume 1, Don McGregor’s work on the Marvel anthology series Jungle Action provides a primary foundation for the mythology constituting the Black Panther canon, despite the character’s debut appearances in Stan Lee and Jack Kir- by’s Fantastic Four #52-53. Considered amongst the original graphic novels—along the likes of Eisner’s A Contract with God––McGregor’s work on Jungle Action represents a milestone both in comics history and the Black Panther canon. At the same time, McGregor’s vision elevated the Black Panther from side-character status into the first mainstream Black comic book superhero; still, McGregor’s contributions to the Black Panther canon are tainted by the limitations of the white liberal imagination. This article draws on works by James Baldwin, Marc DiPaolo, Robert E. Fleming, Toni Morrison, and others in an exploration of how white liberalism undermines the radical nature of the Black Panther’s earliest stories through Orientalism and sentimentality. Contemporary portrayals of T’Challa, more com- Matthew Sautman received his monly known as Black Panther, frequently associate the Master of Fine Arts degree from superhero with visual representations of Black empower- Southern Illinois University Ed- ment due to the popularity of works like Ryan Coogler’s wardsville, where he previously 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe filmBlack Panther and earned an MA in both Literature Ta-Nehesi Coates’s Black Panther comics. Yet the char- and Teaching of Writing. His acter’s history is fraught with problematic depictions of scholarship primarily centers Black identity that seem antithetical to the Black Power around intersections of popular messaging present in modern portrayals. T’Challa’s ear- culture and counterhegemon- liest depictions, conceived by writers and artists like Stan ic discourse. His most recent Lee, Jack Kirby, and Roy Thomas—though foundational publications include “Domestic explorations of the Black Panther canon’s mythos––present Bodies in Hell: The Significance T’Challa as a lower-grade superhero, someone who, de- of Gendered Embodiment in spite his wealth and rank as king of an independent African Clive Barker’s Hellraiser” in nation, consistently is bested or outperformed by his white the Journal of Body Studies and compatriots. As Christopher Priest, the first Black author book chapters in Spaces and to write mainline Black Panther comics, observes, the Places of Horror and Mythopoeic Black Panther of these earliest depictions describes a “guy Narrative in the Legend of Zelda. with no powers” who stands “in the back of the Aveng- ers class photo, whose main job was to point and cry out, ‘LOOK—A BIG SCALY MONSTER! THOR—GO GET HIM!” (“The Story So Far”).1 1 Supplementary material Marvel includes in trade paperbacks do not always include pagination, consequently refer- ences to this material may only include author’s name and/or article name. 2/1 (March 2021) Quimbandas 13 Frequently, T’Challa’s presence in these narratives is tokenistic and underwhelming. Nonetheless, the character garnered popularity despite T’Challa’s comparative inability to execute super-heroics with the same efficacy as his white counterparts. T’Challa’s earliest depictions may not consistently portray him as a hero on par with characters like Thor or Captain America, yet, as Priest remarks, “Black Panther [was] the iconic superhero to the African American community.”2 However, T’Challa earned this iconic reputation with Black comic book readers from his status as the first Black superhero to appear in a mainstream comic, not from his ability to effectively represent Black empowerment in a primarily white medium. Although Black superheroes did exist prior to T’Challa’s debut appearance in Fantastic Four #52 (1966)—for exam- ple, Geo Evans Jr.’s “Lion-Man” debuted in 1947’s All-Negro Comics, a one-shot comic anthology that ran only for one issue—no Black superhero achieved wider success with American comic book readers until Lee and Kirby created T’Challa. The Black Panther canon’s earliest stories comprise what Marvel comics and Black Panther fans refer to as Black Panther Volume 1. Despite this name, only thirteen comics published under the Black Panther name are included in Black Panther Volume 1. This set of stories comprises the thirteen issues of Black Panther comics Kirby wrote and illustrated by himself, in addition to the two Fantastic Four issues that introduced T’Challa into Marvel comics and comics written by another white writer, Don McGregor. McGregor’s contributions to Black Panther Volume 1 consists of nineteen Black Panther stories published from 1973 until 1976 as part of the questionably titled comics anthol- ogy, Jungle Action (henceforth referred to as JA). McGregor’s work thus comprises the bulk of the worldbuilding for the Black Panther canon, making it essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the character’s origins. Although Thomas’s work on incorporating T’Challa into The Avengers predates McGregor’s contributions to the Black Panther canon, Thomas’s Avengers comics are not always considered as part of Black Panther Volume 1 due to the secondary nature T’Chal- la plays in Avengers’ stories. However, Thomas’s contributions to the Black Panther can- on do inform T’Challa’s adventures in Black Panther Volume 1. Thomas’s contributions include the introduction of M’baku, “the Man-Ape,” and Wakanda’s role in the suppres- sion of the White Gorilla cult (Avengers #62 117),3 as well as T’Challa’s love interest, Monica Lynne—a Black American singer with an “apolitical” stance insofar as she does not “feel it’s [her] place to tell people what to believe” (#73 349). Notably, McGregor republished Avengers #62 as JA #5, transforming the issue into a direct prequel to the first of McGregor’s JA arcs, “Panther’s Rage.” “Don did the heavy lifting so far as Wakanda is concerned”4 — The Impact of McGregor’s Jungle Action on Literary History McGregor’s impact on literary history, though significant in regard to the evo- lution of the Black Panther canon, never earned mainstream national attention. While the general American public’s bias against the literary nature of comics that McCloud dubs “the curse of new media” may partially be responsible for lessening the scale of McGregor’s impact, McGregor’s legacy is likely hampered by at least two other factors 2 “Christopher Priest on: Black Panther.” 3 Page numbers for comic issues will refer to their pagination in Marvel Epic Collection but issue numbers are provided for those desiring to engage with these comics in their original publication. 4 Christopher Priest, qtd. in Jess Harrold’s “Panther by Priest.” 2/1 (March 2021) Quimbandas 14 (Understanding Comics 151). JA did not sell well, preventing him from gaining the same name recognition afforded to Lee, Kirby, and Thomas. Even if McGregor were radical for the comic medium and innovative as a comic book writer, McGregor’s JA stories mostly do not advocate for particularly radical positions on social justice that readers would consider controversial–– even if McGregor’s stories feature elements that are considered controversial behind the scenes by Marvel’s editors. Nonetheless, McGregor’s innovative approach to JA anticipates the evolution of comics as media: from consumable print issues to larger arcs that compelled readers to follow novel length stories in comic form. Rather than approach JA stories sequentially where a writer intro- duces a problem that the protagonists solve in one or two issues, as is fairly common in Marvel comics of the era, McGregor wrote Black Panther “as a series of illustrated novels.” Consequen- tially, the story arc of “Panther’s Rage” in JA––specifically––is one of the earliest serialized graphic novels. McGregor completed the arc four years prior to Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (1978)—a book often miscredited as the first graphic novel due to Eisner’s belief that he created the term (Mazur and Danner 181, Eisner x). McGregor’s second JA Black Panther arc, “Panther versus the Klan,” though unfinished, remains significant for transforming T’Challa from a character who happens to have Black skin into a character whose Blackness impacts how he interacts with the people around him. This arc transports T’Challa to Monica’s hometown in Georgia after she learns her sister Angela has been murdered, possibly due to Klan involvement that local police complicity cover up as a sui- cide. Here, T’Challa learns about the Klan’s existence and begins to come into conflict with the organization once they attempt to destroy Monica’s family’s home with Molotov cocktails. The ensuing narrative resurrects a tradition pioneered in the 1946 Superman radio show, wherein so- cial justice is equivocated with anti-racism and the Klan is represented as an unredeemable, evil organization (Jones 242). Traces of McGregor’s anti-racist influences also become more explicit in this arc, such as in JA #19, wherein Monica directly references James Baldwin and Eldridge Cleaver (279). Perhaps most importantly, McGregor successfully resists problematic tropes set forth in preceding and subsequent Black Panther stories written by white liberal writers. McGregor’s Jungle Action stories are, as Milestone Comics founder Dwayne McDuffie notes in the docu- mentary, the first Black Panther stories where “everybody in the book… was Black, from the street-sweepers to the doctors and the lawyers to the king to the criminals.”6 Furthermore, other stories comprising Black Panther Volume 1 cast T’Challa as someone who represents, according to Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, “dignity in service to a white supremacist state,”7 due to T’Challa consistently being bested by white heroes in superheroics and saving white people from villains who threaten them around the globe.

Load more

  14

Copy Link