Black Panther Book 6: The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, Part One

I’ve made no secret that I think Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run on “Black Panther” so far hasn’t lived up to my expectations.  His run has mostly emphasized talk over action and that wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the talk was actually interesting.  There’s been some improvement as the series has gone on, which I believe is due to the writer getting a better handle on how to write for comics, but the series has never reached must-read status with me.  Going into this volume I was looking at it as the last chance for the writer, and new artist Daniel Acuna, to convince me to stick around for the long run.

I’m glad I did because this volume easily delivers the best read of Coates’ run so far!  There may be a certain amount of familiarity to the story it’s telling, but it’s done with such excitement and style that I really want to see where he’s going with this.

We begin with a one-page summary of the history of the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda which was formed by a detachment of explorers from Wakanda on Earth.(*)  The settlement of the region of space they found themselves in was hard and forced them to secure safety through the conquest of their neighbors. That’s how the explorers turned into conquerors and a totalitarian Empire, currently led by Emperor N’Jadaka, was formed.

If “Emperor N’Jadaka” wasn’t enough to give you an idea of how bad this Empire is, then consider that it maintains order in its slave ranks by stripping them of their memories.  No fear of uprisings when your workers can’t even remember a better life than this, right? Unless one of them has the strength of will and skill of a legendary ruler and manages to start an entire uprising on the planet he’s stuck on all by himself.  An uprising which attracts the Maroons, the people who are resisting the Empire, who recruit him to their cause and give him a name worthy of his actions: T’Challa.

That’s just the first issue and the story doesn’t slow down at all from there.  We see T’Challa, along with comrades Nakia and M’Baku, storming Empire strongholds, effortlessly destroying enemies in his starfighter, and also demonstrating that he’s a force to be reckoned with hand-to-hand.  It’s all delivered at much faster pace than the story was in previous volumes and more efficiently as well. There’s a confidence on here that lets you know that Coates knows the story he wants to tell and the way he wants to do it.

Granted, that story is a familiar one of a sci-fi rebellion in outer space and its structure doesn’t deviate much from the rise, fall, time-out for self-discovery, rise again structure you’d expect from it.  We see the initial successes of the Maroons with T’Challa as the tip of their spear only for things to take a turn once the Empire tracks them down, and then are left to see T’Challa reckon with the responsibility of getting back in the fight.  It would’ve been nice to see Coates find some new twist to put on this structure, but I appreciated the way he put the characters swiftly through it. The emotional and plot beats of this structure were communicated well and it was honestly refreshing to see, after his previous twelve-issue stories and their glacial pacing, Coates effectively condense the events here into five issues.

This is a six-issue collection, however, and the best part was arguably saved for last.  The final issue is a spotlight on Emperor N’Jadaka, who is also the avatar of the Panther Goddess Bast.  N’Jadaka is very much aware of T’Challa’s successes and believes that her redeemer has finally come. Now N’Jadaka wants to have some words with his goddess to determine exactly where he stands with her in light of this.

Anyone familiar with N’Jadaka’s character can probably guess that the conversation between him and Bast is going to end in violence.  Yet even though N’Jadaka is made out to be a villain by the preceding issues, his spotlight story makes him out to be a more complex and interesting character.  He’s a man who genuinely believes in the rule of the strong over the weak, and who put his faith in man after his goddess couldn’t entirely put her faith in him.  Naturally his faith was betrayed, but it also led him to discover the power he needed to fulfill his ambitions.

Said power is also one of the volume’s few concrete links to the wider Marvel Universe and it’s a very good one with immediate ramifications for the story.  The majority of this issue may be all talk as N’Jadaka and Bast converse, it’s good talk that reveals lots of character and steadily builds up tension that pays off at the story’s climax.  By the end of it, I felt like I understood N’Jadaka better as a character, to the point where it was clear to me how his actions were justified by his personality and not the plot itself.

The issue also features art from Jen Bartel who has a clear style that’s effective for both emotion and action.  She delivers good work that’s in a very different style than the one delivered by Daniel Acuna in the previous five issues.  I love Acuna’s lush, painterly style and he’s got a great design sense that’s well-served by the story’s sci-fi setting. He gives the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda a distinct, yet familiar, look to it and delivers some clear and exciting action sequences.  I’d have loved to see what he’d do with the rest of the story, but since its next arc is being handled by “Doctor Aphra’s” Kev Walker I can’t complain too much.

This volume of “Black Panther” was exactly what I needed to keep the faith in Coates’ run.  It showed the writer fully acclimating to comic book writing by delivering a fast-paced story with lots of action, and whose words had genuine drama behind them.  Yes, he had to leave most of the Marvel Universe behind in order to do it, but with results this entertaining that’s only a minor problem at best.

(*) It’s not specifically mentioned, but I’d bet that the Wakandan explorers who established the Empire were the ones sent off by the T’Challa we know at the end of “Secret Wars.”  If that’s the case then that means T’Challa has either time-traveled to the present-day of this story, or the founders of the Empire went through some kind of wormhole to find themselves two-thousand years in the past.  None of this has any relevance to my review, I’m just putting it out here in case it turns out later on that I’m right.