Black Panther vol. 5: Avengers of the New World, Part Two

Ok, so it turns out that the trans-dimensional crisis involving the monsters streaming from magical portals in the absence of Wakanda’s gods is genuine.  Klaw showing up with a hard-light hologram machine at the end of the previous volume was just his way of trying to cash in on the current crisis to troll his longtime foe T’Challa.  So now Wakanda finds itself fighting a war on two fronts with magical enemies on one side and supervillains on the other.  And the Dora Milaje are becoming restless after being told that they can’t go rescue one of their own who was captured by Klaw in the previous volume.  The odds might seem particularly dire for the nation of Wakanda at the moment, but that’s only because the Black Panther is waiting for the right time to make his move.

While Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run has lacked the fun of seeing T’Challa as the manipulative mastermind who was three steps ahead of everyone in Christopher Priest’s classic run, this volume comes the closest yet to capturing it.  Seeing how Black Panther deals with the Dora Milaje situation and disclose the real reason he got Storm involved in this conflict are the kind of clever and, in one case, morally ambiguous moves that I like seeing from the character.  This volume is also helped out by some very lively art from Leonard Kirk for most of its run (Chris Sprouse ably chips in for an issue in the middle) and he turns out to be the perfect choice to energize the actual fighting in this three-sided conflict.  His handling of the silent action sequence with Aneka is aces too.

Where the volume falls down is in its use of Klaw.  His history with Wakanda and T’Challa specifically makes him an ideal big bad, but he feels largely peripheral to the conflict.  You almost get the feeling that his presence was something editorially dictated rather than organically implemented. Then you have the fact that the real big bad is someone who comes out of nowhere and is a VERY deep “X-Men” villain cut likely to prompt a response of “Who is this?” in the reader and the climax basically falls apart.  I dunno, I’ve given this series plenty of chances so maybe I should just stop here. Or will excellent new artist Daniel Acuna illustrating the Interdimensional Empire of Wakanda finally (FINALLY) get this series to live up to its potential?