1999. It was the fourth issue of Marvel Knights’ Black Panther. For the previous three issues, Everett K. Ross had been tormented by Mephisto, the being who – more than any other demon found in Marvel Comics – represented Satan himself. In the closing pages, the Black Panther arrived to rescue Ross. Ross was in hysterics. “Kill him! Kill him!” Ross shouted to T’Challa. “You want me to call the Avengers?!” To which the Black Panther replied, “Why?” and with a single punch knocked out Mephisto.

As Priest recounted to Newsarama in 2015: “I was […] introducing a paradigm shift to the way Panther was to be portrayed; somebody had to give voice to the expectation of a dull and colorless character who always got his butt kicked or who was overshadowed by Thor and Iron Man suddenly knocking out Mephisto with one punch.”

“To me, that’s Black Panther. It’s not arrogance, it’s competence.”

The amazement artist Mark Texeira painted on Ross’ face could only have been exceeded amongst comic book fandom. This bold scene said a great deal about Priest’s view on how fandom perceived the Black Panther’s power and how Priest would challenge their perceptions. But to explain the power of T’Challa knocking out the Devil, we need to step back into the Black Panther’s publishing history and why Priest faced that “expectation of a dull and colorless character who always got his butt kicked.”

PANTHER’S PAIN

Indeed, Priest’s collaborator Bob Almond opined on the Black Panther Message Board: “For a few of you guys on this board who’ve been huge Panther fans for YEARS and probably always WILL be huge Panther fans he’s probably on the top of your list in the area of coolness and importance and power. As a huge Avengers fan like myself he’s in the second-tier category IMO compared to the likes of say the founders and some others. But in the general eye of those who haven’t known this character very long or of his history he’s probably not thought of that much.”

There is an entire culture of super-hero fans who enjoy the “versus” aspect of a super-hero fight. By the time Marvel Knights launched Priest’s Black Panther in 1998, some comic book forums already had rules as to whether posters were permitted to engage in “versus” threads. The arguments fans would make about which character was more powerful than another would be rooted in the comics themselves – but deciding which fights “mattered” at times demonstrated the myopic vision of comic book fans.

For instance, a fan who wanted to assert the power level of the thunder god Thor might well point to Walter Simonson and Sal Buscema’s Thor #380 (1987) in which Thor unleashed his full power against the Midgard Serpent in order to slay it – while ignoring the context in which it’s clear that this was not the power level Thor ordinarily operated under and was certainly not representative of what a typical blow from his magic hammer would accomplish.

But sometimes what appeared myopic was rooted in trolling. A fan who wanted to mock the Silver Surfer’s power level might point to Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula #50 (1976) in which the cosmic-powered herald of Galactus had some difficulty contending against the vampire Dracula. A fan who wanted to bring Hulk boosters down a peg would certainly point to Joe Casey and Ed McGuinness’ Incredible Hulk #470 (1998) in which the Hulk lost a fight to Princess Python’s pet snake.

In super-hero fights, everything depends upon the context in which one character triumphs over another. Of course, popularity counts for a lot; many “versus” fans disliked Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz’s Amazing Spider-Man #269 (1985) – edited by Christopher Priest – in which Spider-Man defeated Firelord, another herald of Galactus who was having a bad day. It seems likely that DeFalco and Frenz felt this fight was written in the spirit of so many Marvel super-hero tales (especially Spider-Man tales) in which the underdog triumphs over the supposedly unstoppable menace. Captain America, possessing just the “peak” of human ability (and an indestructible shield) has starred in more than 80 years’ worth of stories in which he almost uniformly defeats villains despite their superior strength or numbers.

By 1998, the Black Panther had not been a regularly felt presence in Marvel’s publishing line in the previous two decades. His first series in Jungle Action under the pen of Don McGregor lasted 19 issues 1973-1976; Jack Kirby wrote and drew his solo adventures in a 15-issue series from 1977-1979; Peter B. Gillis’ delayed 4-issue limited series came out in 1988; Don McGregor wrote him again in a 1989 Marvel Comics Presents serial (issues #13-37) and in the 1991 limited series Panther’s Prey; but that was about the extent of his solo adventures.

Bob Almond opined on the Black Panther Message Board: “I think that’s why McGregor’s work is so fondly remembered (and justly so) because not only did he FINALLY get to handle the character in his own solo series but by having most of the stories take place in Wakanda, a whole ‘universe’ of concepts ripe for plucking, he was able to not only show off aspects that made the Panther special but REALLY get to add to the foundations that Stan and Roy had set and add to the cast and rogues. The stories were very sophisticated and epic in scale and many feel “Panther’s Rage” to be the definitive BP saga. But as noble and brave as Panther was, he was always getting the tar kicked out of him, his costume was often being torn to shreds and he’d be a bloody, pulpy mess half the time with Don at the helm.”

OVERSHADOWED BY THOR AND IRON MAN

Yet outside his solo adventures the Black Panther had not been very visible as an ensemble player either, particularly in the 20 years prior to Priest’s first story. He joined the Avengers in issue #51 (1968) and remained until #88 (1971); he came back in #105 (1972) and left with #126 (1974); he returned in #159 (1977) and was more-or-less present until issue #181 (1978). Afterward T’Challa would return to the Avengers for brief periods, often alongside other inactive members against a particular menace, but he would not regularly serve as a team member again until 2002’s Avengers #57, contemporaneous to Priest’s Black Panther.

Examining the effectiveness of the Black Panther among the Avengers is, I think, instructive in terms of how fandom at large viewed the character. Since his solo adventures were sporadic and short-lived, his most sustained exposure to super-hero fans prior to 1998 was through his time on the Avengers. This is the figure Priest referred to as “a dull and colorless character who always got his butt kicked or who was overshadowed by Thor and Iron Man.”

The Black Panther’s initial act on joining the Avengers was to save the team from their foe the Grim Reaper. Throughout the Roy Thomas (Avengers #52-88) and Steve Englehart (Avengers #105-126) years, the Black Panther was reliable in his showings against the Avengers adversaries. However, in those days the Avengers didn’t typically face universe-threatening menaces – or even beings powerful enough to destroy a city block. Most of the Black Panther’s first six years as an Avenger involved fighting normal men such as the Sons of the Serpent, the Zodiac (even a group of muggers in Avengers #57), or otherwise-normal men with a simple gimmick such as Whirlwind’s superhuman speed or the Swordsman’s gadget-laden blade.

However, when Jim Shooter made his presence felt as the Avengers’ writer in 1977, he escalated the sort of threats the team faced to enormous proportions. The Black Panther returned to the team in issue #159, when all of his teammates had been bested by the gravity-manipulating villain Graviton. At first blush, you might think the Black Panther would succeed where all his teammates had failed, with Graviton underestimating the threat posed by the Avenger – much as, again, Captain America was often portrayed (to say nothing of Hawkeye, the team’s other resident non-powered hero). But the Black Panther was paired with Thor in his rescue mission so the brute force of besting Graviton fell to the latter; the Black Panther’s role was to release the Avengers from being imprisoned by Graviton’s powers – not even by using his own well-documented scientific genius, but by employing a device built by Tony Stark. That was more or less the extent of his involvement in the story.

In issue #160, the Black Panther faced the Grim Reaper, the villain he’d originally bested in order to join the team – but this time he was easily defeated by the Grim Reaper (although so were all the other Avengers present). T’Challa went from that loss to another in the subsequent issue at the hands of Ultron. Then in issue #165, Count Nefaria was revamped into a super-powerful villain (intentionally modeled on DC Comics’ Superman) and the Black Panther was easily defeated by him. The main work of fighting Nefaria fell to Iron Man and Thor, as it so often did during the Shooter years. Shooter was so uninterested in the Black Panther that the character was omitted entirely from issue #166, while all the other Avengers Nefaria had bested did at least put in appearances.

Shooter’s tenure is best remembered today for the “Korvac Saga” that ran between issues #167 and 176. The sheer number of Avengers in this storyline was ponderous; in addition to featuring nearly everyone who had been an Avenger up to that point, Shooter filled the book with hangers-on and guest stars, so that when the Avengers finally faced Korvac in issue #176, they numbered twenty-two heroes! The team size had expanded to a terrific extent – in fact, it was not unlike the number of heroes one found in a typical Legion of Super-Heroes adventure at DC Comics, which had been Shooter’s bread and butter before coming to Marvel.

Yet while the Legion’s heroes might each have a particular power or specialty to help assist in the defeat of a particular threat, the Korvac Saga offered precious little for most of the twenty-two heroes, whose role was to supply canon fodder to Korvac; Shooter was arguably writing Korvac as the protagonist, rather than the Avengers themselves. The Black Panther’s greatest action in the entire storyline came in issue #176 when – after several Avengers had already been brutally killed by Korvac – Iron Man told the Black Panther to seize Korvac’s lover Carina in the hopes of using her against Korvac. T’Challa refused: “But- it would not be honorable!” he retorted, remaining still as a statue. He was soon after killed by Korvac, although all the dead heroes were restored to life at the story’s end.

Again, compare the Black Panther to the Avengers’ other non-powered stalwarts; at one point in the storyline, Hawkeye was the last Avenger standing to face the Collector and he beat the odds, saving the entire team. And at one point in issue #176, Captain America engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Korvac in a fight that lasted a full page, a far more impressive showing than the majority of his super-powered colleagues. It was possible for the Black Panther’s athletic prowess to be just as effective as Hawkeye or Captain America’s – but throughout the Shooter years, he was underutilized.

When David Michelinie took over as writer in Avengers #181 (1979), the Black Panther left the team under ignominious circumstances as the Avengers’ security liaison Henry Peter Gyrich forced a new lineup on the team that included the Falcon, who hadn’t been an Avenger before. When asked to explain himself, Gyrich noted the Avengers would have to adhere to “equal opportunities for minorities” and justified the Falcon saying he would have to join, “since the Black Panther isn’t available.” Gyrich uttered the line while T’Challa was present; in fact, T’Challa had no dialogue in issue #181 and gave no accounting for why he couldn’t have remained on active duty. T’Challa was granted so little storytelling agency that he wasn’t even allowed to say why he was leaving.

Shooter’s tenure on the Avengers was considered a highpoint of the series (indeed, the Korvac Saga was one of the few Avengers storylines collected as a trade paperback prior to 1998). But Shooter’s tenure hadn’t been good to the Black Panther, and as T’Challa’s solo adventures were few and far between, he became a character who primarily appeared as a guest star.

Critic John Jones summed up the Black Panther’s tenure in the Avengers dismissively, writing in 2000: “One dimensional, monochrome, and always in danger of being rendered combatively superfluous whenever the similar, flashier, better equipped and far more charismatic Captain America was hanging around the team, T’Challa might as well have raided Jarvis’ wardrobe and started serving planter’s punches in the main meeting room for all the attention anyone paid him.”

RECONSTRUCTING FROM DOORMAT MAN

Priest had no love for how T’Challa was portrayed as what he called “Doormat Man.” On the Black Panther Message Board, Priest described this version of T’Challa – who sounded a lot like Jim Shooter’s T’Challa – as being “the colorless, humorless, often clueless guy standing in the back row of the Avengers class picture, or showing up for the odd guest-shot to fight *yawn* Klaw again, the guy who got beat up and dragged more often than I can mention.”

Bob Almond agreed, writing on the Black Panther Message Board: “Since BP didn’t have more than 2 limited series and the MCP serial between the end of the Kirby run and the beginning of Priest’s run readers saw BP mostly in guest starring roles, some good, some bad, where BP could, again, not get the chance to show off and flex his muscles and seemed to always have that expected battle with Klaw. Panther needed something to not only get another shot at his own title but be able to sell it well enough so that it could be published long term. And this ‘something’ for a writer, like Priest, [was] to change the ‘perception’ of who Panther was to the ‘general public’.”

Priest wrote on Usenet in 1999: “I was never a *great* Panther fan.  Mainly because I was bothered by how he got beat up so much, and because I found the character a bit dull when I didn’t think he had to be that way.  I turned the book down at first, until I was assured by Jimmy {Palmiotti] and Joe [Quesada] that I could, in fact, reinterpret some things and have a relatively free hand with the character.”

On Usenet in 2001 Priest wrote: “I really believe most writers between Stan Lee and Don McGregor were just lazy. Sorry, but there it is. They didn’t look any deeper into Panther than the color of his skin, and the fact he had no powers. He was often relegated to the back of the Avengers class picture, and the stories that did feature him were stupid. No, really.”

“They got it wrong. It really is that simple. I feel absolutely no obligation to perpetuate bad writing just because that’s the way Panther’s been done for 30 years. It’s been 30 years of getting it wrong, a characterization wholly inconsistent with FF #52, which is the basis for my interpretation of Panther.”

Pulling the Black Panther out of this “Doormat Man” state required going back to T’Challa’s roots. In 1998, whether he meant to or not, Priest tapped into the same zeitgeist which Alan Moore had dubbed “comics reconstruction.” Kurt Busiek had perhaps the best description of comics reconstruction in the introduction to the trade paperback of 1997’s Astro City: Life in the Big City:

For the past decade, starting around the time of the brilliant Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, the prevalent mode for ‘serious’ superhero creators has been deconstruction. The superhero has been dissected, analyzed and debunked, his irrationalities held up to the light to show them for the unworkable Rube Goldberg machines they are, that it’s almost become impossible to present a superhero who does what he does without being emotionally unstable, incapable of dealing with reality without ‘acting out’ his psychoses and obsessions. But, it strikes me that the only real reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so that you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old model could do.

We’ve been taking apart the super-hero for ten years or more; it’s time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it’ll do. That’s the prospect that excites me, that makes me eager to tell my stories to anyone who’s willing to listen. Where can we go from here? What’s out there to find? Come on, let’s head that way — all we can see are shapes in the dark, but they sure look interesting, don’t they?

At the same time, Busiek had started writing the Marvel series Thunderbolts which featured six familiar Marvel super-villains who had been revamped into super-heroes. Rather than ignoring who they’d been before, Busiek looked back into each character’s continuity to justify the storytelling choices he made, as he explained in the 1998 trade paperback Thunderbolts: Marvel’s Most Wanted:

The Fixer, at first, made the team simply because any super-team can use a gadgeteer. But in going back to the three-part Strange Tales mini-epic that introduced him, I was struck by his obvious pride in his abilities and his glee at using them – this is not a man who’s seeking society’s respect, like the Beetle, but someone who has ego aplenty, and simply wants the world to acknowledge that he’s their superior. The adulation of the crowds wouldn’t affect him that much, because he sees it as his rightful due – but he’d still enjoy it, and that could be fun.

Just as Busiek looked to the first appearance of the Fixer to justify his new take on the character, Priest looked back to Fantastic Four #52 to justify his reinterpretation of the Black Panther.

Priest wrote on the Black Panther Message Board: “There was a basic premise, he was THIS guy who lived in THIS place and did THIS stuff. He was calculating. He was duplicitous. He was menacing. He was *funny.* he was NOT stiff as cardboard and he clocked the FF singlehandedly.”

It wasn’t simply that the Black Panther had defeated the Fantastic Four singlehandedly – Priest found inspiration from the means by which that was accomplished. In the story, T’Challa set up a series of traps for the Fantastic Four in his Techno-Jungle, first stunning the Thing with an electro-shock that weakened him for 5 minutes. When the Human Torch chased him, T’Challa captured him in a vacuum-sealed room that put out his flame. Rather than fighting the team alone, he had a squad of men fire Polarity Guns at the remaining three heroes, forcing them to separate. Knock-out gas emitted from the fingers of his gloves knocked out the Invisible Girl. The Thing unwisely drank water from a pool that was designed to sap his strength again, permitting T’Challa to match him in strength, the clash ending when the Thing hit a refrigeration unit that froze him. Finally, T’Challa fought Mister Fantastic in the dark and trapped the hero’s hands in titanium cuffs.

Not only did T’Challa employ his subjects to help defeat a superior foe, he used a variety of Wakandan technologies to affect the odds in his favor. Indeed, in that first appearance, the Black Panther had used weaponry concealed within his costume (the knock-out gas).

Priest wrote on his website: “It seemed to me, as a reader, the writers simply didn’t know what to do with this man who had no super-powers, no snappy dialog, no berserker rage and no obvious character faults to capitalize on. Over the years, Panther became a sideshow. Stripped of his advanced tech, that Reed Richards marveled at in Panther’s first appearance in FANTASTIC FOUR #52, a mindset evolved that Panther, for some odd reason, created incredible advanced technology while eschewing the use of the same. I believe someone explained it to me that Panther feels a true warrior doesn’t need bullet-proof costumes or global positioning communicards. That, to prove himself a man and a true warrior, Panther would go into battle side by side with the likes of Thor and Iron Man, and not take so much as a flashlight.”

Priest used Everett K. Ross to exhibit these ideas within his comics, telling Newsarama in 2015: “So I vented my irritation at how Marvel had so marginalized this character (which I interpreted as Marvel editorial approaching the character from a standpoint of race) through the over-the-top stupidity of his new State Department handler: he saw Panther the way Panther had ultimately come to be seen by Marvel: Just Some Guy who was routinely overshadowed by heroes in which they were more invested. Confounding the low expectations for the character was, to me, Job One, and Ross was the tip of that sword.”

“So I gave Joe the Robert DeNiro speech from Casino: “Okay, Joe [Quesada], but if I do it, I have to do this my way. I mean it, no interference.” Basically, I couldn’t write this dull guy who routinely got clocked over the head and dragged behind pickup trucks. I had to write the guy Stan Lee wrote way, way back in Fantastic Four #52: a guy who out-foxed and beat four of Marvel’s most powerful heroes.”

The first issue of Priest’s Black Panther introduced T’Challa’s redesigned costume with anti-metal claws, Vibranium-weave construction, Kimoyo card communication device and energy dagger weapon. All of this was based on information that had existed about Wakanda’s technological capabilities since the Black Panther’s first appearance. “There was no reason we could think of that Panther would eschew technology,” Priest explained, “and we refused to invent some tribal mumbo-jumbo to perpetuate a warped logic.”

In 2002, Bob Almond wrote on the Black Panther Message Board: “Like Don [McGregor], he took what Stan and Jack and Roy introduced and added to it. We got Panther, in both Wakanda and other venues, back to being a schemer, still noble and bold but he really KICKED TAIL now in the Marvel Knights series. Priest’s take was quite different from Don’s but doesn’t go against it but actually in many case honors his work IMO by adding to the legend and, again, to the cast. Priest’s ‘redefining’ Panther was a success. For a while. But while sales have been weaker over time CJP was able to accomplish having T’Challa in print longer term than anyone else before him.”

Bob Almond concluded, prophetically: “Much can be said of the strengths and weaknesses of Priest’s run but he helped give the guy more attention and that can only help BP overall as a future success with the possible movie in production and any future series that may follow this one.”

TO SAVE YOU, WHY MUST I PUNCH THE DEVIL?

Just as in his first appearance where the Black Panther had triumphed singlehandedly over the Fantastic Four, Priest matched the Black Panther up against an adversary who would require T’Challa to use his wits, his subjects, and all the technological advantages he could muster.

On the printed page, however, a first-time reader might think Priest had made a serious misstep. After Ross asking whether the Black Panther wanted him to call in the Avengers – the team who had overshadowed him in the past – T’Challa responded, “Why?” Then punched Mephisto in the face, knocking him down. T’Challa is a character known for his cat-like agility, his acrobatic maneuvers; the punch, as rendered by Mark Texeira, made T’Challa look like a boxer. If the punch had transpired on the final page of the comic, Priest might have lost a few readers.

In the following three pages, a lengthy series of exposition narrated by Ross explained what had transpired, placing the punch itself into context. Mephisto had believed himself outside of any power the Black Panther might have wielded; the demon, like so many fans and writers, saw the Black Panther as Priest’s “Doormat Man.” A punch in the face was about the last thing Mephisto anticipated. Ross’ narration explained that the large staff who had accompanied T’Challa to the United States (seen in issue #1 but sidelined until this moment in the story) were among the most brilliant minds in Wakanda and had placed a force field around Mephisto, “remodulating the field thirty times a second. Maybe that bought the client eight seconds of confusion. He only needed three.”

Much like Marvel’s heroes, Marvel’s villains are held to particular standards, largely dealing with their popularity. Dr. Doom is considered one of the greatest villains in the Marvel Universe, despite not being one of the most physically powerful. He’s thus sometimes brought out to lose a fight in order to build up another character’s reputation (such as Squirrel Girl, in her debut appearance). The Wrecking Crew, on the other hand, are a team of physically powerful men with enchanted weapons and abilities who are supposed to be on par with the godly Thor; instead, they tend to lose fights to people like the Punisher. Dr. Doom can lose a fight to Squirrel Girl without affecting his standing in the Marvel Universe; the Wrecking Crew are not expected to ever put up a decent fight.

Mephisto, though, was not a villain created as a physical threat. Originally fashioned as an adversary for the saintly Silver Surfer, Mephisto’s primary goal was to corrupt the Surfer’s soul, not best him in combat. Still, that the Surfer had not claimed a decisive physical victory over Mephisto at the time of Priest’s Black Panther suggests something of Mephisto’s ranking. (Mephisto had lost a fight to Thanos during Jim Starlin’s Infinity Gauntlet, but then, Jim Starlin’s Thanos is canonically the villain who only loses when he wants to.)

Matching the Black Panther against a villain who was virtually undefeated and who played in a larger, mystical / cosmic playing field beyond that which T’Challa normally frequented was a bold move by Priest; to any fans who knew something of Mephisto’s standing, it was provocative, but to those who did not know Mephisto or where he ranked in the Marvel Universe, they could at least appreciate that the character who embodied the Devil himself had just lost a fight with a single punch. If T’Challa could do that, what else could he accomplish?

HE’S NOT TARZAN

In the first few months of Priest’s Black Panther, fans challenged the hero’s new costume and equipment. One of critic Randy Lander’s few quibbles with Priest’s first issue of Black Panther was the hero’s new weaponry. “While I like seeing Black Panther using some of the technology of his native land in his costume, I think Priest may have gone a bit *too* high-tech. His energy dagger strikes me as something particularly odd for such a tradition-bound character.”

In a 2000 post on the Black Panther Message Board, Priest explained to one fan why his Black Panther made use of gadgets:

IMO, the gadgets are not new, he just decided to start using them. He is a Reed Richards-level inventor and Tony Stark-level tinkerer who created most every super-scientific gadget he uses or that is employed in the country of Wakanda.

Different writers have different views and interpretations of characters. My view of Panther is it makes no sense to me for so great and brilliant a creator to never use even the most modest and reasonable technology in the furtherance of his work. I mean, it just baffled me that Panther used to get beat up and shot almost every month, when he is certainly capable of kicking butt himself, and he could and should take some reasonable precautions (like a bullet-proof suit).

The use of technology in this version of PANTHER has caused perhaps the greatest controversy among fans and even some pros, who so disagree with my approach to Panther that some may be reluctant to use him in other comics. I’ve been accused of making Panther too mean and too techy and flashy; like he’s supposed to be Tarzan or something. Like he’s supposed to eschew technology and insist on riding bareback and going mano-a-mano in order to prove something.

Or, maybe it’s some bizarre capitulation to “the way it’s always been done;” Panther has never had any tech weapons, and his costume has never been bullet proof. Why start now?

Black Panther has nothing to prove to anybody. He’s a king and an inventor and a scientist. A scholar, a brilliant detective.

The guy who showed up in FANTASTIC FOUR #52 was definitely _not_ Tarzan. He wasn’t clueless or uneducated. He used a _lot_ more gadgets than I do in the current series. He was duplicitous, mysterious, dangerous, ruthless, humorous, and violent. I’m not sure which guy my critics are talking about, but I tend to think the Panther I’m writing is more in line with Stan and Jack’s vision [than] Doormat Man (TM) […] If THAT is the guy my critics are longing for, I have to wonder why.

One fan who agreed with Priest’s take was Chris Griffen who wrote on the Black Panther Message Board in 2002: “And the old ‘well that’s the way they’ve always done it’ argument doesn’t hold water either. Why should the Panther eschew technology? Is he a masochist that like’s having his butt handed to him on a weekly basis? I can see T’Challa now, bedridden in traction: ‘Well, I could have used vibranium-based technology to save myself, but at least I have the solemn pride that I got my butt kicked because I refused to use anything other than a spandex costume!’ Come on!”

Priest agreed with Griffen’s take, responding: “This is what I’m saying … On an even whinier and more personal note: T’Challa is THE black super-hero. The first and the best. It seems a violation of his character that we should deny who he is just because somebody got the dumb idea that Stan and Jack wanted to create Tarzan. He was _never_ meant to be Tarzan. Ka-Zar was meant to be Tarzan.”

Critic John Jones wrote approvingly in 2000 about Priest’s additions to the Black Panther’s arsenal, stating Priest was: “…updating the Panther’s power definition to include some notable technological advances that, while not removing one whit of the Panther’s athletic hand to hand combat prowess, unmistakably delineate him as the scientific genius he is as well.” Jones assessed that the Panther’s new costume and equipment “have managed to make T’Challa a more formidable and credible competitor in the super-arena.”

GIVE THE FANS WHAT THEY WANT?

Even then, Priest dealt with fans from the other end of the spectrum, arguing he hadn’t done enough to make T’Challa powerful. In a 2000 post on the Avengers Message Board, Priest answered one such fan who had complained about T’Challa losing his fight against Killmonger in Black Panther #20. Said fan objected as well that in a recent issue, T’Challa’s sole action scene saw him deliver only one kick. Priest explained:

It was a major decision for us to allow Panther to lose. The problem is, when you have hero v. villain, the result is simple: somebody is going to lose, and it typically is the villain. There is great risk in allowing the hero to fail, but we felt even in this failure, we could accurately delineate T’Challa’s innate nobility.

The whole point of Black Panther is he is a normal guy who uses his wits and extraordinary strength of character to win his battles. He is more akin to Captain America than to Spider-Man. He has enhanced strength and speed and agility, hearing and night vision, an acute sense of smell, etc. But he is otherwise a normal man. A man like Cap, who will always find a way.

I’m sorry you don’t like our take on T’Challa. I’m sorry for the one kick. BLACK PANTHER is not about slugfests and who has the best power level. It’s a political drama about the king of an African Nation who is often seen as a super-hero (but who is not, in fact, a super-hero), and his struggle to maintain balance in the political landscape of the Marvel Universe.

The powers are great, but I started reading Marvel Comics for the characters. For the emotional complexity and diversity Stan and Jack and so many other great creators breathed into this universe. And that’s a tradition I’m proud to carry on in BLACK PANTHER.

If all you’re interested in are the fights, the number of punches thrown, or who’s more powerful than who, then, IMO, you’re missing the best of what Marvel has to offer, and, clearly, BLACK PANTHER as he is currently published is not for you.

BTW: BP, as I see him, can beat anybody in the MU. Anybody. He hardly needs amping.

To fans who wanted a more powerful Black Panther, he wrote to the Black Panther Message Board in 2000:

What I like about Panther is he has no measurable ‘super’ power (beyond his enhanced senses), and he uses a relatively small arsenal of personal weaponry (when he is quite capable of creating Iron Man-style armor and going that route). And yet, he coolly marches into the most unwinable battles without hesitation, with good humor, and typically wins his battles with his wit as much as with his fists.

That, to me, is a more unique comic book than simply amping his power so he can go toe-to-toe with the Hulk or somebody. And, as Kurt Busiek correctly pointed out, if power level was an indicator of sales, then the Silver Surfer would have consistently outsold Spider-Man all these years — which he has not.

[B]ut I tend to agree with those critical of my use of technology in this book: if you move T’Challa too far away from the classic Coyote legends — the mysterious and unknowable trickster god — then he ceases to *be* the Black Panther. He becomes Generic Hero Guy in Black Spandex. Could I make T’Challa fly? You bet. Super strength? a simple exo-skeleton added to the suit. Death ray beams from his eyes? He could rig something like that over lunch.

But I doubt he would, because, I think, ultimately, too much technology moves him too far away from who he is. He becomes like unto, say, a corporate vice president so far removed from the consumer base he’s trying to sell to that he has no idea what books to publish.

I think we’ve struck a reasonable balance between his becoming Iron Man and his being the guy who gets beat up and dragged every month. He has a reasonable and appropriate power level (akin to Captain America, though the two compliment each other in terms of strength, endurance and ability).

Priest added in another Usenet post: “Much of what I think, in terms of Panther v. the Marvel U, applies even moreso to Captain America. Cap does not have high tech to assist him, but he has the indominable will and spirit. I think Cap can beat everybody, including Panther. And I think of Panther as the African Captain America.”

When a fan on Usenet in 2001 asked Priest if he thought he’d made the Black Panther too “uber” he responded:

No. Panther was DE-powered by people who did not understand or did not agree with Stan Lee’s basic premise. He has existed for *decades* in violation and aberration of that premise. I find it marginally offensive that most every other core SA [Silver Age] Marvel character has developed and evolved and improved over the years, while Panther was _stripped_ of his (a) sense of humor, (b) cunning (c) prowess (d) duality and/or duplicitous nature and (e) his technological powers, apparently because no one had much of a vision for the character that didn’t include him getting beat up and dragged every other issue. Panther should be at least on the same level as Namor. I did not amp Panther. He is no stronger and no more powerful than his OHOTMU [Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe] entry. He just doesn’t get dragged quite as often.

Christopher Priest’s interpretation of the Black Panther’s power has been carried on by those creators who followed in his path – including Reginald Hudlin, Jason Aaron, Jonathan Hickman, Al Ewing, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ryan Coogler, and John Ridley. They would adhere to the idea that the Black Panther was more than a fine combatant; he was also a cunning wielder of advanced technology and a difficult enemy in a fight. He’s come a far way from the “dull and colorless character” of before, and you can pinpoint the exact moment the Black Panther’s standing started to shift: When his fist met Mephisto’s face.