Black Panther (2023) Review

Have you ever read an issue of a series and known immediately that it could go on for a good 50 issues easily, if given the chance? That’s how I felt when I read Black Panther #1 by Eve L. Ewing, Chris Allen, Craig Yeung, and Jesus Aburtov for the first time. Now that the series has ended at only 10 issues, I am incredibly saddened because this is the first Black Panther ongoing since Christopher Priest that felt like it could recapture what made that series so special: the fact that it’s an ongoing, sprawling saga simply focused on expanding upon Wakanda and T’Challa. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adored Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Black Panther, it’s amazing, but it did more for the lore behind Bast, the rest of Wakanda’s gods, and going intergalactic than it did to really flesh out Wakanda as a country. There’s always room for that and I will defend that run with my dying breath, but Black Panther is almost 80 years old and he’s only had three series to his name that have run past the 20 issue mark, with his last two ending before they reached 20 issues. Due to this, we don’t have many series that have made the effort to flesh out different cities of Wakanda, or to just spend time with T’Challa in the country, and Eve Ewing and co. took the liberty to finally do this. They flesh out a city we’ve never seen before, Birnin T’Chaka, the city T’Challa’s father grew up in. I found this to be a beautifully poetic thing to allow for T’Challa to rebuild and refocus in the city his father’s from.

So, what is Eve Ewing’s Black Panther really about? Well, first you have to know Ta-Nehisi Coates introduced Wakanda to democracy, which led to T’Challa still being King, but having less power and ultimately deferring to a governing body. John Ridley’s Black Panther series left Wakanda in a rather…interesting state that was trashed by most fans, myself included. T’Challa was stripped of his status as King and exiled from Birnin Zana, the Golden City. Do you need to read both comics to understand this one? No, Eve Ewing does a perfect job of framing this series in a way where almost anyone can just pick it up, as she explains what has happened very naturally. 

This takes us, and T’Challa, to Birnin T’Chaka, or Biti as the locals call it. Biti is described and portrayed to be the slums of Wakanda, while still having the advanced technology that comes with being in Wakanda. Something I found interesting in this is that Biti doesn’t even believe Black Panther would actually come to their city because they’ve been neglected by him for so long. It puts Black Panther in a very similar role to Batman. He’s fighting the idea that he’s a myth, learning about this city and getting his bearings. He even feels bad because he neglected this city for so long. I don’t know if this was meta commentary on the fact that this city has existed, but because no one has touched it, T’Challa had also neglected it or just a very good explanation for why we haven’t seen the city. Either way, I loved this and it drives the main development for T’Challa as he tries to come back from the big fall of grace he had in Ridley’s Black Panther. Eve Ewing gets T’Challa SO intimately, I honestly jump to thinking she may have the best voice for him, to me at least. I feel like for the longest time T’Challa’s balance of his nobility, wisdom, kindness, and calculatedness hasn’t been the greatest. Some writers get parts of his personality right, others sometimes lean a lot into the crafty, noble King bit, which works for certain moments to make him look cool, but for an overall series, you really need to nail every single part, and Eve does this so well. Between T’Challa’s want to be more present in Birnin T’Chaka, to the wisdom he gives to Beisa to help her along as he leaves, and then his ability to show up in a city he’s never been to and still figure out ways to assimilate into the culture and end up knowing the city well, it’s a perfect balance here. 

Ultimately, T’Challa is opposed by the five crime families, mainly the Ilonga family and Baba Nkisu’s family as they are rivals, and T’Challa seeks to rid the city of this gang war. We also have a new supporting character in Beisa, as mentioned before, who serves as a bit of a Catwoman to T’Challa’s Batman here. I hesitate to say Eve brought Gotham to Wakanda because a city overrun by crime families with a “hero” here to save it wasn’t new to Batman, but it’s translated very well since Wakanda has never had that, as far as I can remember at least. It’s something new and fresh that absolutely makes sense and works for who Black Panther is.

We also get some more lore for a previous Black Panther and the mystical side of Wakanda, as we’re taken back a century, during the time of King M’Teli’s rule as Black Panther. King M’Teli is T’Challa’s great-grandfather, as we see T’Chanda as a baby in Black Panther #6, T’Chaka’s father. The captain of M’Teli’s Hatut Zeraze unit, N’Dozi, disagreed with M’Teli’s enforcement of the law and felt he could be more stern, more old-fashioned. This led N’Dozi to leave the Hatut Zeraze and seek a Shaman who would teach him how to access the Djalia – the spirit realm that houses the collective Wakandan memory and souls of their ancestors.This process turned N’Dozi into a phantom and he’d go on to feed on the souls that brought “shame, pestilence and filth” to Wakanda. He became known as Kivu’ma. Thankfully, M’Teli found a way to seal him within the Djalia, and for a century that worked, however the Djalia had been lost recently in Coates’s Black Panther series. Kivu’ma was freed and this led to a series of kidnappings that had gone overlooked for some time until Beisa started investigating it.

I compared this take on Black Panther to Batman a lot and I loved that aspect of it. It’s a new direction for the character that isn’t so alien because T’Challa is a genius so he would have detective skills, couple that with Shuri taking over the brunt of the inventions in Wakanda and T’Challa in general having very minimal resources, this brought a very new challenge to T’Challa. He doesn’t know this city, so you find T’Challa having multiple compelling inner monologues that really showcase how T’Challa’s brain works more than I think we’ve ever seen it, at least in a very long time. He also has an alter ego during the day named Ize Mbaya, which allows him to see the streets of the city as a civilian in an attempt to understand the people, he even eventually embraces parts of the citylife to further ingratiate himself, even if he ultimately used it as a means to generate leads for the Kivu’ma case. This was a profound aspect of the series and honestly one of my favorites, T’Challa has had a rough go of it the last few years, even with Coates’s Black Panther being as amazing as it was. The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda started with T’Challa having amnesia and being a slave, then for him to be on the run and then later exiled by the Wakandan governing body, it’s nice to see him enjoy himself and the city his father is from. It just feels deeply poetic and cathartic since he can’t see his father anymore and this opened up a brand new connection to T’Chaka that he never had. 

Next, we have Beisa, and even though they initially opposed each other, T’Challa does end up befriending Beisa very quickly and they work together to rid this city of the crime family’s prominence by the end of the series. What’s her stake in all this? Kivu’ma had been causing the disappearance of powerful people in Biti, which led to less people that Beisa could steal from. I love Beisa, I think she’s a fantastic addition to Black Panther. I never thought T’Challa needed a femme fatale, but that’s just on the surface, she’s so much more than that. She’s a direct parallel to T’Challa where they both had big shoes to fill set by their fathers. T’Challa is always left thinking he may never fill them, of course, while Beisa instead decided to leave Mohanda and become her true self. She’s incredibly smart and well-cultured, constantly showing she can hold her own and we see many times across this run where T’Challa needs to lean on her a bit. T’Challa even jokes that she may have had a promising career in law enforcement, there’s definitely some truth there because she studied forensics. It’s nice, T’Challa has been King a long time, he’s always been responsible and for him to need someone is rare, especially in his country. It’s also nice that Beisa is a character who isn’t really interested in him in the traditional sense that a femme fatale normally is to the main character, they feel like partners in crime first, and while they have a budding friendship, I doubt there’d be something romantic, but I wouldn’t be opposed to it.

I also want to take some time to highlight the art in this run. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Chris Allen before this because the faces he drew just didn’t work for me, but he does an amazing job here in this book and even more so with the new Black Panther suit and Beisa’s entire design. All of the action scenes Allen draws are so fluid and I couldn’t get enough of them. I love this new Black Panther suit and it’s drawn the best by Chris Allen this entire series, it is stunning. It takes Black Panther, which is normally a very streamlined costume, and makes it more extravagant. He gets a little cape and a shield on his shoulder, it’s so proudly influenced by Wakanda and I’d love for it to stay a little longer. The book is also joined by Matt Horak who draws Black Panther #6, the first appearance of M’Teli, again another beautiful Black Panther design, simple but very effective, and we also have Mack Chater who draws Black Panther #5 and teams up with Allen for issues 7-9 and he does them beautifully. This is the first time I’ve read a series with either Horak or Chater but I’d absolutely love to see them again.

Earlier I said I read the first issue and felt like this series could have gone for 50 issues. I also felt that way even after reading the 10th issue. Even though I felt like Eve didn’t have much room to stretch her legs this series, she still left a significant mark on Wakanda and Black Panther. She concludes her story on the gang war in Biti and with Kivu’ma pretty flawlessly, but you can tell she had a little more in the tank. There’re even characters that, while used effectively, definitely could’ve been afforded more time because I would’ve loved to see what else Eve would’ve done with Shuri or even Nightshade who makes a very brief appearance and was ultimately instrumental in the making of T’Challa’s new suit in Black Panther #10. Even if it was only 10 more issues, I know she’d be able to write another great story that took us through T’Challa being reinstated as King since the series ends with him going to try and do that. It’s unfortunate because I’m going to miss her take on Black Panther, and I don’t know if the series was cut short or if she wanted to leave, but it really highlights a current issue in the Big Two of comics (Marvel and DC) where so many series are marketed as ongoing series only for them to be cut short. We’re no longer in an age where a young, new writer can come to DC or Marvel and get the chance to cook on a title. Even writers who’ve got skin in the game don’t get that much. I don’t know, it’s a bit depressing, I really would’ve liked to see what else Eve would have done with T’Challa.

I’ve been reviewing a lot of Black Panther lately on this site, he’s a character I’m very passionate about, and while I’ve lamented the main title’s lack of “back to basics” stories, even with this series, I do feel like if given the chance, this one would have gotten there. It’s unfortunate, Eve’s voice and clear passion for T’Challa and Wakanda could’ve carried a very long run on the title for me. I hope we can see another run as lengthy as Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run again, but until then I still highly recommend Eve Ewing’s Black Panther, Vol. 1: Reign at Dusk is already out and Vol. 2 hits stores June 4, 2024, so I implore you to go and check out this beautiful run.