Black Panther, Vol. 1: The Long Shadow [Marvel Comics, 2022

Black Panther, Vol. 1: The Long Shadow

by

John Ridley (Writer), Alex Ross (Writer), Juann Cabal (Artist)

My rating: 1 of 5 Ω‘s

This. Was. Terrible.

Preceding this was the Black Panther series by Ta-Nehesi Coates and while I had never read his work before either, that was an epic run that I would be comfortable to say will be landmark as far as this iconic character is concerned. It established the intergalactic kingdom of Wakanda (which was a whole other level of epic!) while also telling the story of not just T’Challa, but of his people and the nation of Wakanda under his rule – one that was bucking for something new and there were machinations in the corridors of power and the hidden paths behind the curtains of it all. It lead to the end of monarchy in Wakanda and the birth of a democracy.

All of that opened up the world of Wakanda and its people and their culture and society that to me felt unprecedented. On top of that, it built a great supporting cast for T’Challa and set up a fascinating new direction for the stories to follow and it is there that we now find ourselves and there that we are suffering as readers – at least I was for certain.

First, I want to get the art out of the way. I do not know who thought this was working. It is VERY rare for me to single out artwork in comics, knowing as I do the painstaking process it can be and it happens lesser still with big-ticket comics like this title. BUT, the artwork is truly terrible. It is inconsistent, it is not exciting, the colours are flat and add little dynamism or depth or life to what I am seeing on the page and frankly, Black Panther deserved better.

Next, the story.
It is poor. There is no getting around that. It is a story that takes the narrative I have laid for you above about this new, deep and intriguing kingdom in transition to a democracy and instead we get a frankly really boring mystery-box globe-trotting adventure. In a moment that made no sense, we start off with Captain America first chiding T’Challa for being lax as Chairman (really?!) of the Avengers and for all his secrecy over the space empire – a loss of faith, rightly so – but then turns around right away and accepts that T’Challa is cool still leading the Avengers and can be relied on to be better at it hereafter… because why not.
Then we have boring times in Wakanda, politics that was about as exciting as the senate speeches in The Phantom Menace and though I got the impression there were meant to be stakes, it didn’t FEEL like it. To top that off, T’Challa is not basically a figurehead and is bored with that – until a secret operative of his gets killed in a foreign country and he has to go figure out the mystery. And while I will not spoil the mystery, the premise is pretty terrible, horribly jarring with the pragmatic but honourable King T’Challa and the whole unfolding of the narrative felt deflated all the way through to the “big reveals” at the end.
T’Challas personal “challenges” and the supposed self-justifications and character journey here felt like just a rinse and repeat of stuff he’s already been through and dealt with in different volumes of his own series and even through Avengers and other titles

It felt like yet another story that had an idea, certain moments/set-pieces and an ending in mind and stuff was thrown together to achieve the same – a problem I’ve seen with most movies for years now and clearly there seem to be more than a few comics following the same pattern. Which is sad.

The singular good(ish) idea was the new tribe of isolationist Wakandans with a whole new approach to Vibranium that were introduced. Lot of potential but again, poorly explored and presented like some enigmatic wonder being put before me but felt bland and derivative. And the new character we gain from them – again, potential and maybe someone will do him justice in future comics, but here he was really boring.

This aside, I think the side-trip T’Challa took to Arrako (formerly Mars) to meet Storm was maybe the only real writing highlight of this entire volume. (This issue had a different artist too, which showed the difference in look and qualty a bit too starkly)

I have never read anything by John Ridley before but this was not a great first impression for me. I pretty much slogged to get to the end just for the sake of reading the whole first story and by then I was 100% clear that I was not going to read any more of this book.



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