Line #61 YMMV/BlackPanther


1	%%* AudienceAlienatingEra: Administrivia/ZeroContextExamples. Do not unhide without explaining how those eras fit the trope's definition.
2	%%** Hudlin's run due to the extreme amount of CharacterShilling.
3	%%** Jonathan Maberry's run, especially ''ComicBook/{{Doomwar}}''.
4	%%** David Liss' run is often considered one for T'Challa as well, but almost always considered one for his enemy the White Wolf.
5	* BadassDecay: In the late 2000s/early 2010s. Panther had gone from outwitting [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony Stark]], [[TheDevil Mephisto]], and pulling off repeated [[GambitRoulette impossibly complex and brilliant schemes]], and going to toe-to-toe with heavy hitters like Namor and the [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk]] to getting yelled at by Luke Cage for not being as good as Daredevil. Al Ewing corrected this, though. Six issues into ''The Ultimates'', and Panther's already dealt with little things like "Galactus" and "How do you get outside of time and space?" without blinking.
6	* BrokenBase:
7	** Some people really, '''''really''''' hate Reginald Hudlin's run on the comic, finding the T'Challa/Storm marriage forced and seeing Hudlin portraying Wakanda as too perfect. Some people love it for the Panther/Storm marriage, cool victories for T'Challa, external villains instead of the endless Wakandan coups and civil wars of the [=McGregor=]/Priest years, and a lighthearted, fun tone.
8	** Jack Kirby's run can come off as either fun or mediocre, depending on the reader's tolerance for its anachronistic use of fantastical, lighthearted Silver Age tropes.
9	** The Hickman years. Hickman fans usually love it, Panther fans usually hate it. People who were already fans of both can go either way. Some feel Hickman did a good job bringing back T'Challa's intelligence and scientific knowledge, and appreciate his portrayal of Wakanda. Others feel he made T'Challa too much of an AntiHero ruled by his emotions.
10	** Wakanda itself is similarly subject to both abject praise by fans who love its strong AfroFuturism theme and the fact it has never been conquered in its history, and to derision by people who see it as a too perfect to be realistic.
11	** Perhaps the biggest BrokenBase to come in the Panther fandom was the marriage - and subsequent divorce - of T'Challa and [[Characters/MarvelComicsStorm Ororo Munroe]]. An avid fandom absolutely loved the idea of wedding Marvel's two oldest and most famous African superheroes and were saddened when they broke up. An equally avid hatedom despised the idea, citing it as a case of StrangledByTheRedString (as explained under its entry) and reeking of [[TokenShipping tokenism]], and were ecstatic (or at least thought it was the most natural result) when T'Challa divorced Storm and she made it plain afterwards that it was over.
12	** Ta-Nehisi Coates' run. Some like the questions it raises about whether or not Wakanda truly is an advanced and progressive country while others find it poorly paced, a poor portrayal of T'Challa as an ineffective PinballProtagonist and an undermining of the Afrofuturism elements that are vital to the Black Panther story.
13	* CantUnhearIt: Creator/ChadwickBoseman and Creator/JamesCMathisIII have both become fan favorite choices for T'Challa's voice. Mathis in particular became one of the few cast members of ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' to reprise his role for ''WesternAnimation/AvengersAssemble''[[note]]Creator/FredTatasciore also reprised the role of the [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk]], but with years of experience from projects predating and following ''EMH''[[/note]], and even attended the premiere of the first live-action ''Black Panther'' movie (to promote ''Avengers, Assemble!'').
14	* CompleteMonster:
15	** [[ComicBook/BlackPanther Comic]]: See [[Monster/MarvelComics here]].
16	** In ''ComicBook/BlackPanther: [[https://www.serialbox.com/serials/black-panther Sins of the King]]'', Viper, aka Madame Hydra, is the leader of ComicBook/{{Hydra}}, who wants to take over Wakanda's resources for herself. She teams up with Dr. Miremba Angom, health minister to Waknada's neighboring nation Rudyarda, who secretly has a grudge against Wakanda. Viper tells the supervillain Graviton that Rudyarda is developing a particle bridge, and Graviton kills thousands in Rudyarda's capital to try to obtain it. Then Viper takes the guise of Jennifer Lancaster, director of an NGO called Ruby that promises to rebuild Rudyarda with Wakanda's help. Viper lures Black Panther into a trap and captures him, taking him to a lab where Hydra has captured hundreds of superhumans, [[PlayingWithSyringes experimenting on them to reproduce their powers]]. Viper has Black Panther tortured, but the latter escapes, later returning to learn that Hydra has invaded Wakanda. Black Panther and his allies defeat the Hydra army, but Viper has been working with Miremba to destroy Wakanda's population, with Miremba bringing back fallen Hydra soldiers as zombies, [[ZombieApocalypse planning to use them to kill everyone in Wakanda]]. When the Avengers try to help Black Panther, Viper forces the supervillain Thunderball to attack them, threatening to [[ExplosiveLeash blow up him with a bomb]] she placed on Thunderball if he refuses.
17	* DesignatedHero: Depending on the interpretation. Played deliberately when Killmonger technically became the Black Panther, and insisted on joining the Avengers, despite being a villain and the guy who took the previous Panther out of action.
18	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Everett Ross, T'Challa's best friend. His [[DemotedToExtra demotion to extra]] in Hudlin's run is still a sore point for fans. Naturally, they were pretty ecstatic when the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse made him a major character.
19	* FandomEnragingMisconception: Fans utterly hate it when anyone accuses the comic of being created as a mascot for the Black Panther Party. Not only did his comic book come out before the party was founded, but Marvel actually changed the hero's name to Black Leopard for a while to avoid any associations with the political organization.
20	* FanonDiscontinuity:
21	** So much of Hudlin's and Liss' plot points are Wall Bangers for some that were big fans of the Priest run, although this isn't always the case. However, pretty much everyone agrees that ''ComicBook/{{Doomwar}}'' never happened... except, unfortunately, for Marvel themselves.
22	** Panther's involvement in ''Secret Wars'' is a whole lot of this for many of his fans.
23	* FridgeLogic: Whilst comic books have never let scientific accuracy get in the way of a good story, the RetCon of Wakanda to having always been generations ahead of the rest of the world on a technological level really flounders when you consider one simple question: how did an Iron Age culture figure out how to even begin to interact with what is literally the most NighInvulnerable metal on the planet? They can't melt it down, they certainly can't beat it into shape, so where do they even begin to experiment with it? Justified in issue #13 of 2020's ''ComicBook/XMen: Marauders" line, where it's stated that, like its Adamantium knock-off, Vibranium can be made malleable by extreme heat, and the first man to figure out how to work it did so by setting up a forge on the rim of an active volcano to use lava to soften the metal.
24	* GeniusBonus:
25	** Coates' run features characters discussing the likes of John Locke, as well as obscure poems by Henry Dumas, and generally features a lot of AllohistoricalAllusion to real-world political struggles in the present and in history.
26	** The Dora were introduced as wives in training for Black Panther. T'Challa has no interest in that, unlike other Wakandan kings. Then the creators made them an AmazonBrigade based on the Agojie, warrior women of Dahomey, for the movie. This was to remove some of the grosser implications of the tradition. But the historical Agojie are, in fact, technically all the wives of the king.
27	%% The Hindsight cleanup thread has determined that comic book Wakanda holding back the cure for cancer and the death of Boseman are not a valid Harsher In Hinsight example. See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15816392660A25032600&page=50
28	* HilariousInHindsight:
29	** The Kimoyo Cards that Wakandans use, especially Black Panther. The things are basically smart phones, complete with the same same-y design... first appearing in 1998, almost a decade before smart phones actually existed. Apparently Wakanda really is years ahead of the rest of the world!
30	** The influence of Creator/VinDiesel on Kasper Cole's appearance might now seem like unintentional foreshadowing of Vin playing a Marvel character. However, it doesn't foresee him playing ''[[ComicBook/{{Groot}} someone else]]'', or that he'd only do so as a voice over.
31	** The beginning of Hudlin's run had a Wakandan suggest bartering the cure for cancer to the U.S., a notion which someone else dismisses because, "They'll just take the gift and turn it into a weapon, like they do with everything else". In ''ComicBook/DarkReign'' it's revealed that ComicBook/NormanOsborn had weaponized a cancer cure for use against people like ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}.
32	** The ''Jungle Action'' series had T'Challa fight against villains named Venomm and Lord Karnaj. Years later, ComicBook/SpiderMan got two villains with [[ComicBook/{{Venom}} similar]] [[ComicBook/{{Carnage}} names]].
33	* IronWoobie: T'Challa does ''not'' have an easy life, but he almost never angsts about it.
34	* JerkassWoobie: White Wolf. He just wants to help Wakanda, but is constantly insulted and rejected, driving him into villainy.
35	* MemeticBadass: Kind of inevitable given that Black Panther has canonically ''[[http://superlolbubblesblog.tumblr.com/post/100791667691/nothingcanstopthejuggernaut-you-havent-lived PUNCHED OUT SATAN]]''.
36	* MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales: For all the occasional slips in depicting Africans in the series, the series has many black fans who like the setting of Wakanda for being an ancient African civilization with a highly advanced technological economy and Afrofuturist themes.
37	* MyRealDaddy:
38	** Don [=McGregor's=] run in ''Jungle Action'' in TheSeventies is now regarded as something of a forgotten classic, with T'Challa returning to Wakanda after a long absence and dealing with his country's feelings of desertion, and new villain Erik Killmonger. It used to be [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes really hard to find]], but thankfully the film has changed that.
39	** While it didn't sell particularly well at the time and it got complex to the point of near-parody, Christopher Priest's run on the character in the [[TheNineties late 1990s]] is one of the most well-regarded runs in Marvel's recent history, and is one of the big reasons why so many fans were upset with Reginald Hudlin's run, albeit not by Priest himself who was friends with Hudlin, and who pointed out that Hudlin's run sold better than his, and introduced the BreakoutCharacter Shuri. A lot of the movie was directly inspired by Priest's work.
40	** Creator/JonathanHickman is also credited as one of T'Challa's best writers by Ta-Nehisi Coates. T'Challa was featured in a major role in his epic run on Fantastic Four and ''ComicBook/TheAvengersJonathanHickman'', where he was {{Deuteragonist}} to Reed's protagonist. Hickman made T'Challa and Wakanda into a major corner of the overall Marvel Universe and many of the events in ''Infinity War'', the Black Order's attack on Wakanda in particular is based on events from his ''ComicBook/{{Infinity}}'' in addition to heavily focusing on the heavy burden of being King and superhero on T'Challa's shoulders.
41	* {{Narm}}: Indonesian-speaking fans (applies to both comics and film) can't take M'Baku's name without laughing because it sounds similar with Indonesian (or rather, Jakartan/Javanese) equivalent of "my older sister" (''Mbakku'').
42	* NeverLiveItDown: Wakanda withholding the cure for cancer has never stopped being a source of mockery at best, a source of contention at worst.
43	* OlderThanTheyThink: The comic book character actually preceded the similarly-named real-world African-American militant group, and wasn't, as many later fans think, named in reference to it.
44	* OneSceneWonder: Solomon Prey only appeared in the ''Panther's Prey'' miniseries, but proved himself to be a very formidable foe to the Panther.
45	* PanderingToTheBase:
46	** The abrupt ending of the T'Challa/Storm marriage in ''Avengers vs. X-Men'' has been interpreted as a present for detractors of the Hudlin era.
47	** As of 2018, after the [[Film/BlackPanther2018 movie]] was released, Black Panther and Wakanda as a whole are given a more active role in the comics continuity such as the ''Avengers (2018)'' series. A lot of fans felt that it's simply an attempt on Marvel's part to ride on the movie's popularity to draw in more readers.
48	* SalvagedStory:
49	** Former ''Power Man and Iron Fist'' scribe [[Creator/ChristopherPriestComics Christopher Priest]] used a story in his Panther run to give Iron Fist his powers back.
50	** Hudlin's ''Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of our Fathers'' miniseries retconed a short WWII flashback in the first issue of Hudlin's run that had Captain America losing to an unnamed WWII Black Panther in a CurbStompBattle. The mini gave the context behind the fight while leaving the result ambiguous. It fleshed out the Black Panther, now identified as Azzuri T'Challa's grandfather, and had him team with Cap against the Red Skull.
51	** Jonathan Hickman's ''Fantastic Four'' run (that led into his ''Avengers'' run) had Reed offer to help T'Challa find a fix for inert Vibranium. T'Challa laughs it off, questioning why Reed thinks he himself hasn't already solved it, and also noting that he's smart enough to have contingency plans for his country's economy. Basically it's a quick fix for ''ComicBook/{{Doomwar}}''.
52	** Ta-Nehisi Coates is using his run to [[spoiler:resurrect T'Challa's sister, Shuri]].
53	* StrangledByTheRedString: T'Challa and Storm. Hudlin basically built the marriage out of a two-issue cameo from Priest's run where their "romance" was treated as an unrealistic-but-cathartic childhood fantasy that would never actually work in any real way, and included Storm explicitly comparing Panther to ComicBook/{{Magneto}}. This was either alleviated or exacerbated (depending on your point of view) by the Storm flashback miniseries which came out around the same time and established that Storm and T'Challa did have an earlier romantic relationship when they were teenagers.
54	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Many believed that [[spoiler:the death of Shuri acted as [[CollateralAngst emotional angst]] for T'Challa instead of any real conclusion to her role as Black Panther in the "End Times" storyline]]. The 2016 comic corrects this by [[spoiler:following Shuri's adventures in Djali, the plane of ancestral memory, and bringing her BackFromTheDead soon after.]]
55	* ToughActToFollow:
56	** [[Creator/ChristopherPriestComics Christopher Priest's]] run essentially redefined Black Panther in every way and is almost universally loved. Reginald Hudlin's work was tolerated only as long as it reworked Priest's ideas; the second he went in his own direction, sales tanked.
57	** It's likely a testament of his writing skills that Don [=McGregor=]'s run turned out to be one for Creator/JackKirby himself.
58	* VindicatedByHistory: At the time it was being written, the David Liss run was disliked by fans for having T'Challa serve as a replacement hero for Daredevil in Hell's Kitchen. However, some fans (especially those dissatisfied with the Ta-Nehisi Coates and John Ridley runs) have developed some appreciation for Liss's story for maintaining T'Challa's GuileHero skills and showing how he can retain his awesomeness in a different environment.
59	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Black Panther was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966, almost at the same time of the creation of the Black Panthers party. But Lee and Kirby were first. Marvel even attempted for a short time to rename the character to "Black Leopard", to avoid the misunderstanding, but returned soon to the original: they created it first, why should they give it up?
60	* TheWoobie: Kasper Cole. Even before he became a superhero and had to deal with supervillains trying to ruin his life, he was constantly harassed and mocked by his peers for being mixed race.

Context YMMV / BlackPanther