Marvel Comics General

Really? I figured he was a step above Tony on that front, and the only reason he doesn't have an Iron Man style suit is because he flat out doesn't need it.

When Black Panther was introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four, way back in the 60's, the idea was that all of Wakanda's ultra-advanced technology was T'Challa's own invention, and that Wakanda was a pretty ordinary African country before this prodigy prince came along. I'm not sure when the retcon that T'Challa simply inherited a longstanding high tech civilization occurred.

Edited by RavenWilder on Mar 21st 2024 at 9:39:22 AM

probably whenever the Wakandan vibranium chunk became more realized

I think Hudlin codified it if not invented it.

Probably a better setting concept than one great man great manning an entire country into a high tech wonderland. But presents its own problems if Wakanda always had superior technology, problems that have been bandaided over with a strict isolationist policy.

T'Challa was basically Doom's Good Counterpart.

As noted the issue with being his Q is that T'Challa is reduced to asking Shuri for help on basically everything.

It's like how in the Ridley run during the Colonialist arc T'Challa had to ask Shuri to wikipedia the history of buffalo soldiers despite T'Challa previously being a college professor of American history in his past.

He can't just know anything, he always has to ask someone for help on it. There is no collaborative effort, he's like the Flash from CW, reliant on Star Labs just to think.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 21st 2024 at 12:20:44 PM

I think Kirby's '60s FF run and '70s BP run suggested that the Wakandans were reluctant to exploit their Vibranium resources because the Vibranium mountain was holy to them, and Man should not tamper with things he was not meant to etc. Then Klaw came to Wakanda in search of their big rock candy mountain and shot the place up, so the Wakandans reasoned that they needed to protect their land from exploiters, and if the gods gave them a magic mountain, they're probably supposed to use it.

Plus, T'Challa nabbed Klaw's sound gun, which might have given them a technological start — which itself would present the problematic issue of Africans only becoming advanced via white man's tech, but Wakandan tech is far more varied than just sound guns, so I don't think it would be a big issue.

I myself prefer the idea that Wakandans were always more advanced than other African nations for most of their history, but didn't industrialize until Klaw invaded, after which they realized they needed to up their game.

I think its fine that t'challa has/had someone to make him stuff and look up stuff for him, he can do it on his own but he's too busy fighting world ending threats with the avengers so his sister who mostly just stays in wakanda can help him. Just need to emphasize more that he could be doing this all himself but it saves time and lives to let others help.

"he’s seldom presented as one of The scientist characters" Back when ranking the smartest characters was a thing, T'Challa was considered one of the 10 smartest men in the world. He was up there with Reed and Banner. So, he kinda was presented as one of the big science characters.

Since then they've really been prioritizing Shuri as the smart one by grafting his technological smarts to her

T'Challa doesn't make anything anymore, even the latest Iron Man suit he pulls off in the last issue of Ewing's run wasn't made by him

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 21st 2024 at 4:57:36 AM

Marvel is using Pride Month this year to celebrate not just the LGBTQIA+ community but their allies as well.

Thoughts on this? The responses I've seen to this don't seem quite happy.

It's also weird because I don't know why Shuri being science gal would know anything about Civil War history.

I mean, it's just corporate leeching off allyship as always.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Mar 21st 2024 at 9:41:17 AM

Yeah, it's a pretty stupid idea. The real reason they're doing it is so they can sell more covers of Spider-Man and Captain America and shit. But the message it sends does end up being, "Hey, you know who deserves a lot of attention during this celebration of queer pride? Straight people."

Speaking of the June solicits, though:

Peach Momoko's variants for some of the Blood Hunt covers are, as always gorgeous. The main cover for the Jubilee one is great, but that Momoko variant, fuck. And the Magik one.

Hey, Ms. Marvel meeting up with the Inhumans. Neat. Especially since it includes Lockjaw.

Oh shit, that Artgem cover for the Dazzler omnibus. Damn. A cover like that is a good justification to give Dazzler a new ongoing with Artgerm on covers.

I'm not digging Kate's bangs on Yoon's Avengers variant cover. I don't know what it is, it just doesn't work for her. Also, no hip holes on her costume? Failure of a design. Fun line-up, though, with Cap, Kate, Hazmat, and Herc.

That Lozano cover for Scarlet Witch? Holy shit? I love it.

Oh huh, Ultimate X-Men bringing in Nico Minoru. That's interesting.

Is . . . Is that a Peach Momoko cover for Scrooge Mc Duck? Wow. That's honestly amazing. I love that.

I'm reminded of Freedom Ring who was created to be killed and the creator as a random aside also made him gay because, "Why not?"

Then he found out that Freedom Ring was like one of four acknowledged gay characters in all of Marvel.

In his defense he felt really bad about it afterward, especially cause Freedom Ring had good characterization.

Have they brought him back yet?

Edited by lalalei2001 on Mar 21st 2024 at 2:10:55 PM

This is something I oddly experienced in my books oddly enough. I just randomly made most characters have some identity beyond white cis dude in the Supervillainy Saga. Weirdly, every other post would mention the diversity.

Which kind of makes the whole Freedom Ring thing sadder because why not do it?

No. He's still dead.

Robert Kirkman (Freedom Ring's creator) did say back then that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn't have killed him off.

Edited by KRider on Mar 21st 2024 at 11:24:15 AM

They should bring him back :(

Nope and they killed his Skrull friend too.

At least Marvel has a lot more queer characters now.

. . . Though it doesn't look like many of them are set to show up in June, if my reading of the solicits is right.

Amusingly in comparison I've seen more praise for DC's pride specials especially since they are releasing a tribute special to thr late Rachel Pollack.

At least their variant covers is actually focusing on their queer characters.

I feel like DC's always been better about queer rep. They allowed queer characters to exist before Marvel did, and hired more queer creators like Rachel Pollack. DC may have largely limited queer characters to Vertigo in the '90s, but at least they existed. Marvel had Northstar come out and then spent the following few years going right back to pretending homosexuality didn't exist, outside of subtext. DC has won more GLAAD Awards than Marvel has (DC has 12 to Marvel's 6; 78 total nominations to Marvel's 37).

Even when Marvel started catching up, I'd argue DC's continued to do better, being more willing to give their queer characters ongoing titles. I took a look at the solicits from March until June, and the closest Marvel has to an ongoing solo title with a queer lead is Deadpool, whose pansexuality has literally never been treated as anything other than a joke.

So honestly, the fact that DC is getting more praise than Marvel for its Pride shit? It shouldn't actually be all that surprising. They've had their missteps, too, and I seem to recall them getting absolutely lambasted over a Pride image featuring a bunch of straight characters (if I'm remembering correctly). But the truth is, they have pretty much always been better than Marvel at queer representation.

(And that's not getting into other media. Batwoman had a TV show. The Supergirl TV show introduced a new trans character in a major role. Marvel Studios still struggles to include queer rep in any way that can't be completely cut out for other audiences, even in their TV shows. Throwaway lines and subtext, rather than, you know, hey! This lady gets several scenes where she smooches another lady!)

Alyssa Wong's Deadpool run did take a different approach to that, as it wasn't treated as a joke and his love interest Valentine was non-binary.

Well... it's Deadpool, so there were "be my enbae" enby puns, but that's a different kind of humor.

Whether Valentine was afab or amab was irrelevant to the story and never stated.

I'm hoping they're still around in the new series.

Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 22nd 2024 at 9:30:33 AM

Please correct me if I'm off the mark. But Alyssa Wong is a femme-presenting non-binary Asian who wrote a Deadpool book with a love interest, who is a femme-presenting non-binary Asian. Hm?

I read the first issue and totally lost interest right then and there. Am I forgetting something? Did it change in the next issues?

Edited by raykoda16 on Mar 22nd 2024 at 3:56:35 AM

Okay, so I need some help with something.

I've always heard that nobody at Marvel liked the original comics version of Mantis except for her co-creator Steve Engleheart. I wanted to put that Creator's Pest, but I'm having trouble finding any quotes from anyone who worked at Marvel at the time that backs that up.

I was wondering if anyone could point in the right direction of anyone who's actually said that?