Black Panther's Daughter

The origin of Black Panther

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The Evolution of Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’

Tracing the comic book origins of a complex, exciting character—and the series that (sometimes) bears his name

By Micah Peters on February 14, 2018 12:45 pm

Mario Zucca

The most tattooable image of Huey P. Newton was taken in 1967, when the cofounder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was about 25 years old. The photo, shot by Blair Stapp, finds Newton sitting on a round wicker chair, a beret on his head, a black leather duster on his back, a spear and a rifle in either hand. It is an image that projects strength and elicits feelings of pride. And when the first official poster for Marvel’sBlack Panther was released,the resemblance was tough to miss:

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This only makes sense for a movie titled Black Panther, with a majorly black cast and a black director, arriving during Black History Month. The last leg of the promotional tour brought Michael B. Jordan to the cover of British GQ, glowering in pensive black and white styled in … a beret and a leather duster. The cover waslauded as a celebration of the legacy of the Black Panther party as an organization that inspired the black community to dignify and protect itself.

The less sexy way to read Jordan’s look for the GQ cover was as an advertisement. Like the dubious GQ cover, the story of the Marvel property itself has often been one of its capital-I Importance clashing with the fact of its profitability. The same could be said of almost every other piece of politicized culture we consume, from Moonlight toStar Wars to Kendrick Lamar. But the relationship between Black Panther, as a franchise, and the cachet of the real-world imagery on which it trades, is a complicated one. It’s also one that’s changed a lot since the character was introduced to the reading public 52 years ago. At times like this, it’s worth tracing the character’s origins. His alter ego was almost the Coal Tiger, and his story began clumsily.

In July 1966, an African chieftan gave Reed Richards a flying craft. The rest of the Fantastic Four, and indeed the world, had never heard of the man who would become the first black superhero of mainstream American comics. With the glossy cover ofFantastic Four no. 52, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, legends of the medium, introduced “The Sensational Black Panther!” To note, the inception and early stewardship of the character is very much the work of white guys. This is the first panel of the comic that introduced him: