hellotailor:

A lot of people seem interested in Black Panther after seeing Civil War, so I thought I’d put together a list of links to make it easier to start reading his comics etc!

Comics

Good news: you’re living in a golden age for Black Panther comics. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze’s new series launched to universal acclaim in April, and a new issue comes out each month. 

I STRONGLY recommend this comic. The art is gorgeous, it’s incredibly well written, and it’s a really thoughtful and complex portrayal of T'Challa and Wakanda. (Also, most of the main characters are women!)

Here’s a guide to previous Black Panther comics, from his origins in the 1960s through each of his solo arcs, plus the more important crossovers. [One book was turned into a motion comic in 2010. The animation is NOT GOOD, but the voice cast includes Djimon Hounsou and Kerry Washington.]

That guide includes recs for shorter story arcs if you just want a taster, and also describes the general tone/genre of each period in BP comics. For example, which books are adventure stories vs ones that focus more heavily on character and politics. You can read most of them digitally on Comixology or Marvel, or in collected volumes.

Blogs, articles & podcasts

• Ta-Nehisi Coates has been writing a series of blog posts about his work on Black Panther, covering a variety of topics from the geography of Wakanda to feminism in superhero comics.
  
• The Black Panther tag on the We Are Wakanda fan blog.
• The Politics of Black Panther by Evan Narcisse at Kotaku.
• The Women of Marvel podcast had a great interview with Coates last month, as did the Black Girl Nerds podcast.
• I also recorded a Black Panther episode on my podcast, Overinvested. (Hopefully this doesn’t come across as too self-promotional – I think it serves as a decent intro to BP from a fandom perspective, and we also discuss the upcoming movie.)
• If you prefer print interviews, I recommend this one with Coates and this one with artist Brian Stelfreeze. Also, you can follow both on Twitter.

Okay, plz reblog with more recommendations if you think I’ve forgotten something essential!! Hopefully this post will be of use to new fans.

Pantherfans, dig in!

I’d also recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates’ intro to the series, and his own personal history with comics, from The Atlantic: “Indeed, aside from hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons, comics were my earliest influences. In the way that past writers had been shaped by the canon of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton, I was formed by the canon of Claremont, DeFalco, and Simonson. “