BLACK PANTHER # 59
© 2003 Marvel Comics

Mania Grade: C
Issue: 59
Authors: Christopher Priest, Patrick Zircher, Norm Rapmund
Publisher: Marvel
Price: $2.99

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BLACK PANTHER # 59

Pay attention, because this'll take some explaining: Kasper Cole, a former narcotics office, has "borrowed" an old Black Panther costume from T'Challa's old friend Tork, who has since been shot to death. Now Kasper is trying to get free of Sal Anthony, the corrupt cop who had Tork killed, by offering to free Sal's son from 66 Bridges, the street gang who took the boy years ago. Problem is, the boy may not even be alive. Oh, and the Falcon's in it, too.

I'm all for trying to do interesting updates of characters, especially when those characters have seen better days, as in the case of the Black Panther. T'Challa's Panther worked far better in the '60s and '70s than he does now, and it makes less sense nowadays to have the king of an African nation running around in a suit fighting crime in New York. In trying to create a modern version of the Panther, however, Christopher Priest has given us a character who's little more than a conglomeration of all the worst stereotypes about angry black men, even when said angry black men are cops.

Don't get me wrong, I do understand what Priest is trying to do - he's presenting us with a man who hasn't got what it takes to be a superhero yet in order to show that character's slow growth into "wisdom, spirituality, and prowess," as the new opening character bio puts it. Problem is, Kasper isn't all that well-developed to begin with, so watching him mature is a bit like watching a Polaroid picture develop and hoping it'll achieve 2.2 megapixel quality. For example, Kasper often veers between "ghetto speak" and standard English, sometimes for no apparent reason. It's reminiscent of what Mark Twain had to say about the Natty Bumpo character in James Fennimore Cooper's LEATHERSTOCKING TALES: it doesn't make sense for someone to talk like a scholar in one panel and a brother from the 'hood in the next. Even this would be forgivable if the latter sounded the least bit authentic, but this isn't a MAX title - at one point, for example, a character says "Somebody explain that spit to me, yo" (emphasis mine). Reminds me of all those movies that have been redubbed so that the characters are calling each other "motherfarmer".

Aside from all that and the fact that Kasper really doesn't seem to have that many redeeming characteristics, the plot isn't all that bad - a tad derivative of THE SHIELD and convoluted, perhaps, but not bad. It's good to see Sam Wilson back in action as the Falcon, as well, leading me to think that perhaps it's long past time he had his own series again. And there's nothing wrong with the artwork - far from it. But combine this plot with this sort of characterization (or lack thereof), and the result is a book which has, as one of these walking stereotypes might say, "mo' pantha, mo problems." Best to rejoin this story arc towards the end, when Priest has allowed Kasper to grow a bit (and when Priest is writing a slightly more believable character), than to deal with it now.