kagablog

Bringing It Home

The changes that the Black Panther underwent in the beginning of the 1970s proved relatively minor in comparison to his various transformations throughout the remainder of the decade. In 1973, an up-and-coming young writer, Don McGregor, was unexpectedly handed Marvel’s failing bimonthly series Jungle Action and instructed to give the Black Panther a starring role in the title. Prior to McGregor’s involvement, Jungle Action featured Tharn the Magnificent, a White Tarzan knockoff who battled jungle creatures alongside two beautiful White female sidekicks. In McGregor’s hands, Jungle Action became the Black Panther’s default solo title for the next four years. After transitioning from his role in the Avengers, the Black Panther assumed his new trajectory in issue 6 when McGregor took control and launched readers on his expansive 13-issue epic storyline entitled “Panther’s Rage.” At the outset of “Panther’s Rage,” the Black Panther realized he had lost touch with his native kingdom as his control of Wakanda is challenged by a rival chieftain named Erik Killmonger. The Black Panther’s protracted search to find and defeat Killmonger and his cadre of evil lieutenants gradually assumes the shape of an Odyssean saga, in which the Black Panther not only defeats Killmonger but painfully faces his own responsibility in allowing his country to suffer in his absence and slowly rebuilds his connection to his beloved homeland.

The first letter to appear in the “Jungle Reactions” column was printed in the July 1974 issue of Jungle Action. Responding to “Panther’s Rage,” Gary Frazier of Eugene, Oregon, kicked off the discussion by calling the story “revolutionary,” particularly McGregor’s subtle attention to the differences in language, which suggested more broadly “that Africans in Africa are different from Afro-Americans.”46 In the following issue, Bob Hughes of New Haven, Connecticut, added, “After all those great white fathers (and mothers) we’ve had tromping across Africa, a real bona-fide Black African jungle king was desperately needed.”47 In issue 12 in November 1974, Dean Mullaney of Staten Island, New York, commented “It’s great to see blacks drawn realistically for a change.”48 In the same issue, Meloney M.H. Crawford of Saratoga Springs, New York, remarked, “The interpersonal relationship and character developments reach a sensitivity that is rare in today’s comics,” adding that “The ‘Panther’s Rage’ is an emotional experience, like any great work of art.” Crawford concluded by asserting the importance of Wakanda’s existence as an independent African nation ruled by Blacks: “One final comment: Wakanda must survive! It is encouraging to know it has withstood the onslaught of white hunters, jungle girls, and Tarzan-types, and has remained a settlement of BLACK people in the African jungle.”49 In a similar vein, Ralph Macchio of Cresskill, New Jersey, contended (at considerable length) in the following issue that Don, once again, your characterizations of the entire Panther-cast were so clearly defined, I honestly felt as if I knew them. From the false bravado of Tayete to the overtly indulgent self-pity of Monica, you have unobtrusively helped advance the cause of the Negro far more than the melodramatic “relevancy” of Marvel’s competitors that was big a few years ago…Over the past several months, we have seen the inner workings of an all-Black society, with its customs, conflicts, and yes, prejudices …One other thing: please keep guest stars from other mags out of this series, because as you’ve presented Wakanda to us, it appears to be a self-contained world within a world, and I like that, immensely.50

Having successfully concluded “Panther’s Rage” In November 1975, McGregor and the Jungle Action crew immediately took their engaging vision of Black Superpower on the road by launching the ambitious and controversial “The Panther vs. The Klan!” saga in January 1976. In this storyline, Monica Lynne and T’Challa travel to Monica’s childhood home in rural Georgia to mourn the suspected suicide of Monica’s sister Angela. However, almost immediately upon their arrival in Georgia, Monica and the Black Panther become embroiled in a clash with two secret societies implicated in Angela’s death: the notorious Ku Klux Klan and the fictional Dragon Circle. While most critics agree “The Panther vs. The Klan!” never achieved the same artistic cohesiveness and narrative success as “Panther’s Rage,” the realistic subject matter, highly emotional scripts, and poignant illustrations that comprise the “The Panther vs. The Klan!” furthered readers’ identification with the story and evoked letters of unparalleled empathy from White and Black readers alike, including the following intimate disclosure from a reader identified only as “S.D.W.” situated “On the road”:

I’ve just finished JUNGLE ACTION #21…shaking…It has been months since I left Louisville, but the sights/sounds/smells of my encounters with the Klan and the anti-busers linger on. As I read “A Cross Burning Darkly, Blackening the Night,” all those events came rushing back…Don, your perceptions of character and contemporary myth/reality are so fine, so strong…and I wonder if here, in this oh-so-American drama, we can play the myth through, find the America we started to look for so many years ago.51

Despite the impressive feedback that McGregor and the Jungle Action team enjoyed from its loyal readers, the series suffered an untimely demise. It was cancelled In November 1976, only six issues into the “Panther vs. the Klan!” storyline. While many reasons have been offered for the unexpected cancellation of Jungle Action, most explanations center on business pragmatics and poor sales figures. Jim Shooter has also suggested McGregor’s authorial obduracy led to his dismissal. According to Shooter, McGregor “utterly refused to take direction of any kind, to change a thing he was doing, to take any steps whatsoever to improve sales. There was no way to work with him, no way to help him.52 Not surprisingly, McGregor has offered a counter explanation for his dismissal. While admitting that Jungle Action sales were not what either he or Marvel would have liked, the writer has repeatedly suggested that his decision to create the politically controversial “The Panther vs. The Klan!” story arc was among the primary reasons for both ending the series and eventually dismissing him from Marvel:

The dismissal editor said, and I quote, quite accurately, because some things I don’t forget, “Don, you’re too close to the black experience.” That’s the verbal reason given, I kid you not, as I looked at the back and front of my white hands. To which the editor responded, “You know what I mean.” And that…was the end of my time on the Panther.53

Ironically, it would take the Black Panther’s original co-creator Jack Kirby to reveal the true extent of readers’ personal investment in McGregor’s vision of the Black Panther. Two months after the last issue of Jungle Action, the Black Panther resurfaced in the first issue of his first self-titled series. The entirely new Black Panther series was written, illustrated, and edited by none other than Jack Kirby himself. Kirby, who left Marvel in 1970 after creative differences with Stan Lee, returned to the company in 1975 and, according to Shooter, was looking for titles to satisfy his new contract, which specified Kirby’s writing and penciling four issues a month. In the wake of McGregor’s removal from Jungle Action, Kirby found himself once again in command of the Black Panther. In an editorial comment from Kirby that appeared in the first issue, the new author promised Black Panther fans a “NEW BLACK PANTHER,” pledging “I can only say that you’re due to see the Panther the way he was originally meant to be.54

If readers had any doubts about the sincerity of Kirby’s dramatic predictions for change, they vanished upon reading the first issue. Kirby delivered a new interpretation of the Black Panther—to the extent that the character bore absolutely no relation to his most recent incarnation in Jungle Action. The initial story, “King Solomon’s Frog!,” inaugurated the series by immersing the Black Panther in an intergalactic struggle for an ancient magical artifact—a plot that included nothing less than a brass frog that functioned as an ancient time machine, a midget sidekick, and an eggplant-headed humanoid from the distant future named “Hatch-22.” Not surprisingly, readers immediately responded to Kirby’s radical changes to the Black Panther. The majority of these letters conveyed a pronounced sense of betrayal and personal loss as fans assailed Kirby for tampering with McGregor’s vision of the Black Panther. In issue 3 of the Black Panther, the first letter printed in response to the new series was from Bill Dickenson of Crystal, Minnesota:

I hope that you don’t plan on transforming the Black Panther into just another super-hero. Although this is an integral part of his character, his royal heritage cannot be overlooked. He is a true leader of men, the kind of leader we all look for. I also hope that a delicate balance is struck between the action/adventure hero and the concern he has shown for his race and for men of all creed and colors.55

While Dickenson expressed his desire that the Black Panther not lose the depth of character McGregor gave to the superhero, his comments were relatively mild in comparison to a letter from Jana Hollingsworth of Bellingham, Washington:

I can fully understand and appreciate, though not agree with, your desire for a less controversial storyline than McGregor’s “Panther vs. the Klan.” Listen, I am not one of Don’s coterie of fanatic fans—I quite disliked his LUKE CAGE—but his PANTHER stories were among the finest ever produced. They were relevant not in the cheap chic sense, but truly relevant both to the special problems of today and the eternal condition of mankind. McGregor’s storylines were as complex as the real world, and his characters were genuine human beings. After “The Panther’s Rage” and “The Panther vs. the Klan” there is only one word to describe “King Solomon’s Frog”: obscene…As originally presented in FANTASTIC FOUR #52 and #53, the Panther was not the crazy cosmic character you’ve depicted. He was the chieftain of an African nation which combined its traditional heritage with Western super-science. In “Panther’s Rage” McGregor explored this original premise on a more sophisticated and realistic level…Please, please, don’t abandon this real world to go careening throughout the universe. The real world is what is truly fascinating…I’m not asking for the return of McGregor. I know that won’t happen. I am asking for Kirby’s departure.56

Unfortunately for Kirby, Dickenson and Hollingsworth’s responses were just initial volleys in a long barrage of letters, begging Kirby and Marvel to not “forget what Don McGregor and Billy Graham set out to do with this character in JUNGLE ACTION.”57 In issue after issue, readers bombarded Kirby with protests to restore the “real world” of Black Panther and Wakanda to its previous glory. In doing so, many readers, such as John Judge of Clinton, Idaho, scathingly vilified Kirby, charging: “To take Marvel’s first black character and depersonalize him so severely is criminal.”58

Sadly, Kirby’s awkward attempts to convert his readers to his new vision for the Black Panther only served to fan the flames. In issue 6, Kirby controversially referenced Alex Haley’s 1976 Pulitzer Prize winning novel Roots to justify his perspective: “And, as you may have already noticed, my character is neither a Kunta Kinte nor a Chicken George…”59 In the ninth issue, Kirby revealed “the Black Musketeers” with the cover tagline: “His homeland facing holocaust—T’Challa goes wild!” Tellingly, the same issue also marked the permanent disappearance of the letters pages from the Black Panther. Following the release of his twelfth issue of the Black Panther and the culmination of his second year on the title in November 1978, Kirby quietly handed off the series to Ed Hannigan and Jerry Bingham. Jim Shooter has confirmed that the change was not due to poor sales but was entirely Kirby’s decision.60 Whether from disgruntled fan mail or his growing lack of interest with the Black Panther character, Kirby had washed his hands of the superhero. Only three issues after Kirby’s departure from the title, Marvel discontinued the Black Panther in May 1979.

Reading the Medium

Regardless of how one reads the reader responses to Jungle Action, it is quite obvious that something singular happened to the Black Panther under McGregor’s tenure. In McGregor’s hands, Jungle Action became one of the most intricately conceived and artistically audacious Marvel titles. After Marvel’s brief 2-issue trip to Wakanda in those first issues of Fantastic Four, the country disappeared from view as the Black Panther became an immigrant to America. After years of restless squatting in the margins of more traditionally superheroic titles, the Black Panther regained his homeland—a country so richly imagined and captivatingly vivid that readers became profoundly connected to it. What McGregor and his team understood is precisely what Lee and Kirby seemed to realize when they first created the Black Panther: that the character’s superpowers were mind-numbingly dull but the concept of Wakanda is endlessly compelling. While Lee and Kirby chose not to expand upon Wakanda’s potential, McGregor developed it as fully as possible.

In 1999, Dwayne McDuffie, comic book writer and co-founder of the most successful Black-owned comic book company, Milestone Comics, redolently memorialized his own readership experience of “Panther’s Rage.” In addition to calling the storyline “the most tightly written multipart superhero epic ever,” McDuffie echoed previous sentiments expressed in the letters pages of Jungle Action by stating:

It was 1973…The comic book was JUNGLE ACTION #6. It featured a super hero I’d never heard of called the Black Panther, but then, I’d never heard of the Black Panther political party either…What didn’t escape me was the powerful sense of dignity that the characters in this book possessed…[T]he Black Panther was king of a mythical African country where black people were visible in every position in society, soldier, doctor, philosopher, street sweeper, ambassador— suddenly everything was possible. In the space of 15 pages, black people moved from invisible to inevitable…I’ve spoken ad nauseam about the importance of multiculturalism in fiction, as in life. I’ve preached about the sense of validation a kid feels when they see their image reflected heroically in the mass media. This particular summer afternoon, reading about the dastardly (but nuanced) Eric Killmonger’s villainous plot to usurp the Black Panther’s rightful throne, is precisely when it happened to me. I realized that these stories could be about me, that I could be the hero. Years later writing in my own comic I’d describe that wonderful feeling as “the sudden possibility of flight.”.61

McDuffie’s poignant comments underscore a point implicit in so many reader responses to the Black Panther: that much of the appeal of the Black Panther superhero lay in his ability to transport readers to Wakanda—a utopian, hidden territory within which readers could “gain the perspective to allow you to see the many possibilities open to you.”

Unlike readers of early versions of the Black Panther such as Guy Haughton who wished to abstract the superhero and his Blackness from his African homeland and import him to the U.S., McGregor’s expansive imagination of Wakanda was the source of much of the Black Panther’s power as a cultural icon. For many readers, Wakanda functioned as a surrogate, utopian vision of a powerful, Black organized, and separately determined state—the goal of many groups that fell under the generalized banner of the Black Power movement. Wakanda’s technological and social progress rivaled (or even exceeded) that of the United States and offered a valuable affirmation that successful self-governance and community self-improvement were neither geographically nor culturally dependent. As such, McGregor’s Wakanda provided readers a new frontier for experimentally imagining alternative possibilities for real world Black Power, and readers passionately valued such an opportunity, as evidenced by Meloney Crawford’s insistence that “Wakanda must survive!”62 and Jana Hollingsworth’s desperate plea for Kirby to “Please, please, don’t abandon this real world to go careening throughout the universe. The real world is what is truly fascinating.”63

What emerges from a study of reader responses to Marvel’s Black Panther is that the ability to occupy, explore, and map the magical land of Wakanda was not the exclusive right of the vibrant superheroes framed within the pages of each comic book. Rather, Wakanda existed materially in the medium of the comic book itself. Through the shared interaction between the various groups of writers and readers, the space of the comic book became a fertile ground for surveying the boundaries of sociocultural identity and expression. Instead of functioning solely as a self-indulgent and entirely fanciful distraction for avoiding the racial tensions of the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Panther offered a public space for actively engaging and collectively imagining new possibilities for representing race and power. In his examination of reader responses to the first gay and lesbian superheroes, Morris E. Franklin III has noticed a similar ability for comic books to function as vehicles for collectively exploring politically contentious territories:

In the case of comic books, the reader has the potential to move from a position as an isolated individual, separate from the text, to part of a discourse community in the form of a letter column; the reader’s ideas become part of the textual product itself. In this way, comic books can serve in the stories they tell and in the discussion of those stories as epistemology, a way of knowing about particular subjects, ideas, and opinions.64

As such, the Black Panther storylines and letters pages became dynamic discursive spaces for authors and readers to safely assay new permutations of emerging African American power within the larger rhetorical context of Cold War superpowers.

In his preface to Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Superman in the 20th Century, Scott Bukatman captured the liberatory powers of superhero comics through his observation that All the fantasied escapes from gravity…[such as] Superman’s flight across the skies of Metropolis, recall our bodies to us by momentarily allowing us to feel them differently. It is a momentary effect, a temporary high: we are always returned to ourselves. These escapes, however, are more than retreats from an intolerable existence, they are escapes into worlds of renewed possibility.65

Superheroes are powerful precisely in their ability to transport their devotees into such “worlds of renewed possibility.” It is through this creative ability to temporarily free their readers from the otherwise intractable material constraints by drawing them into entirely new possibility spaces that the most important superhero comics artfully negotiate the fine line between escapism and hope. As resplendent lodestars on the vast, fluctuating horizon of the American cultural imaginary, superhero comics construct a path from frustrated desire to productive imagination that can most poetically be described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari emancipatory conception of “lines of flight” or Dwayne McDuffie’s equivalent evocation of the “sudden possibility of flight.” It is through such creative escapism that superhero comics empower readers to experience imaginative heights that conventional configurations of social power never allow them to reach. Yet, as McDuffie has so eloquently indicated, the act of reaching can itself be transformative.