Book Review: Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration by Ytasha L. Womack

 

reviewed by Charles W. Henebry, Boston University

Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration by Ytasha L. Womack. New York: Epic Ink, 2023. 176pp. https://www.quarto.com/books/9780760375617/black-panther

Judging by its cover, lavish illustrations, and meager page count, you wouldn’t think Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration lived up to the scholarly ambitions of its title. Yet Womack manages to pack a surprising wealth of cultural references and oral history into this slender volume. Having myself analyzed the Panther by reference to the aims of his creators, I was fascinated by Womack’s reader-centered approach to the character. Prior scholarship has problematized the Panther’s status as the “World’s First Black Superhero,” given Marvel’s all-white creative staff back in the sixties. Womack implicitly responds to this criticism with a moving account of the lived experience of the superhero’s African-American fans who, in that same era, encountered the new character at the newsstand and argued with their friends about how he was connected to the Black Panther Party. And she ties this oral history to developments in contemporary history and culture, from Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, to the cosmic jazz of Sun-Ra. In so doing, she encourages us to think of the Black Panther not as corporate IP, but as one of the shared myths of our culture: “I’d reason that the Black Panther myth is bigger than its creators, an idea held by fans, writers, pencilers, and the awed alike—a myth that channels love and liberation.” Having previously published a book on Afrofuturism, Womack is well situated to deliver in this effort to claim the Black Panther as a genuine expression of the African-American experience.

While the first chapter contextualizes the creation of the Black Panther in the ferment of the late 1960s, the book is organized not by timeline but by topic: “The Panther Mystique,” “The Wakandan Protopia,” “The Modern Goddess and Futuristic Warrior Queens,” etc. Throughout, Womack works suggestively rather than analytically: in the chapter on political power, for instance, she juxtaposes the Panther with real-world political figures ranging from MLK to Mandela, but does not explicitly argue any particular parallel or connection. Some may see this as a virtue, in that it invites the reader to take an active role in making sense of the Panther’s cultural resonance. But I would have liked a more detailed account, especially in regard to lesser-known figures like Kwame Nkrumah. Without such detail, the reader is hardly in a position to weigh the real significance of Womack’s musings.

The book’s greatest strength is its oral history of fans. Besides childhood memories, the interviews offer up a variety of insights as to the Panther’s political and cultural significance. A few of those interviewed are famous; many others are identified by Womack as authors or artists. In a few cases, we are provided with no more than a name, which left me wondering what principle Womack used in choosing whom to interview.

Another strength is the book’s format: lavish full-color images predominate throughout, ranging from comics panels to news photographs. Comics are a visual medium, and it’s wonderful to see scholarship illustrated in this way. Too often, due to the cost of permissions, comics scholars see their work go to print with no illustrations whatsoever. In Black Panther as well as in an earlier book on Spider-Man, Epic Ink neatly solved the permissions problem by partnering with Marvel Comics.

But I can’t help but worry that this cure is worse than the disease. Rights holders like Marvel are unlikely to partner with scholars who train a critical eye on their history, so in the marketplace of ideas, such scholarship will be text-only and hence at a disadvantage relative to visually attractive puff-pieces. Womack’s wholeheartedly celebratory account—which interrogates neither the politics of the character’s early decades nor the politics of Marvel’s creative team—does little to allay such concerns. Interested readers will have to seek out that richly problematic history elsewhere.

Book Review - Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon by Terence McSweeney

Reviewed by Jason D. DeHart, PhD

Terence McSweeney. Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, University Press of Mississippi. 978-1496836090. $20. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/B/Black-Panther

I am not sure of the point at which I became acquainted with T’Challa, the Black Panther superhero and hereditary King of Wakanda. The character was introduced in a 1966 issue of Fantastic Four, as a support player whose unsteady allegiance was reflected in other characters such as Namor, but who was Marvel’s first black superhero. As originally created by Kirby & Lee, Black Panther’s interests have always been mostly closely aligned with Wakanda, his fictional futurist African nation; it is only when the concerns of this nation and the wider world intersect that he springs into action. He first battled the Fantastic Four, and then became a regular member of the Avengers. This was all established well before I was acquainted with the character, whose first introduction to me was likely through a collectible Marvel trading card or action figure.

            These days though everybody knows the Panther, largely due to the success of the 2018 film starring the late Chadwick Boseman which is the focus of this book. That is not a surprise as the film is amazingly well done, and addresses social and cultural issues whose resonance was only just beginning to spread in wider circles of white privileged culture. The original movie storyline, when pitched in the early 2000s, was going to be along the lines of an Indiana Jones adventure featuring a lost relic. In the film that was made, that lost relic McGuffin transformed into the interaction of Wakanda and the wider world as T’Challa sought to reconcile an unsteady and misrepresented past with the hope of being a good king.

            In spite of the title, much of the book’s focus is on the film, rather than the comic book origins of the character, reflecting the author’s interest and research. McSweeney knows the film world well, but this reviewer wonders to what degree can he speak to the vicissitudes of Black experience? In the first chapters, the reader is offered a brief history of the character with nods to the comics, as well as the story of the film’s opening. All of this sets the stage and provides the background knowledge that the reader needs, although more information from the comics would have been helpful for knowing more about the 50-year-old character, in terms of his origins, motivations, and changing interpretations over time.

            McSweeney also analyzes moments in the film featuring the supporting characters and villains, almost in summary form. Both the relatability and unappealing aspects of the characters, particularly in the Panther's rival and political antithesis, N’Jadaka, aka Eric Killmonger, are mentioned, but only briefly explored. McSweeny’s focusing on the film in itself reveals too much to uncover both in terms of historical context and character analysis – it seems each moment in the story deserves a full volume’s worth of summary and exploration, especially relating back to the foundational comic books.

            A reader will encounter the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s view of Wakanda’s world, leading to what will hopefully become a fuller view upon reading the comics and engaging with what will certainly be an entire film series (at the time of this review, production on the second film is well underway). In sum, what McSweeney offers is more than a primer or appetizer, but still not a full course on one particular aspect or dimension of this transmedia character. This is understandable given the depths of how much information would have to be consumed, summed up, and explained to produce a more complete treatment of the Black Panther. I recommend reading this book alongside a stack of Black Panther comics, including the work that has been done by writers Ta-Nehisi Coates, Christopher Priest, and Don McGregor who created much of the underlying sources of the stories that the film redevelops.

A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA.

Book review - The Wakanda Files. A Technological Exploration of the Avengers and Beyond.

 

Benjamin, Troy. The Wakanda Files. A Technological Exploration of the Avengers and Beyond. Epic Ink, 2020. 160 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7603-6544-1. $60.00.

 reviewed by Aaron Ricker

Troy Benjamin is the author of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Declassified book series, and a contributor to the Official Guidebook to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His new book The Wakanda Files is, like these other titles, an illustrated look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) aimed at fans in a hardcover book with plastic slipcase.* The book’s creative conceit presents The Wakanda Files as a collection of top-secret intelligence assembled by the royal scientists of Wakanda (a fictional African kingdom featured in the MCU, led by the Black Panther). The high-tech information thus collected by Wakandan spies and scientists is arranged into five sections: “Human Enhancement” (pages 4-69), “Weapons” (70-105), “Vehicles” (106-129), “AI and Mind Control” (130-143), and “Energies and Elements” (144-162). Chapter 1 therefore presents data on how Steve Rogers was transformed into Captain America, for example, and Chapter 2 talks about the development of his shield. Chapter 3 includes a discussion of the ups and downs of Howard Stark’s flying cars, and Chapter 4 highlights the AI breakthroughs (lucky and otherwise) achieved by Tony Stark. Chapter 6 presents some of the most fantastical science of all, including wonders like the fictionalized powers of palladium and the “Infinity Stones” whose blatantly magical character does not even get a perfunctory scientific fig leaf.

 

As this list of representative items suggests, the focus of The Wakanda Files is squarely on the MCU and the Avengers. The book’s subtitle touts it as “a technological exploration of the Avengers and beyond,” but the scope of its attention never extends far beyond the marvels of the Avengers-related movies. Even the illustrations are often just screenshots from the films, run through various Photoshop filters. If Wakanda has been patiently collecting data on exotic science related to human enhancement for years, one might ask, why do these files include no mention of achievements like Dr. Doom’s ultra-high-tech armour? The answer seems to be that the narrative focus of The Wakanda Files is restricted by the marketing needs of the real world outside the MCU: the Fantastic Four movies were (by MCU standards) commercial flops, and done by a rival studio which controlled the intellectual property. Hot Marvel properties that are fresh in people’s minds from the Avengers blockbusters are more likely to sell books.

 

The presentation of The Wakanda Files is not only limited by the MCU’s Avengers high-tech context in terms of the fictional technologies deemed worthy of attention. As intimated above with reference to the Infinity Stones, the book is also noticeably shaped by the way the Avengers movies tend to casually “retcon” the magic found in their source material as exotic science. On the very first page, chief scientist Shuri-Kimoyo specifies that the goal of the project is to “bring our planet the forefront of technology and innovation” (Wakanda Files, p. 3). The first file presented, though, is about the magic herb that allows the Black Panther to “access the ancestral plane” (Wakanda Files, pp. 6-7).

 

As a result of this artistic, or commercial, decision to accept the MCU’s preference for non-explanations, The Wakanda Files squanders some of its potential. A book about science (and) fiction can help scratch the hobbyist’s itch for collection and escapism. Such a book can also serve at times, though, to inform and inspire. It can give readers a pleasant chance to marvel at how elegantly the fantasy has been made to dance with the hard science. The lazy approach that The Wakanda Files picks up from the MCU shrugs off this opportunity. In Chapter 3, for example, Howard Stark explains that Captain America’s shield is bulletproof because it’s “[c]ompletely vibration absorbent” (p. 72). What do readers interested in scientific information gain from the suggestion that bullets are dangerous due to vibrations as opposed to their weight and speed?

 

At times, the loss in terms of potential infotainment value is exacerbated by losses in narrative coherence. According to The Wakanda Files, for example, the Bifrost bridge from Asgard to Earth controlled by the thunder god Thor is an Einstein-Rosen wormhole – an idea floated as theory in the movies and repeated here as fact. As such, the Bifrost is said to permit travel through space and time (pp. 80, 149). In narrative terms, though, this picture just doesn’t work. If Thor had the ability to open portals for time travel, the Avengers wouldn’t have needed to spend so much time and energy building a time machine (the very device discussed on pages 59-61 of The Wakanda Files). Now and then, this unfortunate streak of intellectual laziness drags the book down to the level of absurdity. In Chapter 3, for example, the reader is presented with Dr. Hank Pym’s plans to become smaller than an atom, which for some reason include worrying about how breathable the air might be. “Oxygen levels within the Quantum Realm are undetermined,” Pym notes (p. 129). This is a truly bizarre concern to attribute to a brilliant scientist. How many oxygen molecules per billion is he hoping to inhale, once he’s smaller than an oxygen molecule? The services of a good scientific advisor/editor would have come in handy at such points.

 

On a less serious, but nevertheless distracting and disappointing note, The Wakanda Files also suffers from a lack of basic editing. In Chapter 1, the head of the German super-soldier program is found writing, “I need resources. I need men” (p. 12). Two pages later, the head of the American super-soldier program writes, “We need resources. We need men” (p. 14). In Chapter 2, SHIELD agent Phil Coulson recommends copying Asgardian tech because “we’ll want to fight fire with fire” (p. 95). Two pages later, he also recommends copying Asgardian tech because “we’ll want to fight fire with fire” (p. 97). Proofreading mistakes appear in every section. Benjamin writes “burying the lead” as opposed to “the lede” (p. 142), for instance, and invents the new English expression “of which I’m familiar” (pp. 123, 146). In short, the timing of The Wakanda Files seems wise from a sales point of view - hot on the heels of the movies and ready for holiday sales - but a less derivative and more precise approach could have provided fans and students of comics culture with a more enjoyable read while enriching the backstory of the MCU.

 

*editor’s note – Ricker’s review was written from an advance copy pdf. His comments with page citations have been checked and confirmed against the final text. The finished book also comes with a small ultraviolet light designed as Wakandan technology with which the reader can find concealed messages. The plastic slipcase is necessary to hold the light together with the book. A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 22:2.