Jack Kirby’s Black Panther Volume 1
Jack Kirby wrote and drew the original Black Panther series in 1977. It lasted for 15 issues, of which Jack Kirby did the first 12. This trade collects issues #1-#7.
Readers are introduced to a plot where the Black Panther teams up with a diminutive artifact collector who is in search of a brass frog which enables the user to travel in time. They are not alone though and in conflict with another collector they drop the frog and bring a super-powered telekinetic evolved human from the “sixth era”. They manage to defeat this thing and a tenuous peace is reached between Black Panther and the competing collector. I would characterize it as von Daniken inspired futuristic technology from the past, though aliens are not involved much as civilizations forgetting lost science (I guess that is more Atlantian).
A group of collectors threaten to destroy the Black Panther’s homeland if he does not journey to a remote temple and secure for them waters that will restore them to youth. The Panther and his diminutive sidekick endeavor to liberate them from the samurai protectors that guard them.
In the later issues of the trade a military coup in underway in Wakanda while the Panther is away, plotted and executed by the Panther’s half brother – a sickly man with a definite Napoleon complex. The trade ends in the middle of this storyline, but a second trade is available.
The Jack Kirby art is top notch, but what did you expect me to say? The colorful machines, futuristic and bizarrely rendered, are all over the place. The Black Panther’s battles are dynamic and gymnastic in the classic Kirby sense. The fact that the story goes on for so long before Wakanda is even mentioned is an interesting writing choice for Kirby. Most stories about the Black Panther are based in Wakanda and the relationship of this nation to the outside world or the internal politics of the African kingdom.
It is a pretty good read and I would probably put it somewhere in the middle of a list of great Kirby stuff. As far as late period Kirby it is pretty high up there.
