Black Panther #3: Original Sin

[superboyprime]

'The “brides in training,” his bodyguards the Dora Milaje, grew out of Don McGregor’s brilliant concepts of tribal castes within Wakanda, which made perfect sense. How does Wakanda avoid the kind of splintering and tribal warfare that riddles the continent? He keeps a representative from the two major tribes in a kind of G-rated harem. So long as he doesn’t, ahem, close the deal with either of them, Wakanda’s tribal factions remain in a state of détente.' - Christopher J. Priest

Comments

[astrakhan42]

For a long time I thought Achebe was a stupid idea with a really bad character design. But then it finally hit me with a recent re-read that if Priest was turning Black Panther into Marvel's Batman, then naturally he needed a Joker. Hence the giant smile and perpetually decreasing sanity. (Killmonger was already BP's Bane, with the waterfall toss as his "breaking the Bat" moment.)

[thatnickguy]

I'm re-reading the series now and something struck me: they established that Achebe was influenced by Mephisto. And during the story when Mephisto is still a force to be reckoned with, Achebe seems relatively sane. He's under control, he cracks a few jokes, but he's not maniacal.

And then IMMEDIATELY after Mephisto's defeat, Achebe brings out the hand puppet, his sanity goes south, and T'Challa's mother loses control of him. Which makes sense if Mephisto influenced him in some way, maybe keeping his sanity at bay.

[flint_marko]

Why was his mother working with him?

[thatnickguy]

Technically working undercover for T'Challa to feed him intelligence reports.

[broblawsky]

Yeah, that seemed logical to me too, although surprisingly Priest never explicitly suggested it. He might not have wanted to 100% definitively say that Achebe and Mephisto were linked.

[thatnickguy]

Mephisto definitely admitted the connection. I can't recall if Achebe did. But there was definitely no direct statement on the sanity thing. Which is strange. Most times, that sort of thing is blatantly spelled out. It was kind of a nice change.

[michaelsaint]

I am really confused by the coloring in these scans, particularly the skin color. The Fantastic 4 are light-skinned but then the Avengers in the panel below them are dark-skinned? The woman with the blonde hair in the panel above the Fantastic 4 is probably Caucasian but then Achebe in the first panel is clearly the same skin tone as her.....

Are these just a lot of mistakes by the artist or am I getting something wrong?

[ozaline]

Looks to me like the Avengers are light skinned but just really over shadowed.