[Black Panther #39] Return of the Dragon, Book Two of Three: Silent Stone

[superboyprime]

"Black Dragon's backstory was immensely, unthinkably complicated. Why I thought draggin' all of that in would help me simplify PANTHER, I'll never know. The dizzying amount of plot threads and continuity we went into with ...Dragon was complicated all the more by there being a 'silent' issue right in the middle of it. As a writer, this mess presented a unique challenge. As a reader, it must have been hell to try and sift through." - Christopher Priest

Comments

[crinos]

Ah yes, the Nuff said event. Where Marvel told all their writers "Hey, this month, make a story without any actual dialog in them."

I be the writers all LOVED that. Especially guys like Priest who were in the middle of a storyarc.

[dcbanacek]

If this "event" was around when Echo was, that might have been an interesting issue showing thing's from her perspective.

This must have been horrible in the Spider-Man titles, its 75% of the way he fights.

[baroncognito]

If I remember correctly, the Spider-man nuff said was just after Aunt May discovered Peter was Spider-man and the entire issue just followed her around as she did things like cancel her Daily Bugle subscription to Jonah's face.

[zachbeacon]

Pretty much. The JJJ thing was the following issue but she did email a bunch of talkshow hosts to tell them to go easy on her neph ...er ... Spider-Man.

I know I'm in the minority but I always thought JMS made May kind of dumb.

[zachbeacon]

Not really. IIRC he got to moon an evil mime in the Peter Parker issue.

In hindsight (pun completely intended), that's really more of a Deadpool move.

[thanekos]

I love how much of a workaround that page with Ross diagramming the plot so far is.

Spoilers for the TTG

[ozaline]

The Spider-Girl issue did a pretty good job of tying it into it's plotline IIRC. I love this kinda stuff, but feel this one up here was cheating with the story book.

Spoilers for the TTG

[ozaline]

that autofilled for some reason. And won't let me edit it, it's from something else.

Re: Spoilers for the TTG

[crinos]

To be fair, Priest had a lot of weird plot stuff to deal with her, which was made 10 times hard to convey because he couldn't use any dialog or text balloons.

Priest: Okay, so we got the guy, Mephisto was in the dragon, and then he swapped places with Danny Rand, and now Danny is turning into the dragon, and Panther is fighting Mephisto in Danny's body. Should be easy enough to convey

Editor: Oh, hey Chris, we're doing an event where everybody publishes their next issue without any text or dialog of any kind. So keep that in mind for your next issue.

Priest: *Smiles as he snaps a pencil in his hand*: Suuuuuuuure.

I mean I can forgive the guy cutting corners on this one, this is some pretty high concept stuff.

Re: Spoilers for the TTG

[laughing_tree]

To be fair, Nuff Said was announced so far in advance, neither Priest nor any other writer would have been ambushed like that. As I recall, Peter David mentioned online that he'd completed his script for the event, and some of the reaction was, "Holy #$T%, you're writing that far ahead of schedule?" (Turned out that, no, he was just writing issues out of order.)

Re: Spoilers for the TTG

[zachbeacon]

Right, the Amazing Spider-Man issue was late but that was only because the 9/11 issue messed up the planned schedule. Everyone else didn't seem to have a problem either telling a one-off or working it into their ongoing story.

Granted some were certainly better than others. In Daredevil the solution to the writing challenge was "let's just do a bunch of fights" and I thought most of F4 #50 was incomprehensible (I did like the non-silent backup where they auction off dates with Johnny and Ben though).

[zachbeacon]

I didn't realize people were so against silent month (though I sort of think Priest is cheating with all the written narration). I LOVED Nuff Said. It really gave the artists a chance to shine as storytellers.

I miss the days when we had actual events like this, Flashback month, and Assistant Editors month instead of just constant crossovers.

[q99]

Yea, I remember really liking it too. I think X-Static did a Doop issue.

[zachbeacon]

Yeah. Then there was the Exiles dream issue, the origin of Cassandra Nova, an emotional Spider-Man story, a fun Spider-Man story, a pretty solid Christmas story with Captain America, Kang taking over the world, a really good Captain Marvel issue by that guy we're not supposed to talk about, Deadpool's funeral, ect.

I do sort of think the Cable creative team didn't understand the assignment. The February 2002* had the event banner but it was just a regular issue.

*Hey, did you know you can filter Marvel Unlimited by month?