The Four Color Media Monitor

Adventures in Poor Taste interviewed Priest about his new Black Panther series with Joe Quesada, under the revived use of the Marvel Knights line, where T'Challa may end up going to the Great Reward

In 1998, Christopher Priest was part of an elite group of writers tasked with crafting high-quality stories for Marvel Comics characters under a brand new imprint, Marvel Knights. This series launched standalone titles that offered fresh takes on age-old heroes, often brandishing a darker edge and grit. Priest’s Black Panther run was one of its pillar tentpoles, and that book took T’Challa in brave and daring new directions that inevitably ingratiated the character for a new generation.

One of those "fresh" takes included Brian Bendis' direction with Daredevil, if memory serves, getting his secret identity revealed, and there were even worse directions taken with Hornhead's stories, including the tale by Kevin Smith that set the Knights edition in motion, where Karen Page was killed by Mysterio just a few issues in. I'm sorry, but when they speak of "edgy" they fail to be clear what they actually mean, and the Knights edition of Capt. America was insufferable with its Blame America direction post-911. And as for this new BP tale from the revived Knights line, Priest says it took awhile to complete:

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of The World To Come? It’s been finished for quite some time.

“That was written a long, long time ago,” Priest said with a laugh. “It’s taken Joe Quesada a long time to draw this book, and not because he’s slow.”

Priest explained that Quesada’s job as Marvel’s executive vice president and creative director took a toll on the comic’s release schedule, putting the project on hold until the time was right. That time, however, is now.

I seem to recall several books were fashionably late when Quesada was EIC, like the Black Cat miniseries the aforementioned Smith wrote, but was delayed in completion for nearly 2 years, and even then, the finished product - establishing Felicia Hardy had been a sexual assault victim - was abominable, and wasn't worth the wait. Many mainstream press sources, unshockingly, gloss over the worst moments of Quesada's tenure as Marvel's EIC. If he couldn't get certain items published on time, and couldn't get his contributors to commit to schedule, what is there to appreciate in his time as their EIC? And then, returning to the main subject, Priest makes matters worse with the following:

“I did 60 issues of Black Panther,” Priest said. “I did everything with that character that I could think of at the time, including blasting him into outer space. Ta-Nehisi Coates acquitted himself much better in that regard.”

Well, this sure doesn't make me think very highly of a guy who to my knowledge does happen to be left-wing himself, and whose record is very mediocre as a whole. If Priest's going to sugarcoat a writer who made divisive political statements, he's only making me lose more respect for him than I'd like to. Why, what makes Coates' writing any better than say, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's, the former who's probably just mentioned once here? Priest continues:

“You know, I can’t read that stuff without cringing,” Priest said. “Like, ‘Wow, really?’ I felt like maybe the first couple of issues were pretty decent. Back then, Joe and I were having a difference of opinion about like, I was really focused on increasing readership by bringing more aspects of the Marvel universe into what we’re doing. Joe wanted Marvel Knights to be more insular. Like the Netflix Marvel series, where they didn’t deny the MCU, but they weren’t that worried about them.”

As Priest admitted, “30 years later, I go, ‘Yeah, Joe was right.”

Even so, Priest didn’t shy away from including more out-there characters in Black Panther.

“I had the Hulk go to a big disco,” Priest said. “The fun part was this ‘Enemy of the State’ stuff, where it’s revealed that Black Panther only joined the Avengers to spy on them. And that pissed off a lot of readers!”

Whether it was more insular, the problem with the writers assigned to the Knights line is that their directions later wound up influencing the flagship titles in the long run. The Knights line ran about 8 years before discontinuation, and honestly, the whole notion BP just joined Avengers to spy upon them is decidedly cringeworthy, because it contradicts the premise T'Challa's a dedicated crimefighter. And what about the MK volume of Captain America, along with DD's? There wasn't anything to cringe about there? If it really wasn't part of what until that time was 616 universe continuity proper, it's decidedly a relief, but even so, that doesn't make it immediately acceptable to depict BP as though he's doing something bad to his best buddies.

Priest continued by talking about the realities of the industry and the difficulties he had to deal with when writing Black Panther as a part of the larger Marvel machine.

“Once we transitioned Panther back to the Marvel Universe, I came under enormous pressure to raise sales,” Priest said. “It’s always a big mistake to subjugate creativity to commerciality. I think that at some point, the retailers are the ones who are gonna set the tone, where they will buy a first issue of almost anything, but those numbers will go down with #2 and collapse with #3. And at some point around #4 or #5, those numbers will settle into where the retailers think, ‘This is where the demand is.’ And there’s no escaping it. There’s no getting around it. And once those numbers settle in, the publisher has to decide, ‘Do you want to keep going or not?’ But if you’re gonna keep going, I think you have to dance with the ones who wrung you.”

As a counter to that dynamic, Priest is acutely aware of who he and his fellow writers’ focus should be when telling stories.

“Our obligation was to the fans who were reading the book, and we should stop turning ourselves inside out trying to attract those who are not,” Priest said.

Unfortunately, that's just what Quesada and Bill Jemas were doing, and even the latter's successor, Dan Buckley did pretty much the same. If we take Smith and J. Michael Straczynski as examples, along with Garth Ennis and Grant Morrison, they were trying to use "celebrities" whose audiences might follow them to whatever mainstream comics they wrote, and rely on them for moneymaking, based additionally on their political/ideological perspectives. And it didn't matter if the specific writers didn't understand or respect the series in question, as seen in Straczynski's run on Spider-Man. Even Bendis' run on DD was pretentious. And then, these same writers continue to get jobs with Marvel/DC, even though they have no talent for writing their stable of characters.

Priest added, “I did my part, but Black Panther has a lot of dads. Not the least of which of course is Ta-Nehisi and Brian Stelfreeze (who is not mentioned nearly enough). A lot of what you see in the motion picture is derivative of Brian Stelfreeze. There’s a lot of Brian on that screen. And nobody ever talks about Brian, and that’s a little irritating, and I’m guilty of that.”

What's irritating here is Priest's boomeranging back on sugarcoating Coates' resume, at the expense of Lee, as much as Kirby. I'm sorry, but I don't think any of these writers since the turn of the century have proven themselves the most truly worthy successors to Stan the Man and Jack on any of the comics published under the Knights imprint.

Aside from praising Isanove, Priest is quick to note that Quesada is more than the artist; he’s also the co-plotter of this book (and not in name only).

“The story is as much Joe’s as it is mine,” Priest said. “Which is why I kept insisting, and then finally demanding, ‘Do not print this book if you don’t put his name first.’ He needs to take the lead position on the story. The story’s by both of us.”

Quesada's involvement is decidedly but one reason I'd rather avoid this new series, based on where it's going:

Back to the meat of the story (Black Panther), Priest says that he’s not trying to hide his death whatsoever.

“Oh, he dies on page 2, so… ‘Woah, what happened here? Did somebody put something in his soup?’ We’ll you’re gonna have to read to find out,” Priest said. “The story is not about him dying, it’s about how we got to this point. And I think that’s the more significant thing. That’s the good stuff that we don’t want to reveal.”

Priest added, “We know sooner or later everybody dies. Now, the question is what happens to all the toys? It’s very scary if Black Panther dies, because he’s got a lot of toys that we know about and a lot of toys we don’t know about. And we established in our series, 30 years ago, that in a desk drawer, he’s got all these plans for how to defeat, you know, Batman. He knows how to take down Galactus. He’s got all these like, contingency plans. Or as Jack Nicholson said, ‘All these marvelous toys.’ So the crisis is, what now? OK, Black Panther’s dead, what now?”

And this sounds like a failure to make a proper distinction between fiction and reality. Or, more precisely, to understand that the way in which T'Challa goes down has long become revolting and forced.

Speaking of T’Challa’s demise, Priest recalls the controversy he encountered when first writing the character.

“We got a lot of hate mail because I gave Black Panther an iPhone,” Priest said. “And this was long before there was such a thing. And we kept getting those hate mails about how absurd it was that he had this device that could talk to people, and there’s video. How absurd, you know? And I’m like, ‘Well, first of all, go back to Fantastic Four #52.’ This guy was a high-tech genius.”

Assuming this is factual, I will definitely agree it's bizarre a certain segment of "fandom" wouldn't want T'Challa to be portrayed as a master technologist and scientist, as he was in the Silver Age upon debut, and seemed almost oblivious to how this was a sci-fi universe as it is. I'm guessing it's just some troublemakers who didn't really care about Marvel comics anyway. But this doesn't excuse the cheap path they're taking now, even if T'Challa's demise is only brief.

“I really believe that subversiveness and new ideas are what’s needed,” Priest said. “That there’s really too much of this mimicry of the silver age going on these days.”

Writers can be afraid to break the toys given to them. But playing it safe doesn’t lead to interesting stories; it makes for forgettable ones.

“There can be these people that grew up reading comics,” Priest said. “Where they finally got their hands on Spider-Man, and now they want to do what they’ve always done. When what we need is real innovation. And you need people who are not going to treat them like they’re precious…and are gonna take chances. And if you fail? You fail. It’s comics. We bring people back from the dead all the time. But we need to try, and get characters out of cul-de-sacs.”

On the other hand, Priest respects the original material, but he doesn’t stop there. He uses it as a jumping-off point to modernize the character and take them to places they’ve never been.

And this obscures the grevious errors made when JMS was writing Spidey. I guess it's okay if he breaks the toys for the sake of making both Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson look awful? Please. Also, how is Priest respecting the original tales if he had BP spy upon Earth's Mightiest Heroes? That's hardly an admirable act. And what new ideas are there today, in an industry where left-wing politics dictate the narrative? That's why in the long run, it's failing.

“People keep thinking because he’s wearing his costume that he’s a hero, or that he’s somehow noble or even a moral leader,” Priest said. “He’s none of those things. He’s the sovereign of a nation. That responsibility is the only thing he cares about. And Black Panther’s always doing like, terrible things behind people’s backs. Because that’s the nature. He’s a sneaky guy. And he’s always stayed at least five steps ahead of his enemies.”

But if he was written doing terrible things to good people, is that a good example? Hardly. At the end, Priest says:

“Our Black Panther is our world to come,” Priest said. “It’s completely our own vision of the near future. It is not tied into any other bit of Marvel continuity, which gives us enormous freedom to do things like have Lockjaw show up, so we’re very happy about that. I’m glad that’s finally coming out. It’s been a long and interesting journey.”

Even if this is similar to a recent Sub-Mariner tale set in the future, it's still coming way too late, and I personally am not interested in owning the Knights series. I vaguely remember seeing a volume on a store shelf many years ago, but couldn't decide and never got the chance in the end to buy it. But, now that I own 3 Epic Collections gathering all the most essential tales, what difference does it make? Far as I'm concerned, I have the whole true BP run in my collection, and that's what counts.

Now, as if this couldn't get stupefying enough, ComicBook says Priest and Quesada have now done what until recently most might not have thought them capable of doing as they would with a white protagonist: they're conceiving what could be called a reverse race-swap:

Marvel Knights: The World To Come #1 comes from the creative team of Joe Quesada, Christopher Priest, Richard Isanove, Richard Starkings, and Comiccraft’s Tyler Smith. Much of the conflict takes place in the Republic of Wakanda, 8 Years Before The World To Come. An older T’Challa is engaged in a tribal challenge against his son Ketema to decide who will rule over Wakanda. Ketema is wearing a full-body Black Panther costume, keeping his identity a secret. However, it’s made clear that T’Challa is his father and we’re assuming it’s by blood.

We flash back to T’Challa’s marriages to Storm and Monica Lynne, with Monica shown to be pregnant with a boy. The tribal challenge between T’Challa and Ketema continues until the boy finally gets the upper hand on his father. Ketema stands above a bloodied T’Challa and takes off his mask to reveal that he’s a white male with blond hair.

Obviously, this is a pretty big development for the King of an African nation. Is Monica Lynne Ketema’s mother? Is T’Challa his biological father? The finale of Marvel Knights: The World To Come #1 opens up several questions. It’s worth pointing out that when we flashback to T’Challa returning to Monica to propose in the rain, she ditches her significant other at the time — who appears to be a white male — to accept T’Challa’s proposal. Perhaps he is secretly Ketema’s father, but T’Challa helped raise the boy as if he were his own.

However, Ketema clearly has resentment towards T’Challa. He mentions being raised by the clerics of Wakanda, possibly since the King of Wakanda couldn’t be seen raising a white child. T’Challa also calls Ketema his only son, but the cover of Marvel Knights: The World To Come #3 shows T’Challa standing with a Black boy and a white boy, signifying that they are both meant to be his sons. It’s a lot to digest, which makes reading each future chapter all the more appealing.

Forget it. All this makes clear is that, given the chance, woke writers can and will make a mockery out of a Black protagonist at the drop of a hat, and that they're definitely willing to troll the audience when it could be completely avoided. Most hilarious is how they make the new character blond, when they could just as well have made him a redhead or dark-haired. This controversy-baiting tale may not end with T'Challa remaining in the afterlife, but it's still appalling they even have to spend so much money for its making, all under the defense of "creativity", and even being "edgy".

Making matters worse, Comic Book Movie also comes off sounding like this is okay, and maybe it's not a shock they'd take that position at all:

The Marvel Knights: The World to Come collection has just launched with its first issue and is already revolutionizing social media and conversations among those who closely follow the comic book universe. And no wonder: the new bearer of the Black Panther mantle is an unexpected, controversial figure, and, for many, difficult to fit in. The reason? The new Black Panther is white.

It should be noted the real reason this is appalling is because these kind of stories aren't built on writing merit, but on controversy baiting, and putting a new protagonist into the costume at the original wearer's expense. One of the most grating problems about this kind of story is that it also relies on the notion a veteran hero can only pass on the baton by dying. It won't be a surprise if some will say Priest's a sellout to a form of wokeness that was bound to happen, perhaps by being naive to the notion Black and Asian protagonists were immune in contrast to whites. But as we're learning fast, that's clearly not the case.

Anyway, based on Quesada's involvement with the writing as much as the art, that's why it'd be best to avoid this story and not pay all the money they're surely hoping people will pay for the sake of a story that's unlikely to be widely discussed in the coming decades. Stories built and marketed based on trolling the audience and dedicated fans do not have high value, and as is rather obvious today, the time's long past where Marvel books like these could work anyway. Let's also remember Quesada was part and parcel of Spider-Man's downfall as a comic. And the Knights imprint was decidedly overrated, including the take on Daredevil, where, last time I looked, the demise of Karen Page still remains canon, no matter what continuity it's set in. Plus, what Marvel universe is there now where BP could be transferred back to? It's all a shambles today, no thanks to Quesada for one.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, Black Panther, Captain America, Daredevil, golden calf of death, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, technology, women of marvel