Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther Volume 1

/ Alex Good

Mighty  Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther Volume 1

That bubblegum pink cover might strike you as a little off, but this is a collection of Marvel titles from the late 1960s and they were doing bright colours in a big way. In Fantastic Four #53, which provides an origin story for Black Panther, we get a half-page spread of a bright red elephant tearing out a tree against a canary-yellow background. Then flip the page and the sky has turned to that same shade of pink as on the cover. All of which makes up for the sickly grey skin tone of the Wakandas, making them seem like the mall-walking zombies from Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

The early comics here were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaborations. No need to go over their controversial relationship. Suffice it to say they were both good at what they did. The storylines are strong and the art explosive. But things don’t drop off in the back half of this collection, which introduces new writers and artists (principally Roy Thomas and John Buscema). The Sons of the Serpent storyline (from Avengers #73-74) is a terrific example of how good Marvel could be at the time, with a racial angle and twist ending that still plays fresh today. And Avengers #62, which has the Panther facing off against M’Baku the Man-Ape is my favourite. In fact, I had a copy of this when I was a kid. It’s one of the classic Panther stories that I’ve never forgotten.

Fans looking for a good collection of the Panther’s early days (what the Marvel Masterworks series is aimed at) should really like this, as the Penguin Classics Black Panther volume skips most of this early material. And to be sure the Panther started off mainly as a supporting character. In Fantastic Four #57, which is only included to round off the Klaw storyline, he barely puts in an appearance. It took him a while to come into his own. And also to get his costume up to speed (seeing his pupils behind his mask was a bit disconcerting). But this is still an essential volume, full of classic material that I call classic not just because it’s old but because it stands up as great reading more than fifty years later.

Graphicalex

26 thoughts on “Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The Black Panther Volume 1”

  4. I’ve always liked the way Kirby drew Black Panther. Thanks for the heads up about the Penguin Classics volume.

    In other news, I thought I was subbed to this blog and was wondering when your next comic book post was going to drop. It may be a problem with my browser but I’d clicked the Follow button a while ago and presumed everything was fine. Now I see I have a few posts to catch up on.

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    • Sorry for not getting back to this Wakizashi, for some reason it went to the spam folder. I’ll be covering lots of Black Panther here going forward. I do like these early ones, but he had excellent later iterations as well. Oddly enough, I read the Marvel Masterworks X-Men volume after this and it was full of Lee and Kirby stuff and I thought it was really subpar, especially considering how good later X-Men was.

      Yes, I’ll be updating every Saturday with a comic review. Hope you like them!

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      • No problem. I had a feeling it had got spammed because of me changing my user name.

        I love the Spider-Man Penguin Classic edition that focuses on the very early Lee & Ditko comics. I haven’t read the early X-Men comics by Lee & Kirby. I never got into the X-Men comics until Grant Morrison was writing New X-Men.

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