black panther

Wakanda forever.

Could a visit to the ‘Black Panther’s home be in our future?

Ryan Coogler’s company is producing the series.

‘Black Panther II’ is still happening.

Black superheroes have undergone a necessary evolution over the last 50 years. Luke Cage was originally a jive-talking hero-for-hire, but he's become an altruistic mainstay of the Marvel heroes. Storm leads the X-Men, while Black Panther makes decisions that gravely affect the state of the universe. The growth and variation of black superheroes has brought them out of the shadows. But we're still lacking the same sort of evolution and diversification for great black supervillains. Off the top of your head how many can you name? And of those, how many are iconic?

Pretty much the the two things we definitely, absolutely know about Black Panther is that Black Panther will be in it, and it’ll feature a pretty grand-scale car chase scene in the middle of Busan, South Korea. They’ve been filming the car chase for the past week, which is why we’ve been hearing so much about it, and today Korea’s branch of the Walt Disney Company has released a first look image of the scene.

At this point, you could probably use the MCU to delineate the passage of time. For instance, in just one more Marvel movie, it’ll be summertime, and we only have two more Marvel movies until Black Panther arrives. As we anxiously await T’Challa’s first solo film, new photos and video from the South Korea set have landed online, teasing a big chase sequence in which the hero rides atop a sports car. That series of words is definitely exciting.

Black Panther is one of Marvel’s most exciting upcoming projects — the first film in the MCU to have a majority Black cast, a Black protagonist, and a Black director at the helm, and set in an entirely new, mysterious location we’ve only gotten a 30-second look at in a post-credits stinger. And as if we didn’t have enough of a reason to be excited about Black Panther, here’s a little reminder that Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya is in it! He recently spoke about how excited he was for the movie, and compared its epic scope to that HBO show you might’ve heard of, Game of Thrones.

Spinning out of Ta-Nehisi Coates' groundbreaking Black Panther comes The Crew, a new series co-written by Coates and his World of Wakanda collaborator, Yona Harvey, with art by the legendary Butch Guice. The team consists of Black Panther, Luke Cage, Storm, Misty Knight, and Manifold, who are investigating the death of a Harlem activist.

It's been just a few months since Amadeus Cho told nine-year-old Lunella Lafayette that she was "the smartest person in whole world" at the end of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #12. In the time since, Lunella has been condescended to by adult scientists, helped take down the Mole Man's monsters, and teamed up with two other girl geniuses --- the new and unstoppable Wasp, and Ironheart, aka Riri Williams. Lunella's brilliance makes her one in a long line of inspiring, super-smart Black characters in comics that can be traced back decades to the Black Panther's first appearance in 1966's Fantastic Four #52, by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.