Things You Didn't Know About Black Panther

Black creators were a part of comics from the very beginning. In fact, Golden Age artist Matt Baker, probably best known for his work on Phantom Lady, was one of the earliest pioneers of the longform adult-oriented graphic novel with his work alongside writer Arnold Drake on 1950's pulpy crime story It Rhymes With Lust. On the page, however, things were drastically different. There were a few attempts at making comics directed at an African-American audience, but with the early days of mainstream superhero comics, most black characters were sidekicks rooted in unfortunate racial stereotypes.

In 1966, however, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took steps to correct that by introducing a new character in their flagship title. Fantastic Four #52 introduced the world to T'Challa — better known as Black Panther — king of the African nation of Wakanda. When he was asked about it by Gary Groth in the pages of The Comics Journal, Kirby pointed to a very simple reason for creating the character: he realized that there weren't any black people in his comics, and thought that was a problem to be corrected.

"I came up with the Black Panther because I realized I had no blacks in my strip. I'd never drawn a black. I needed a black," Kirby recalled. "I suddenly discovered that I had a lot of black readers. My first friend was a black! And here I was ignoring them because I was associating with everybody else."

With that, the Panther was introduced in a story where he invited the FF to his secretive, ultra high-tech homeland, only to take them all out in a massive battle in order to test them and find them worthy of helping them. Not a bad debut.

While the Panther would remain a fixture in Fantastic Four for the rest of the '60s after his first appearance, and would join the Avengers in 1968, the early '70s saw him launched into his first solo adventures. It happened in the pages of Jungle Action #6, and over the next 18 issues, Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, and Billy Graham would tell one of Marvel's most lauded stories.

The series introduced foes like Erik Killmonger and Venomm (a snake-themed villain not to be confused with the Spider-Man baddie of the same name), but reached its heights in #19, when McGregor and Graham pit the Panther against the Ku Klux Klan. Set in Georgia, the story focused on Monica Lynne, a singer who became the Panther's longtime love interest, and as you might expect, dealt heavily with racism and the intimidation of black families in America. It's full of striking imagery, and one issue even ends with the Panther strapped to a burning cross — before he frees himself, batters his way through the crowd with the wood still tied to his back, and returns to stomp a mudhole in the entire group.

It's an incredibly pivotal story for Marvel. All Star Superman writer Grant Morrison cited McGregor's "lyrical allusiveness" in #19 as a huge influence on his work, and the legendary Dwayne McDuffie called it "the most tightly-written multi-part superhero epic ever" that was "everything a super-hero comic should be."

Comic books are full of special metals, from Wolverine's famous adamantium claws to DC's significantly less famous Batmanium — no, really, that one's actually in comics — but none are quite as interesting as Vibranium. It's got plenty of superheroic properties, and is only found in two places on Marvel's version of Earth: Wakanda, and the dinosaur-filled Antarctic jungle known as the Savage Land.

Wakanda's variety is known as "True Vibranium," and its rarity is attributed to the fact that it's not actually native to Earth. Instead, the mountain from which it's mined is actually a massive meteorite. As the name suggests, it has the ability to store and discharge vibrations, including the kind that come with a kinetic impact. In short, it's able to withstand and even reflect energy, which makes it pretty useful as part of the alloy that makes up Captain America's shield.

It's also used in plenty of other Marvel Universe artifacts: Hawkeye's arrows, Warpath's daggers, and the Constrictor's coils all employ Vibranium. Most prominently, though, you can find it in the Panther's strength-enhancing, bulletproof costume.

If you've been paying attention to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then you may already be familiar with Everett K. Ross, the CIA agent assigned to deal with some of the more official aspects of life in a universe full of superheroes. In the movies, he's played by Martin Freeman, and made his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War, interrogating Baron Zemo for his crimes.

In the comics, however, he had a bit of a rocky start. As an agent working for the State Department's Office of the Chief of Protocol, he was assigned to be a liason to Black Panther during the Wakandan hero's visit to America. Needless to say, the self-proclaimed "king of the useless white boys" was woefully unprepared to be pulled into the world of superheroics, and wound up being dragged along as a viewpoint character on what could charitably be called "misadventures."

Perhaps his scariest moment came early in the series. After losing his pants in a mud-wrestling match (long story), Ross found himself visited by Mephisto, the closest thing that the Marvel Universe has to the actual devil. Sitting next to each other in an apartment, with Ross on the couch and Mephisto on a flaming throne of skulls that he conjured up from the depths of Hell, the two characters shared a moment when Mephisto granted Ross a new pair of jeans, leaving Ross wondering if he had accidentally sold his soul for pants. Which, to be fair, isn't the worst possible reason to damn your immortal spirit.

One of the more recent developments in Black Panther's life came in 2012. Once again, T'Challa had given up the title of the Black Panther, with his sister Shuri taking over in his stead as both Black Panther and Queen of Wakanda. Unfortunately, she inherited a pretty big problem, in that the hyper-advanced nation was now being attacked constantly by hordes of the undead. Mondays, right?

In order to solve the problem, T'Challa descended into the underworld — figuratively and literally — to confront an ancient goddess. After receiving glimpses of future tragedies set to befall Wakanda, and admitting that he still desired the position of the Black Panther despite not wanting any harm to befall his sister or his rule, T'Challa was given a new role: King of the Dead. Blessed by Bastet, he was restored to his old strength, and given all the memories and knowledge of every Black Panther before him.

Superhero fans are undoubtedly familiar with Wesley Snipes from his role as Blade in the movie series of the same name. Hitting screens in 1998, the movie not only gave Marvel its first cinematic hit and launched a franchise that blended vampiric horror and hard-hitting action in equal measure, it also showed that second- and third-tier superheroes could be given a new life in film with the right idea behind them. But what even diehard fans might not know is that Blade wasn't Snipes' first attempt to bring a superhero to life. Long before Ryan Coogler took the helm with Chadwick Boseman, Snipes was dead set on playing the lead in a Black Panther movie.

As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, Snipes was involved in the mid-'90s in a potential film that, as he put it, would use the "fantastic, glorious periods of African empires and African royalty" as the basis to bring an inspirational new superhero to mass market audiences across the world. He wanted Wakanda, Vibranium, the force field, and the kind of comics-accurate costume that would require him to be, and we quote, "in shape and just be straight bodied up."

Unfortunately, as we all know, there's always someone ice skating uphill. While Snipes met with director John Singleton and screenwriter Terry Hayes — whose origin story for the Panther included a thematic callback to the story of Moses — the project never came together. Instead, Snipes went on to take a very successful risk as the Daywalker, and says today that he supports the new film "1,000 percent."