Loren
08-09-2006, 07:57 PM
It’s been a year and a half since the new “Black Panther” series premiered, and since Hudlin first said that the series was a reboot, before he retracted that statement. At the time, he said that how the series fit into MU continuity would be sorted out later.
Well, it’s a year and a half later, and there’s still no agreement on the matter, other than the obvious fact that the current issues are taking place in the current-day MU. Readers, meanwhile, appear to have at least three different takes on the internal timeline of Reggie’s stories:
1) The events from #1 through #18 have taken place more or less sequentially, over a short period of time, in the present-day MU. Thus making the T'Challa who just got married a fairly young and new king, and new to being the Black Panther.
2) The events from #8 through #18 have taken place over a short period of time in the present-day MU, but the events depicted in #1-6 were a ‘flashback’ story, taking place several years earlier in T’Challa’s life. Thus making T'Challa someone who's been king for a few years.
3) The events from #8 through #18 have taken place over a short period of time in the present-day MU, but the Wakanda-US-Klaw conflict depicted in #1-6 was a ‘flashback,’ taking place some years earlier in T’Challa’s life. Other aspects of #2-3 (specifically T’Challa becoming king and the Black Panther) were an unidentified flashback within a flashback, taking place some further years earlier in T’Challa’s life. Thus T'Challa has been king for several years.
There might be some further variations, but these are the three primary views. All three have to agree that #8 was set in the ‘present-day,’ because it crossed over with the present-day X-Men title. And subsequent issues have clearly followed it closely, chronologically.
There’s one other thing that all must agree on, and those are the two timeline facts that Hudin specifically addressed. One is that in the first arc, T’Challa and Ross have not met. The second is that in the first arc, T’Challa is not yet an Avenger.
Now Reggie originally said the series was a reboot, but when he backtracked and said that he’d misused the word, I trusted him. But now, with a year and a half of Hudlin-penned issues behind us, I think we can make a determination: of the three timeline options above, (1) is correct. T’Challa became king and the Black Panther only a short time ago, and the series is, indeed, a reboot of the Black Panther (or at least was intended to be until recently).
How do we know this?
1. Storytelling evidence:
Hudlin said early on: “[This series is] not about ‘negating’ all that has gone on before, as some panicked posts have speculated. It's about creating a coherent story that a first time reader of the Black Panther - or even better, a first time reader of a comic book - can pick up and follow.”
This strongly suggests that the series should be approached from the POV of a reader new to BP, rather than someone versed in his history. If new readers are his target audience, then he’s not going to suddenly require an implicit knowledge of the character’s history to understand unstated developments in the story.
This points to the first arc not being a flashback arc. Most authors, if they're going to skip their narrative ahead several years, or suddenly set a sequence in a different time frame, will somehow tell the reader that. See, for instance, DC’s “One Year Later” jump. Or the season finale of "Battlestar Galactica." Or within the pages of Hudlin’s BP, the specific time settings given to scenes in #1 (“5th Century AD”, “19th Century”; but no “X years ago” for the Klaw/White House scenes, implying they’re in the present). Particularly if the reader is expected to come into the story fresh.
Ask yourself, would a person unfamiliar with the Black Panther or the MU have *any* reason to glean from the text that years had passed between issues? Nothing was said about time passing. Nothing was said about the first arc being a flashback (and there were at least three flashbacks within the first arc that were identified as being flashbacks). Nobody got noticeably older. Everybody's status quo from #6 remained completely intact in #8. A new reader’s natural interpretation would be that little to no time had passed between issues.
2. Specific, in-text references:
Over the first dozen or so issues, Hudlin provided ample evidence that said that minimal time had passed between the events of #2 and the events of #8 and following.
- T’Challa wins the the title of king and Black Panther in combat in #2. In #3, following a meeting with his advisors (in which he talks about Klaw), he receives congratulations on his coronation from two world leaders. This means that the events of #3 happened soon after the events of #2.
- Hudlin said that T’Challa wasn’t an Avenger during that first arc, so by necessity, the entire invasion storyline must take place prior to him joining the Avengers. After all, if he had several years of Avengers’ status on his resume, one would think that might’ve been mentioned at some point while Dondi was planning to invade his country.
- In #5, T’Challa goes into Niganda and finds and attacks M’Butu. In #8, when T'Challa is telling the X-Men about Dr. Paine, he mentions that Wakanda had wanted to do something about it for a while, but their non-interventionist policy prevented them. Then the attack came.
T'Challa says something to the effect of 'We removed M'Butu from power and then moved on this facility,' referring to the facility the X-Men just found him in.
He then explains that the monsters escaped when the war began and the power grid quickly dropped. He says they got it back up, but the monsters had already escaped and started eating people.
- There apparently is a reference in some issue to Rhino still being in captivity in Wakanda in #8 or later, after having been captured in the first arc. Seems odd to lock up a recurring Spider-Man villain for several years.
- In #10, T'Challa gives a speech at the UN about the events of the first arc (he even says "all enemy combatants will be questioned;" future tense). And then meeting with Secretary of State Dondi Reese, with the head of one of the zombie soldiers from the first arc.
It’s rather unlikely that the US would attempt to invade Wakanda, then a few years go by while T'Challa runs around with an American super-team based in NYC, and then the series picks back up when he decides to tongue-lash the UN and the Secretary of State for an invasion from years earlier.
- Shuri is still distraught in #10 over her killing of the radioactive Igor in #6. As in randomly breaking down and crying in public. That would make sense a short time after the event; it makes a lot less sense years later. Note that T'Challa consoles her by saying "A first kill can be very upsetting," without her having to tell him what she's crying about; that's remarkably psychic of him if the thing she's crying about happened years earlier.
- When Monica Lynne appears in #10, the narration reads as follows;
"Monica Lynne - a neo-soul singer out of Philly. They dated while he was learning the diplomatic game in Washington. He was out of college and she already had a following. Now he's a king and she's a star."
Under the old continuity, T'Challa and Monica met in the course of an Avengers adventure. For some reason, Hudlin specifically amended their history to remove the Avengers context. Also note that Hudlin now has them meeting *before* T'Challa became king, rather than after.
- Cannibal's been inhabiting T'Shan since #6. In #18, Dr. Strange quickly noticed something was odd about T'Shan; if years had passed while T'Challa was an Avenger, one has to wonder why he hadn't aroused suspicion earlier.
Or, for that matter, why Cannibal would be content to remain a Wakandan ambassador for years. As a diplomat, he would meet rich and powerful people all the time. He could probably possess the First Lady, and then the President, if he wanted to. 'UN ambassador from Wakanda' would not be his endgame, as since his own thought balloons in #18 have him expressing a desire to take over Storm.
- And the dialogue coup d'etat, from #10 (emphasis added by me):
"Apparently, after taking the throne and killing the man who murdered his father, his next job was to find a wife and produce an heir. Or two."
That specifically sets up the events of the first arc through #10 as being sequential.
So there you have about ten reasons, all pulled directly from Hudlin-penned issues of BP, why the narrative in Hudlin’s story hasn’t skipped over years of T’Challa’s life between issues. Which means that the events in #2-6, where T’Challa was a new king who had never been an Avenger, happened not too terribly long before the wedding arc kicked off. Thus, the T’Challa who proposed to Storm was still a new king and never had time to be an Avenger. And that means that all of Black Panther’s previous history (from Lee and MacGregor and Priest, and including, to cite one example, the Storm/T'Challa meeting from "Sturm und Drang") is all retconned away. Despite Hudlin’s subsequent claims to the contrary and attempts to obscure the point, he was right the first time: he rebooted the character of the Black Panther.
Arguments to the contrary, or to refute the above evidence, are welcomed.
Finally, it seems Marvel is backtracking on Hudlin's reboot already. The lip service paid to a history with the Avengers in #18 is in direct conflict with Hudlin's earlier BP issues. And the profile of T'Challa (http://www.marvel.com/universe/Black_Panther_(T'Challa)) on Marvel.com (also printed in the Marvel Milestones issue in May) contains a very thorough synopsis of Priest's series, but makes absolutely no reference to a single event or new character from Hudlin's series.
Loren
Well, it’s a year and a half later, and there’s still no agreement on the matter, other than the obvious fact that the current issues are taking place in the current-day MU. Readers, meanwhile, appear to have at least three different takes on the internal timeline of Reggie’s stories:
1) The events from #1 through #18 have taken place more or less sequentially, over a short period of time, in the present-day MU. Thus making the T'Challa who just got married a fairly young and new king, and new to being the Black Panther.
2) The events from #8 through #18 have taken place over a short period of time in the present-day MU, but the events depicted in #1-6 were a ‘flashback’ story, taking place several years earlier in T’Challa’s life. Thus making T'Challa someone who's been king for a few years.
3) The events from #8 through #18 have taken place over a short period of time in the present-day MU, but the Wakanda-US-Klaw conflict depicted in #1-6 was a ‘flashback,’ taking place some years earlier in T’Challa’s life. Other aspects of #2-3 (specifically T’Challa becoming king and the Black Panther) were an unidentified flashback within a flashback, taking place some further years earlier in T’Challa’s life. Thus T'Challa has been king for several years.
There might be some further variations, but these are the three primary views. All three have to agree that #8 was set in the ‘present-day,’ because it crossed over with the present-day X-Men title. And subsequent issues have clearly followed it closely, chronologically.
There’s one other thing that all must agree on, and those are the two timeline facts that Hudin specifically addressed. One is that in the first arc, T’Challa and Ross have not met. The second is that in the first arc, T’Challa is not yet an Avenger.
Now Reggie originally said the series was a reboot, but when he backtracked and said that he’d misused the word, I trusted him. But now, with a year and a half of Hudlin-penned issues behind us, I think we can make a determination: of the three timeline options above, (1) is correct. T’Challa became king and the Black Panther only a short time ago, and the series is, indeed, a reboot of the Black Panther (or at least was intended to be until recently).
How do we know this?
1. Storytelling evidence:
Hudlin said early on: “[This series is] not about ‘negating’ all that has gone on before, as some panicked posts have speculated. It's about creating a coherent story that a first time reader of the Black Panther - or even better, a first time reader of a comic book - can pick up and follow.”
This strongly suggests that the series should be approached from the POV of a reader new to BP, rather than someone versed in his history. If new readers are his target audience, then he’s not going to suddenly require an implicit knowledge of the character’s history to understand unstated developments in the story.
This points to the first arc not being a flashback arc. Most authors, if they're going to skip their narrative ahead several years, or suddenly set a sequence in a different time frame, will somehow tell the reader that. See, for instance, DC’s “One Year Later” jump. Or the season finale of "Battlestar Galactica." Or within the pages of Hudlin’s BP, the specific time settings given to scenes in #1 (“5th Century AD”, “19th Century”; but no “X years ago” for the Klaw/White House scenes, implying they’re in the present). Particularly if the reader is expected to come into the story fresh.
Ask yourself, would a person unfamiliar with the Black Panther or the MU have *any* reason to glean from the text that years had passed between issues? Nothing was said about time passing. Nothing was said about the first arc being a flashback (and there were at least three flashbacks within the first arc that were identified as being flashbacks). Nobody got noticeably older. Everybody's status quo from #6 remained completely intact in #8. A new reader’s natural interpretation would be that little to no time had passed between issues.
2. Specific, in-text references:
Over the first dozen or so issues, Hudlin provided ample evidence that said that minimal time had passed between the events of #2 and the events of #8 and following.
- T’Challa wins the the title of king and Black Panther in combat in #2. In #3, following a meeting with his advisors (in which he talks about Klaw), he receives congratulations on his coronation from two world leaders. This means that the events of #3 happened soon after the events of #2.
- Hudlin said that T’Challa wasn’t an Avenger during that first arc, so by necessity, the entire invasion storyline must take place prior to him joining the Avengers. After all, if he had several years of Avengers’ status on his resume, one would think that might’ve been mentioned at some point while Dondi was planning to invade his country.
- In #5, T’Challa goes into Niganda and finds and attacks M’Butu. In #8, when T'Challa is telling the X-Men about Dr. Paine, he mentions that Wakanda had wanted to do something about it for a while, but their non-interventionist policy prevented them. Then the attack came.
T'Challa says something to the effect of 'We removed M'Butu from power and then moved on this facility,' referring to the facility the X-Men just found him in.
He then explains that the monsters escaped when the war began and the power grid quickly dropped. He says they got it back up, but the monsters had already escaped and started eating people.
- There apparently is a reference in some issue to Rhino still being in captivity in Wakanda in #8 or later, after having been captured in the first arc. Seems odd to lock up a recurring Spider-Man villain for several years.
- In #10, T'Challa gives a speech at the UN about the events of the first arc (he even says "all enemy combatants will be questioned;" future tense). And then meeting with Secretary of State Dondi Reese, with the head of one of the zombie soldiers from the first arc.
It’s rather unlikely that the US would attempt to invade Wakanda, then a few years go by while T'Challa runs around with an American super-team based in NYC, and then the series picks back up when he decides to tongue-lash the UN and the Secretary of State for an invasion from years earlier.
- Shuri is still distraught in #10 over her killing of the radioactive Igor in #6. As in randomly breaking down and crying in public. That would make sense a short time after the event; it makes a lot less sense years later. Note that T'Challa consoles her by saying "A first kill can be very upsetting," without her having to tell him what she's crying about; that's remarkably psychic of him if the thing she's crying about happened years earlier.
- When Monica Lynne appears in #10, the narration reads as follows;
"Monica Lynne - a neo-soul singer out of Philly. They dated while he was learning the diplomatic game in Washington. He was out of college and she already had a following. Now he's a king and she's a star."
Under the old continuity, T'Challa and Monica met in the course of an Avengers adventure. For some reason, Hudlin specifically amended their history to remove the Avengers context. Also note that Hudlin now has them meeting *before* T'Challa became king, rather than after.
- Cannibal's been inhabiting T'Shan since #6. In #18, Dr. Strange quickly noticed something was odd about T'Shan; if years had passed while T'Challa was an Avenger, one has to wonder why he hadn't aroused suspicion earlier.
Or, for that matter, why Cannibal would be content to remain a Wakandan ambassador for years. As a diplomat, he would meet rich and powerful people all the time. He could probably possess the First Lady, and then the President, if he wanted to. 'UN ambassador from Wakanda' would not be his endgame, as since his own thought balloons in #18 have him expressing a desire to take over Storm.
- And the dialogue coup d'etat, from #10 (emphasis added by me):
"Apparently, after taking the throne and killing the man who murdered his father, his next job was to find a wife and produce an heir. Or two."
That specifically sets up the events of the first arc through #10 as being sequential.
So there you have about ten reasons, all pulled directly from Hudlin-penned issues of BP, why the narrative in Hudlin’s story hasn’t skipped over years of T’Challa’s life between issues. Which means that the events in #2-6, where T’Challa was a new king who had never been an Avenger, happened not too terribly long before the wedding arc kicked off. Thus, the T’Challa who proposed to Storm was still a new king and never had time to be an Avenger. And that means that all of Black Panther’s previous history (from Lee and MacGregor and Priest, and including, to cite one example, the Storm/T'Challa meeting from "Sturm und Drang") is all retconned away. Despite Hudlin’s subsequent claims to the contrary and attempts to obscure the point, he was right the first time: he rebooted the character of the Black Panther.
Arguments to the contrary, or to refute the above evidence, are welcomed.
Finally, it seems Marvel is backtracking on Hudlin's reboot already. The lip service paid to a history with the Avengers in #18 is in direct conflict with Hudlin's earlier BP issues. And the profile of T'Challa (http://www.marvel.com/universe/Black_Panther_(T'Challa)) on Marvel.com (also printed in the Marvel Milestones issue in May) contains a very thorough synopsis of Priest's series, but makes absolutely no reference to a single event or new character from Hudlin's series.
Loren