McGregor, Don

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

2 out of 5

(1 book)

Black Panther: Panther's Rage

(Art by Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Billy Graham, Klaus Janson, Craig Russell, Pablo Marcos, Dan Green and Bob Macleod)

T'Challa returns to Wakanda from his time spent with the Avengers in the US to find that he and his American girlfriend are treated with suspicion of being tainted by the outside world.  With his rule already undermined, T'Challa then has to face a revolution led by the brutal Erik Killmonger which throws Wakanda into civil war.

This story from the 70s is considered by some to be Marvel's first graphic novel and whilst that may be true, I can say with certainty that it's far from their best.  I found this book a real chore to read and it took much longer to get through than most other graphic novels of the same length.

The biggest problem is how pretentious it is.  McGregor clearly felt that he had some great insight into human psychology and matters of philosophy and is at pains to express all of this, taking long tedious tangents to try and make some point that's clearly intended to be deep but instead comes off as trite.  Furthermore, his writing is overly verbose, with long paragraphs of awkward prose being used to convey something that could've been expressed in a single well-written sentence.  It very much feels like the writer was under the impression that more words is always better.

A few other nitpicks but which further soured me towards this book include; the fact that most chapters feature Black Panther killing some African animal for absolutely no reason beyond "Look!  He can kill a rhino with his bare hands!", the bizarre and badly-implemented inclusion of dinosaurs, the above-and-beyond terrible naming of the sub-villains (Karnaj, King Cadaver, Venomm - with two 'M's! - etcetera) and the fact that the book repeatedly uses the word crossbow for a weapon which is clearly just a bow.  That last may seem like a silly thing to get annoyed about, but it speaks volumes about the lack of attention to detail throughout.

The one and only reason I've not given this the lowest possible score is that Billy Graham's artwork is something special.  He does a great job of all of the human figures and their sense of movement, but in particular he does an amazing job of giving T'Challa a sinuous, catlike grace that is just perfect for the character.

2 out of 5

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