Todd Steven Burroughs

Marvel's Black Panther Todd Steven Burroughs

Created by Marvel Comics Legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Black Panther is considered the first Black superhero in American mainstream comics. Through a textual analysis, this book narrates the history of the character from his first appearance in 1966--the same year, the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland, California--through Ta-Nehisi Coates' version in 2015. It tells the story of how Black and white writers envisioned the character between those years, as a Patrice Lumumba to a Sidney Poitier to a Nelson Mandela to a hip-hop cool to a reflective, 21st century king. Along the way, the limitations of white liberalism and the boundless nature of the Black imagination are revealed. Marvel's Black Panther is the first textual study of a superhero comic book character, examining its writers and the stories they have created over a fifty year period.