KILLMONGER GETS SHOWN THE LOVE AT THE 2016 SAN DIEGO COMIC CON THAT HE DIDN'T IN 1973
By Don McGregor 8-2-16
Sometimes, it takes decades before a truly strong villain can get his due.
In 1973, when I was first given the BLACK PANTHER to write for what had been a reprint comic, JUNGLE ACTION,
the title was considered a genre that had little chance of survival.
That is one of the main reasons I was given the series to write.
Rich Buckler would not have been on PANTHER'S RAGE if Rich Buckler had not told
editorial he wanted to work with me on T'Challa's adventures.
An artist of Rich's calibre and importance to more high profile titles for Marvel would never have been
considered to work with me if he had not told them he wanted to be there.
And certainly, at that stage of my career as a writer, starting out on my first series at Marvel, I did not have the power
to choose who I wanted to work with to visualize my scripts.
I had been incredibly lucky at Warren Magazines to have artists like Billy Graham and Tom Sutton
to draw my first stories, such as THE FADE-AWAY WALK and THE NIGHT THE SNOW SPILLED BLOOD.
Tom Sutton followed my visual ideas exactingly, and embellished many pages with his own story-telling
expertise.
But PANTHER'S RAGE was different.
This was the first time I was able to work side-by-side with an artist.
Rich Buckler and I had become friends from the get-go.
We both loved comics with a passion, and we wanted to dare to try to do the best we could.
To bring something individualistically our own to the medium.
I have written this before, but it is essential in comics. You can bleed onto the blank sheet of paper,
or splash your psychic blood over a computer screen, but if you don't have an artist who believes
in what you are doing, who sees the possibilities in the challenges of the story-telling, who bring their
own creative spark into the telling, the page will lie dead and shy of its possibilities.
Rich told Marvel he wanted to work with me on the strip, and he was doing so many other projects
for them, that editorial consented.
For the first three issues.
When I was given the Black Panther to write, the only given was that it would take place in
Wakanda, the land where T'Challa was king.
Before I could write any finished pages, I had to know that land-scape, that place, and take
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's concept and focus on how it might work/
I was also determined that this would at last be a black hero facing jungle pulp life-and-death
confrontations. I wanted it to be one big story that would capture many of the classic African
pulp situations, from icy waste-lands to humid lands where time stood still and prehistoric creatures
still existed.
The major difference: It would not be a white blonde jungle god or Goddess, it would be a true
African hero.
I started to ponder the other dimensions I hoped I could bring to series thematically.
Before I could write the first page, I read all the Black Panther stories in whatever comics he appeared in.
You could do that in those days.
There were not 4 or 5 decades on different renditions of the character.
Besides starting on the shape and various locations of Wakanda as a enchanted, special place,
where there was always only a Frank Frazetta moon in the sky, and exploring what themes I wanted to
try to explore, I thought that the villains of the piece (always of prime importance in costumed hero stories)
had to somehow be connected.
I had about 13 to 15 pages every two months, and if T'Challa came back to his country,
and as soon as he re-appeared Wakanda was over-run each story with a new villain to terrorize
the country, my belief was the populace would say, "Hey! You know what? We were better off
when you weren't here."
I couldn't tell anyone that PANTHER'S RAGE would be a graphic novel that would run at least 10 issues.
I never would have been given permission to do it.
What I did do, however, was take the logo Rich and I designed for Panther's Rage and have Stu Swartzberg
Stat it into a small version that I could glue onto the Splash page of the next issues, until finally no one gave
a damn whether it was there or not.
Actually, I had to know what I would do after PANTHER'S RAGE, that I had some other kind of story to tell,.
and before I was into the fierce dead-line battle to depict T'Challa against Killmonger and his coterie of war commanders.
I realized none of the Panther stories had ever mentioned his mother, only his father, and I talked about this in early comic fanzine interviews that the next series of stories would be set in South Africa and deal with Apartheid.
Rich found me a place to live in the Bronx, and we spent many hours there discussing the series.
I would sometimes pose for Rich as the Panther, the way I thought he should crouch, or leap, or display
his lithe abilities.
I was not, of course, in T'Challa's league.
Working with Rich in such positive environment was the first time I would have such a wonderful
collaborative time.
For all the tensions that came as the series progressed, those first three issues were exciting to do,
to watch Rich bring the ideas to visual life, to work side by side to create something both of us felt
was worth the while to do.
No one puts that kind of love and energy for $12.00 a page.
However long it takes to write the page, an hour, a day, a night, a week, whatever, the amount of
money you make is still $12.00.
For a two year project like Panther's Rage, you need to be like a race-horse, with blinders on,
keeping your focus on the end run, turning into reality what you had envisioned back at the beginning.
Rich left after the first 3 issues. Editorial insistence was elsewhere.
But in those initial books, I came up with Erik Killmonger, who would become, I hoped, T'Challa's Big Bad,
as Joss Whedon has come to call them in later years.
Rich and I worked on designing him, and Venomm, with full page illustrations by Rich.
Despite how striking they were, editorial did not want Killmonger used on the cover again after the first
issue.
If you look at the covers, you will see it is not until Panther's Rage is starting its second year that Killmonger
appears on the cover again.
In fact, in Rich's original cover, there were only the wolves attacking T'Challa in Blood Stains on Virgin Snow.
Later on, someone decided to add Killmonger onto the cover, and have bold copy announce his reappearance.
Rich and I are close to this day.
Working with him on those first books was exhilarating.
It was my first time working so closely with an artist.
I did not get to choose Billy Graham to draw the rest of Panther's Rage,
even though we were close friends, and had been long before I came to Marvel,
back when Billy was the first black Art Director in comics,
at Warren Magazines.
Through-out the years after that I was incredibly fortunate to be partners with
and become friends with not just
Rich and Billy,
but Craig Russell,
Gene Colan,
Dwayne Turner,
Mike Mayhew,
Tom Yeates,
Marshall Rogers
Esteban Maroto.
So Killmonger, who had been banished from covers in Jungle Action,
is now a part of the upcoming Black Panther movie, with
Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger.
And his name gets news play all over the San Diego Comic Con.
I think Rich and I should-a been there.
And as you can see in the photos below, I believe T'Challa would agree, as well.
Be kind to each other.
Be kind to yourselves.
And hang in there!
KILLMONGER GETS SHOWN THE LOVE AT THE 2016 SAN DIEGO COMIC CON THAT HE DIDN'T IN 1973
Sometimes, it takes decades before a truly strong villain can get his due.
In 1973, when I was first given the BLACK PANTHER to write for what had been a reprint comic, JUNGLE ACTION,
the title was considered a genre that had little chance of survival.
That is one of the main reasons I was given the series to write.
Rich Buckler would not have been on PANTHER'S RAGE if Rich Buckler had not told
editorial he wanted to work with me on T'Challa's adventures.
An artist of Rich's calibre and importance to more high profile titles for Marvel would never have been
considered to work with me if he had not told them he wanted to be there.
And certainly, at that stage of my career as a writer, starting out on my first series at Marvel, I did not have the power
to choose who I wanted to work with to visualize my scripts.
The Official Website of Don McGregor
