The #RecastTChalla Remix: BW Responds To A Review Of A Past Article

When I saw the #RecastTChalla hashtag was trending again on X-Twitter (this week, Elon Musk moved it over to the “x.com” URL because apparently he’s officially going with this unnecessary name change), I did what any blogger who has a bad track record of self-promotion would do, and link to my old article from the first time this hashtag trended. “Weighing In On #RecastTchalla” was the third article I put up after the rather stupid decision to not recast the Black Panther after the death of Chadwick Boseman, despite his family stating he wouldn’t want to leave the character uncast. Instead Marvel Studios, now entering their “comic sux, we do bettar” phase, instead took the opportunity to replace the king of Wakanda with Shuri, despite T’Challa still being Black Panther in the comics. Critics claim it was to replace the male hero with the female hero, and we’ll probably get into that. Short version: branded representation versus actual representation. Being there isn’t enough, the NAME is all that matters.

I’ve done this before, even though I rarely care about trends, but this topic is apparently big. I actually got buzz on X-Twitter. Surprised me. It’s a very touchy subject for both the black community and the current racial/culture war as well as for actual comic fans who read the comics or saw the cartoons and knew about Black Panther long before that. Note that few of these champions ever went to buy the comics, according to sales figures at the time. Having the black hero (not the first black hero when Spawn, The Meteor Man, Blankman–and those are just the title heroes–already hit movie screens and we can discuss TV as well) finally show up in the MCU unless you count War Machine, Falcon, and frankly Goliath deserved to be more than a retired old man is a big deal. Comic fans have waited longer for a live-action Black Panther and while it’s still on my Finally Watched list (my backlog is incredible, but look what I’ve been through in the past decade) I hear good things about it. I did see him in the Avengers movies and liked him. My “Civil War” Marvel embargo is still in place so I missed his debut.

One interesting responder was a YouTuber who refers to himself as a Black Panther historian, so I’m assuming he’s checked out the comics and cartoons. He even talked about it Monday on his “Mornings In Wakanda” podcast, which is linked below and I will be responding to. I tried to cue up to where we get to the examination of my article, which I linked to in the first paragraph so you can read along with him. You can check out the full show if you want, but be prepared to hear political views contrary to your own, possibly during the “important” part as I’m going to write as I watch. The starting point is around the 25 minute mark. The host, Theo B on YouTube, goes over my article and is fair enough to it. I just want to take the chance to elaborate on a few points I made in the original article. This was recorded live, while I was waking up to the usual Morning Nonsense podcast so I caught this after the fact and couldn’t respond then. I can now. I have a website!

He’s not wrong about the BW part of the name, but the origin is more “I made comics in black and white and it became my pseudo-brand so I used it as part of the site name” than discussing things in black and white. Full story is in the about section.

The first bit of clarification is what if any connection this cracker has to the black community or “black culture”. Admittedly as an outsider, but even in the groups I’m part of I’m outsider so that’s par for the course. I’ve been around black people, talked with plenty in various situations (though we discuss less politics unless we’re talking taxes and stuff we all agree on, or my usual storytelling interests) but I live in a small Connecticut town. There are more people of color here than when I went to school but I’ve been a shut-in lately thanks to the medical issues I just got over. So what I know comes from the internet, commentary shows, and the news, plus the interactions I’ve had with actual human beings. Remember human beings? So I wouldn’t think to comment on “black culture”, and I can find two black people with two different definitions of what that means based on whether they’re liberal or conservative, outside of general empathy and what I’ve seen from people of all races of various political perspectives. Everyone deserves their own heroes, so long as you don’t steal from some other group, including whitening up a black character, or fail to do anything with that character outside of their race. Those tend to be boring characters and I’ve done multiple lists of black characters I enjoyed growing up who had more of a description and personality to them than “black”. So judge my rights to speak as you will, but that’s not the “culture” I can speak from.

I’m coming from comic culture or storytelling culture, people of all races who have enjoyed Black Panther’s actions for years. Granted, I have few of his comic appearances, partly because I was more of a DC kid than Marvel (the only Marvel comic I subscribed to as a kid was The Transformers, shout out to Walter Barnett of Triple-I) but I did get a few of his four color showings as well as seeing him on cartoons. The Ultimate Avengers movies are quite good. His various Fantastic Four show appearances showed him to be a good man who wants to protect his country and better serve his people. The Super Hero Squad Show and the current Spidey & His Amazing Friends guest appearance also make him a cool character. The Black Panther cartoon from BET that used the CEO’s comic stories…happened. Sorry, but I didn’t care for the show. Read the comics instead. That leads to his first comment, where I mentioned Stan and Steve’s origins. From the original article:

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (two Jewish men), T’Challa, otherwise known as Black Panther, is the ruler of Wakanda (created by those same two Jewish men), a fictional African nation with advanced technology and outdated weaponry if you ask the folks at Marvel Studios.

Concept art for the MCU costume.

Yes, the African nation with advanced technology uses spears and rides animals into battle. Of course they do. They’re an African tribe. I really need to get some facepalm images in this site’s library. That wasn’t me being petty, that was me being snarky about a dumb decision, and the comics are guilty of that one at times as well. By the way, in a comic story also written by a black guy but without the studio making a huge interference. As Hudlin adapted into the cartoon airing on his network, BET, there is a scene where an opposing tribe tries to attack Wakanda, only to deal with auto-launching spears. I don’t remember if that was a flashback or not, but it wasn’t the movie was in present day and the Wakandan army are still using spears that are just spears with vibranium. You’re more high tech than Tony Stark. Those things should be firing thunderbolts at Thanos.

Was I being petty on the rest of it, as the host and someone else on X-Twitter stated? Maybe, but remember what the situation was like when the movie came out. Ignoring the real fools who actually went to travel agents to book a trip to Wakanda (at least there is a Metropolis…in Illinois and it’s not a mega city, with the only Superman being a big statue), and even Just Some Guy made fun of them, the movie was of course dragged into the culture war by people who didn’t pick up a comic book since they were 5, if even that. They supported the movie but not the comic and thus not the character completely.

The most used example in my discussion circles at the time Black Panther came out was a woman on Tiktok insisting white people should buy tickets for poor black people (as if seeing a movie was the top priority of people struggling to feed their children something more than popcorn) and stand in front of the theater doors on opening weekend to protect black moviegoers from being attacked by racists. Which didn’t happen because the only white people going to see this movie were comic fans who knew T’Challa was married to Storm of the X-Men and the average moviegoer wanting a fun night out with a superhero movie back when Marvel Studios focused on making good superhero movies that were also fair adaptations of the comic world. So, petty? Maybe a bit, but it also helped with the gag between the two paragraphs, the first being the creation of Black Panther and the other the creation of Chadwick Boseman. I thought it was a good bit, and it’s rare my self-esteem is happy with one of my jokes. I never promised Jake & Leon was funny. 🙂 I do my research at least.

I’m not sure if Theo is referring to the Marvel Action Hour/Universe Fantastic Four cartoon (not the same one that aired last Saturday’s Showcase of “Pryde Of The X-Men” or the 2006 World’s Greatest Heroes. I didn’t see the latter because I’m not an FF fan and only watched the former because it aired with Iron Man (season one was bad but season two was great) and they did do a story based on T’Challa’s debut story, challenging the FF to improve his fighting skills and traps to protect his people. Pushing him out with his dad (who if memory serves worked with Captain America in WWII and is how he got his vibranium shield in some continuities) or his sister is a move I don’t understand.

My warning to both sides remains in this article as well. Don’t harass the people I posted tweets for in that article, or Theo in this one. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, “us” or “them”. The first tweet I used didn’t have the name “Free Palestine” at the time because that wasn’t a discussion at the time. I chose his tweet because that’s where I decided to write the article.

M.A.N.T.I.S. was a great TV movie. Too bad the series didn’t live up to it.

Fantastic Four #52, debut of the Black Panther

He stops going over the article at that point, at the 1:17 mark. So he doesn’t get to the part where I talk about past recasts during a movie series run, like Dumbledore after his actor passed. Batman had three different Batmen over four movies and none of them died. Sadly he also missed me going over the race change of Nick Fury because the Ultimate universe version was based on Samuel L. Jackson so that’s what they went with, having him be the son of the original white Nick Fury (wouldn’t that make him biracial?) in the comics to match the movie after the original Ultimate universe got blowed up. Wonder what he thinks of my idea of David Hasselhoff from the old Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD failed pilot playing Sam L’s dad? Still totally want to see that by the way. I also responded to a really petty tweet about recasting him with Ryan Gosling pre-Ken, which is just dumb. Still love the idea of John Boyega as the new T’Challa. No, you don’t need to use the alternate universe stuff Marvel Studios does now, or “this is his son with the same name we didn’t know about because reasons”. They won’t be doing that for General Ross I’d wager.

My thanks to Theo at “Mornings In Wakanda” for the shout-out. If you liked what you saw, check out his YouTube channel. Let T’Challa be T’Challa and Black Panther. No reason to replace him or retcon him out. Too many comic fans, or movie-only superhero fans, or black superhero fans, waited a long time for him, and they want more of the character they love. Not that the current regime at Marvel Studios cares about any of these groups anymore. Perhaps we were too harsh on Ike Perlmutter?