I was planning to wait until more issues came out to make some comment on this, to see where it goes. Of course, with the culture war surviving longer that M*A*S*H*’s version of the Korean War, I’d probably rather not talk about this at all. Outside of the folly of not recasting T’Challa and some animated appearances I don’t know much about the Black Panther. Seeing how it’s been weaponized by people who don’t care about comics against comic fans on the opposite side of the battlefield I really don’t have a desire to. I’m not even sure I want to watch the movie anymore. Activists ruin everything, and if killing superheroes was their goal they’re doing better than any supervillain in any comic or TV show ever. So I had to use one of the sites I get the Ultraverse comics from to research this, and while I’m ignorant of the Wakandan area of the Marvel Universe I was able to follow what was happening even with the time jumps.

Now we have an alternate future story from Marvel Knights, their “adult” imprint (like you can tell the difference from a mainstream kid-ignoring comic these days) in the style of DC’s Black Label. It will be up to future writers to decide if this is indeed the future, though it means killing Storm off in a “race war” (whether it’s her being a “mutant” or “black” is hard to tell these days), T’Challa being killed by his own son, and said son looking like this.

Admittedly not a bad cliffhanger.

Meet Ketema, pronounced “Ka-TO-mah” according to the comic. Not sure how that happens with the only “a” being at the end and no “o”s, but I guess that’s Wakanda for you. This is T’Challa’s son. Yes, he is as white as South African businessman Elon Musk. What was your first clue? There was a video many years ago that has since been taken down (though you can still read my thoughts if you want) where the host was using Black Panther as an example of race swapping long before the movie was even under consideration. Said host was talking about the problem of whitewashing T’Challa, somehow using Moon Knight Marc Spector as the end point. It made more sense in context (barely) but it’s not available anymore. Well, this isn’t a whitewash per say, but of course it’s bringing out the two sides of the culture war. I know which one I’m laughing along with, but once the fun is over the reason this is a bad idea starts becoming clearer. I know because I had it before the meltdown began.

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