Marvel's Black Panther: A Comic Book Biography From Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates

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. Marvels 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.