Review: Black Panther and The Crew #1
Even though most of Black Panther and The Crew #1 is spent in the Harlem of the 1950s and Black Panther doesn’t even show up, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ thoughts and ideas squarely fit in 2017. (Also, a team of black vigilantes beating up mafiosos in 1954 is pretty awesome.) An activist named Ezra Keith was arrested after protesting gentrification and ended up dead in police custody, and Misty Knight must investigate his murder while coming to terms with being a “good cop” in a world where brutality and cover ups are the norm. The twist is that Keith was Lynx, the leader of that earlier mentioned vigilante team, and Coates, artists Butch Guice and Scott Hanna, and colorist Dan Brown are off to tell a Harlem superhero/crime yarn that spans decades.
Coates does a little point/counterpoint with his writing of Misty Knight and Blue with Misty being more sympathetic towards police officers while Blue leans more towards the protesters’ POV. They end up somehow making a great team. I like how open he was about Misty’s bias because she is a police detective herself even though the presence of the fascist Robocop wannabe Americops makes the veteran superhero’s defense of the system come across as naive. She even starts by pulling her punches against the Americops when they confront her and Blue for missing their curfew before Guice and Hanna show her kicking ass in a flurry of sparks and kicks ass like the Daughter of Dragon that we know she is.
Misty’s sympathetic point of view towards the police comes off better in a scene where she talks to a correction officer who is badly and doesn’t appeal to some idealistic view of justice, but just doing his job well. Guice and Hanna do a great job blocking panels having Misty move closer to the guard because they both understand the tough reality of fighting for justice and keeping a job to pay the bills when corruption is everywhere. She comes off better as the constantly questioning detective than being a
mouthpiece for respectability politics or a borderline “Blue Lives Matter” advocate. (There’s a scene where she says that police need more credit for making Harlem a better place.) It seems like her becoming an active part of resisting society’s corruption will be part of her arc in Black Panther and The Crew as she interacts with characters like Blue and the other superheroes set to appear in this comic.
Butch Guice and Scott Hanna’s art in Black Panther and The Crew #1 is pretty fantastic at seamlessly transitioning from the past to present Harlem and showing character’s emotions in a more effective way than Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bombardment of caption boxes. The examples of their skill are numerous from Misty rolling her eyes about a police cover-up to an intense expression from Blue’s friend Ava-Jean that nails his passion for his justice even though he barely appears in the comic. And their drawings of the 1954 members of The Crew are just pure fun and old school superhero nostalgia with Coates’ captions feeling like Stan Lee’s carnival barker act, but cooler.
Other than Ta-Nehisi Coates’ characterization of Misty Knight, Black Panther and the Crew #1 is a knock-out combination of a generation-spanning murder mystery, ripped from the headlines thoughts about police brutality and capitalist systems, and eventually superhero team-up action. It’s worth thumbing or clicking through again just for Butch Guice and Scott Hanna’s gift with faces and action choreography alone.
Story: Ta-Nehisi Coates Pencils: Butch Guice Inks: Scott Hanna Colors: Dan Brown
Story: 7.5 Art: 8.5 Overall: 8.0 Recommendation: Buy
Marvel Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
In the latest installment of the anthology series Civil War II: Choosing Sides, Alpha Flight goes on a mission on American soil, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing trade blows with the cast of a cancelled Marvel series providing backup, and the Declan Shalvey/Jordie Bellaire Nick Fury spy saga continues. The Alpha Flight and Nick Fury stories are good, and the Colleen Wing is okay so everything averages out in the end.
5. OMAC (8 issues, last in April 2012): OMAC wasn’t brilliant and it was, of course, little more than a tribute to Jack Kirby that hadn’t really been developed into anything of its own yet, but it had a lot of potential. Keith Giffen gave us art that was as true to Kirby as if Jack had done it himself. Dan DiDio was starting to establish an original character in Kevin Kho (the only Cambodian-American character in comics I know of) and there were a lot of Brother Eye stories to be told. Many crappier titles survived into the Second Wave of the New 52, hopefully we’ll see more from Kho, OMAC and Brother Eye again soon.
4. Heroes for Hire (12 issues, last in November 2011): Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning showed us with this series that there are no small characters, just small stories and small writers. Misty Knight and Paladin were turned into compelling and entertaining characters in a way they rarely have been in the past. The first issue of this series, with its shout-out to The Warriors, remains one of the best first issues of any series I’ve ever read. Luckily we got to see the story continued in Spider Island and Villains for Hire, but with the team having no current home, I worry that we won’t be seeing them as much.
3. 28 Days Later (24 issues, last in June 2011): In the days when zombie comics are rightfully dominated by The Walking Dead and wrongfully imitated by dozens of inferior titles, 28 Days Later was one of the few non-Robert Kirkman series that actually added something to the genre. Every issue started with a brilliant cover (most of the recent ones by Sean Phillips), continued with solid interior art by Alejandro Aragon and top-notch storytelling by Michael Alan Nelson. Following in the footsteps of the first movie, the series was always compelling and gave us a look at the aftermath of the British zombie outbreak that broke new ground in a well-worn genre. The comic did the same.
2. SWORD (5 issues, last in March 2010): SWORD is exactly what I’m looking for when I pick up comics. It was one of the smartest comics on the shelf, fast-paced, funny, filled with references and jokes that you don’t need to know, but if you do they add layers to the story, action-packed, and consistently awesome. It featured a strong female lead who could’ve developed into one of Marvel’s better characters and introduced us to one of the more intriguing characters to come along in years in the Unit. Luckily, we’re still seeing flashes of these characters and SWORD in X-Men comics, but it’s sad, that from what I understand, the comic was never really given a chance. Keiron Gillen gets most of the credit for how great this comic was.
1. Secret Warriors (28 issues, last in September 2011): Secret Warriors beats out SWORD, to me, because, while SWORD is exactly what I come to comics to find, Secret Warriors consistently surprised me. It was way better than I expected and it brought to my attention things I wouldn’t have otherwise read or thought about. It also had better art than SWORD. Another series with consistently brilliant covers and superior art by the likes of Allesandro Viti and Stefano Caselli (among others), the comic clearly had its own visual style and it was better than most of what was on the market. On top of that, the writing was even better. Originally a Brian Michael Bendis project and later taken over by Jonathan Hickman, the comic delved into the espionage side of the Marvel Universe, particularly the ongoing tale of Nick Fury, better than it has been done in decades. I’m not even that big a fan of Fury and the espionage stuff. Well, I wasn’t until this series. The only thing that still touches on this stuff in a good way are the ongoing Captain America and Secret Avengers titles, but neither of them is as consistently good (and shocking) as Secret Warriors was.