T’Challa (Almost) Died for Your Sins

In his Introduction, McGregor admits that he is particularly proud of the opening line of Issue 21, appearing on a splash page with T’Challa on the burning cross: “He is not a symbolic Christ!”:

“Forget about turning his flesh and blood into some esoteric allusion to the persecution of contemporary man.

“This is the Black Panther…king of the Wakandas…also known as T’Challa.

“And he is made of flesh and blood. And the flames which consumer the cross and his body prove his humanity. “

McGregor is trying to avail himself of the visceral power that the crucifix carries while grounding the moment in the physical, human suffering of the Black Panther.  Presumably, he is trying to make T’Challa’s pain real.   But, once again, T’Challa’s pain is framed by Kevin Trublood’s verbiage.  And the insistence on a lack of symbolism is puzzling.   Yes, it’s real pain, but why even spend pages with a body tortured on a cross while insisting that the cross means nothing?  Even theologically, it’s a problematic choice.  The point of Christ’s suffering is supposed to be that, on the cross, he suffers like any human would, and not like a divinity.  The sheer physical agony T’Challa endures is Christlike in its intensity. The real question is: is it Christlike in its purpose?

This, in turn, brings us back to the fundamental question raised earlier in the chapter: not “Who is the Black Panther?” but “Who is the Black Panther for?” In "Panther’s Rage,” he exists for Wakanda, with his home country developed more than his character.  In “Panther vs the Klan,” he is fighting on behalf of Monica, engaging in a struggle that, despite its obvious relevance for a Black man, is not, at heart, his:  “X vs. the Klan” is a quintessentially American story.  It makes perfect sense that he involves himself in his lover’s family tragedy: what kind of partner, let alone hero, would he be if he did not? 

But again, Kevin Trublood’s role is indicative. The Panther is suffering not just at the hands of whites, but in her service of a melodramatic narrative whiteness.  He is acting out the drama that Trublood is narrating, a Black man taking a beating in a story mean to raise the consciousness of its primarily white readers. As always, McGregor is at great plains to make his hero’s pains real; violence is not to be taken lightly, for it always has a human cost.  But the Panther’s body is tortured as part of struggle against one of America’s original sins, that is, the commodification, abuse, and murder of Black bodies over the course of more than four centuries.   If T’Challa is hurt in the process of confronting white American readers with their country’s crime, how is that not Christlike?  T’Challa suffers for the readers’ sins.

Yet martyrdom and whiteness are not the entire story.  McGregor takes a detour from the main plot in Issue 22, when T’Challa and Monica listen to Mrs. Lynne’s tale of her ancestor Kaleb, a freed man tormented by the Klan in the aftermath of the Civil War. [1] McGregor, Graham and co-penciler Rich Buckler turn most of the comic into an illustration of Mrs. Lynne,’s story, but with a twist:  the initial portrayal of Mrs. Lynne’s words shares the page with the visual depiction of Monica’s own appropriation of the narrative. In Mrs. Lynne's depressingly familiar tale of intimidation and lynching, Caleb is a skinny old man who could not possibly hold his own against the white supremacists, but Monica turns her mother’s family legend into her own personal heroic fan fiction:

“And in her interpretation of the story, Caleb is noble and unconquered, proud and defiant…a giant capable of compassion.

“And the night the klan met her cousin Caleb and his family was an ebon mystery…. And her man, the Panther, was there!

“Before they appear on the horizon, the Panther is aware  of their approach.

“He waits with considerable  cool for the inevitable conflict!”

In her mind, Caleb is taller and stronger; thanks to the Panther, he will survive rather than be lynched.

While this issue might seem to be irrelevant to the arc’s overall plot, it is the thematic lynchpin to everything McGregor and his collaborators are trying to do.  Heroic fantasy can be gratifying and even restorative in its depictions of oppression and abuse, and in this particular issue, the Black Panther is, for the first time, framed specifically as a wish-fulfillment figure for African Americans.  At a time when Hollywood had yet to turn to chattel slavery as the defining narrative for the Black American experience, Jungle Action was already imagining the next imaginative leap away from a seemingly endless series of stories about Black victimization.  This issue also demonstrates the power that consumers of popular narrative (including, but by no means limited to comics) can read against the grain and create meanings for themselves that the texts would seem to lack. 

In fighting the Klan, the Panther is tangled in a complex narrative and ethical knot.  He is not in this story for himself, but for Monica, for Kevin Trublood, and, by extension, for implied Black and white readers with their own backgrounds, baggage, and agendas.  He is also faced with the fundamental problem of the superhero confronting social injustice: he cannot solve the problem with his fists, and if he “solves” it in some other way (magic, super science), he shatters the illusions that the world of the comic book differs from the “real” world only in the existence of superheroes.  To have T’Challa stop a lynching in the 19th century would be to whitewash history. McGregor’s solution is to double down on the power of comics: imagination.  Jungle Action 22 stops short of proposing that the Black Panther actually go back into the past and prevents a racially-motivated murder; instead, the comic shows the solace provided by the fantasy of a Black hero who could stand up to racist terrorists and fight for justice.  

As an exploration of subjectivity, “The Panther vs the Klan” succeeds not by exploring the consciousness of the Black Panther.  This is not because McGregor is incapable of doing so, or uninterested in T’Challa.  When he finally gets the opportunity to write the story of T’Challa’s search for his long-lost mother in South Africa in 1989’s “Panther’s Quest,” this very personal story is accompanied by the Panther’s full-fledged interior monologues.  But during the few brief time that Jungle Action spends in Georgia, it excels at portraying the inner life of Monica Lynne.

Note

[1] Kevin blathers about freedom on the second page, but after that, he is mercifully silent.