Black Panther, Vol. 1

Black Panther (1977-1979) #1-7

by Jack Kirby

The Black Panther, as onlyJack "King" Kirby could do it They searched for it They fought - and even killed - for it What was it? King Solomon's Frog Alongside Mr. Little and Princess Zanda, T'Challa battles the Collectors, the Six-Million Year Man, and more in this power-packed, never-before-reprinted action epic in the mighty Marvel manner

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book

136 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 2005

About the author

Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 1 out of 5]

THE HORROR...THE HORROR


Talk about your "destruction of innocent childhood memories" moment. OUCH, baby...VERY OUCH!!!

Now, before I begin my "Waltz O Rant" let me start off by saying that I am:
(1) A slobbering fanboy of comics in general,
(2) A wannabe stalker of Black Panther in particular, and
(3) Someone who believes that Jack Kirby is one of the most influential writer/artist to ever work in comics.

....UNFORTUNATELY I must now add that I am also...

(4) A disillusioned, disgruntled, pissed off individual who is doubting the wholesome nature of the universe, the existence of a supreme being and fighting a desire to dig up Mr. Kirby and go APOCALYPSE NOW on his corpse for doing such vile harm to my image of the Black Panther.

Seriously, this book blew HIPPOS, was about as pleasant as a urinary tract infection and had all the artistic merit of that white crap that forms on the corner of your mouth when you are really parched. OH, DID I MENTION IT SUCKED?

Sorry, but when I think Black Panther, I think of the 90's version of the character by Chris Priest (see Black Panther: The Client) who was a cool, breezy spectaculariffic cross between Batman (James Bond like special equipment), Captain America (just behind Cap in fighting prowess and leadership ability) and a "moral" version of Lex Luthor (extremely wealthy ruler with diplomatic ties around the world but with willingness to ruthlessly protect his people from exploitation). The Kirby version was NOT THAT. It was the comic equivalent of the campy Batman TV show (which I enjoyed but not as a serious comic book adaptation). When I think Black Panther, I am not thinking POW, BLAM and SPLAT.

Yet another childhood memory shredded.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all Jack Kirby's 70s projects for Marvel, none matched Black Panther for stylistic whiplash. Readers used to the serious, agonised, self-consciously literary and highly acclaimed Don MacGregor run on the character were suddenly confronted by Kirby in full flow - half the panels, a quarter the words and five times the energy. Even worse, the subject matter shifted too - Marvel's premier Black hero was no longer tackling colonialism or confronting the Klan, he was on a globe-trotting adventure hunting up lost artefacts and forgotten civilisations in the company of a bumptious wise-cracking midget. Kirby's work received a critical and fan roasting and the comics went forgotten until the mid-00s.

Hindsight, though, has been very kind to Kirby's Panther. Within a decade, Indiana Jones had vindicated the basic pulp archaeology approach. And the more arch and wordy, caption heavy style of Kirby's 70s contemporaries now seems as gauche and dated as Jolly Jack's bombast did then. Even compared to other Kirby comics, Black Panther is energetic - a fast, funny and violent bomburst of ideas. Freed from the baggage of Stan's patter and from his own myth-making, post Fourth World Kirby is a late flowering of pure style and action, and Black Panther is one of his goofiest and most entertaining runs.

There's still a lingering sense that this is the right approach for the wrong character - it's only in the final stories here that we get any sense that these are tales of T'Challa rather than any two fisted pulp muscleman. But something else we've learned since the 70s is that Black Panther is a character that rewards multiple angles - there are a lot of ways to use him well. And it feels right that there's one run in his publication history that's this much fun.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not gonna lie; this wasn't that enjoyable. This is my first venture into Black Panther, but the story want compelling or interesting. I do plan to try some other Black Panther though to see if something newer that has a better story.

[David Agranoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I was interested in how Black Panther started and this is a weird 70's comic with all kinds of cosmic stuff. No Wakanda or back story. So that was a bummer. As goofy and out of date as the art was I loved it.

[Carine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to be honest, this was an odd story. I don't know what I was excepting but clearly not this .

[Miguel Alves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awesome, AWESOME artwork. Exotic retro-futurism. Writing is the best type of corny.

[Orrin Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the story with King Solomon's Frog and the Six-Million Year Man.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to begin? Well, first of all Jack Kirby, the creator of the Black Panther is back! That’s a good thing right? Well, there’s the problem. Okay, the good part of this is that this is a fun, fast-paced thrill-ride that only Kirby can deliver. There’s tons of crazy stuff thrown at the reader here and it’s a roller coaster of chaos. Basically - it’s typical Kirby. What’s not to love? Well, there’s the problem. What's not to love? Everything. When last we saw Black Panther he was in the pages of Jungle Action (see: Black Panther Epic Collection, Vol. 1: Panther's Rage) and fighting for his life in a really progressive thriller that pitted him against the Ku Klux Klan. No seriously. It was a deeply personal and sociopolitical story about racism and how the United States was refusing to deal with institutionalized discrimination. Heady stuff for a comic book being published in the 1970s. And now we’re getting a crazy story about Collectors, frog shaped time machines, alien-humans from millions of years in the future and King Solomon’s Tomb. And then we’re off on a wild goose chase to find a elixir vitae in some hidden samurai conclave in … I suppose the Himalayan mountains, cuz that’s a yeti right? When Kirby returned to Marvel he got to pick his titles: Captain America, Black Panther and the Eternals (see: Captain America and the Falcon: Madbomb, Captain America and the Falcon: The Swine, Captain America: Bicentennial Battles & THE ETERNALS BY JACK KIRBY MONSTER-SIZE for those other titles, and from this same era you might want to check out 2001: A Space Odyssey, Machine Man: The Complete Collection & Devil Dinosaur: The Complete Collection). But as fun as his run on Black Panther was, it left us fans of the Jungle Action series without resolution. And it was shock inducing and frustrating. On its own, this stuff of pure Kirby magic and two-tons of fun, but it is an infuriatingly unrecognizable different take on the character of T’Challa, the beloved Black Panther.

[Professor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's say you're writing a new comic book series. Your main character is an African prince from a tiny but powerful kingdom that protects a mountain of unique, and extremely dangerous metal with unique properties. Do you make your first story set in that land, or perhaps directly related to it? Or do you send said prince on a scrambling mission around the world in the company of bizarre "Collectors" like Mr. Little, a monocle wearing dwarf genius who always has a trick up his sleeve? If you chose the first option, you're no Jack Kirby. Loopy Silver Age madness at its finest, with Kirby's trademark art (I love how an old man looks just like one of his crazy mouthed monsters) and outrageous characters.

[Nick Marino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Kirby's Black Panther was a total departure from a lot of the character's other comics... and it was totally fun!

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Kirby's Black Panther followed the cancellation of Jungle Action and the premature end to Don McGregor and Billy Graham's run on Black Panther in that Marvel comic book. Readers who followed the character from one book to the next must have suffered from whiplash.

Kirby's Black Panther is a super-scientific adventurer whose first multi-issue adventure involves a team-up with a diminuitive collector of weird antiquities named Mr. Little on a quest to find the second of two objects known as King Solomon's Frogs. They've discovered one. It periodically pulls someone or something in from another time. Together, the two assume, the two frogs should form a controllable time machine. OK!

This is Jack Kirby in full-on lunacy mode. It's great lunacy, mile-a-second action, wild double-page spreads, and some of the oddest of Kirby's 1970's narratives. I mean, a time machine shaped like a frog (why?) is weird enough. But the time machine will eventually pull in a dangerous, hyper-evolved human from millions of years in the future. There will also be a hidden kingdom founded by seven samurai. There will be a half-brother of T'Challa (that is, the Black Panther) who will seize control of the kingdom of Wakanda. There will be a Council of relatives of the Black Panther who will come together from across the world to battle that half-brother while T'Challa is stuck in the samurai kingdom.

Oh, and a lost Black Panther will stumble across a science-fiction movie filming in the North African desert. It isn't Star Wars, but it's clearly a nod to Star Wars. Kirby's work on a film adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light would be used to help some of the American hostages out of Iran. remember Argo? They actually shot but didn't use a scene with Jack Kirby. It's true!

Whiplash, though, oh boy! This is rollicking science fantasy laced with absurdity. If you like more serious versions of Black Panther that address social and racial concerns, this is probably not your Black Panther. I love it. I love McGregor's version too. I am entertained by multitudes!

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Campy, but with a unique artistic direction- what made the book for me is not necessarily the work itself, but how well Christopher Priest integrated his own run of the Black Panther into this mythology so as to reclaim much of what might otherwise be problematic in it. Read as part of this shared universe, it is easy to become lost in this as this is very vintage '60s Marvel (albeit these comics are from the '70s). For a grittier fanbase, or those who have not read Priest's tie-in, this work will probably be less engaging, but for the "right" reader, this can be easy to lose oneself in. I don't understand though why the average price for this volume is so high.

[Carmen (TheReadingTrashQueen) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am really not fond of the artwork, and while the story isn't that bad, it seems like it's just going round in circles. I started reading these comics after seeing the movie, and well, let's just say that they clearly didn't take anything from this first era of Black Panther. Hoping it will improve!

[Nate Marcel · Rating 5 out of 5]

My third read. I love it. It’s a comic book radish.
It’s one of the most surreal Saturday morning cartoon paced comics of Kirby’s Marvel Return. Royer’s inks are atomic, Princess Zanda one of Kirby’s sexiest creatures.
If you are looking for more than a fast paced fury of the drawing board taken in bite sized sweet surreal sequential sign language segments then look elsewhere!

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not at all what I was expecting. This early version of the Black Panther has T'challa acting like a lackey of "collectors" who seek after rare archaeological prizes. All this while he is king of Wakanda. That aspect of the character is barely touched on.

[Drunken_orangetree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really much of a Panther story. The first arc follows the group of Collectors, Indiana-Jones-types looking for expensive loot. Black Panther is more in evidence in the second arc, yet another lost-treasure adventure.

[Acton Northrop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Subterranean African Samurai cities and time machine frog statues make for an automatic 5 star review. Kirby at his most unleashed and intense. Love it.

[Orange · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent, relentlessly energetic romp, albeit dated as hell.

[Robin Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great and entertaining! I've read the Black Panther series by Ta'Nehisi Coates and it made me curious about the first Black Panther comics from the 1970s.

[Datagu · Rating 5 out of 5]

yhe comic was totally great.

[Johnatan]

estética de quadrinho antigo é tudo para mim, mais um em francês pra conta 💅🏾

[Chris W · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jesus this is terrible. If I could I'd give it 0 stars. If you like modern black panther, stay far away from this

[Jason Henwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Respect to Jack Kirby, but this is nearly a slap in the face as a follow-up to the previous Panther’s Rage storyline which actually dealt with being an African king and racism in America.

[Robert Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume reprints the first half of Jack Kirby’s 1976-1978 run on BLACK PANTHER (VOLUME 2 contains the second half, of course.). Here, Kirby takes our titular hero – along with a diminutive companion named Mr. Little - on a series of globe-trotting adventures. The two encounter long-lost treasure and ancient hidden civilizations.

If that description made you think of Indiana Jones, then you’re on the right track. It should probably be noted that Kirby’s BLACK PANTHER #1 was published five years before Harrison Ford debuted as the world’s most famous archaeologist, but Kirby and George Lucas doubtless shared many of the same influences. In fact, Kirby likely pays tribute to at least one of those here, as the Panther and Mr. Little search for King Solomon’s Tomb – a name that brings a certain H. Rider Haggard novel to mind.

Kirby’s popularity had declined greatly by 1976, and you can sort of see why. Personally, I found these stories great fun, but it’s also true that there’s little new here – especially if you’re familiar with Kirby’s body of work. Kirby tended to go to the same wells over and over, and once again, we witness his fixations with hidden civilizations, fantastical technology and Erich Von Daniken’s book CHARIOTS OF THE GODS.

Kirby’s approach to the Panther also stands in stark contrast to that of Don McGregor, who preceded him as the character’s main chronicler. McGregor’s acclaimed Black Panther run ended mid-story with JUNGLE ACTION #24, an issue that shipped a mere two months before Kirby’s BLACK PANTHER #1. That had to be jarring to many 1970s comic fans, and today, McGregor’s run is still well regarded, while Kirby’s is virtually forgotten. That’s understandable, as McGregor’s run certainly seemed more fresh and innovative then and arguably remains so today. In contrast, Kirby – as I noted above – largely pulled out his usual bag of tricks, which would have been pretty familiar at the time, especially to older fans.. That’s a shame, really, as Kirby had once been an innovator in his own right and actually co-created the Black Panther (in an issue of FANTASTIC FOUR) along with Stan Lee.

While Kirby’s later works might have been less ground breaking they are – for me, at least – no less fun, and I greatly enjoyed this volume. Here’s hoping that later generations will appreciate BLACK PANTHER and other latter-day Kirby works more than comics fans did in 1976!

[Eliran · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the ever expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe and current Marvel events, it makes me realize how little I actually know about some of these beloved characters or their original storylines. Such was my pleasant surprise at finding this volume, a chance to learn more about the T'challa, Prince of Wakanda and the Black Panther!
But oh man. This is a story written by the Jack the King Kirby! Nothing goes as you expect! A crazy, wild ride that makes you wonder "what did I just read?"(to be fair, it was also made in the 70s so the zaniness from that time is definitely seeped into this comic).
The story begins in media res, right in the action, as Black Panther finds himself allied with the mysterious Mr. Little on a quest to find the mythical artifact known as "King Solomon's Frog!"(if you read Marvel Zombies, they're referenced in that story, now I finally see where they first appeared!) The Frog is basically a time travel device, but you can't control it! Anything from anywhere can pop out, leading to disastrous results. The story is a wild ride as this strange pair travels across the world fighting other ultra rich "collectors"(individuals who collect prized artifacts such as that). Only towards the end of the story do we see T'challa return to his homeland of Wakanda and do we get a brief "origin story" of the mantel of the Black Panther. Can't wait to read volume 2 and see how the story progresses. A great Kirby story overall, if you can stand the craziness you'll experience!

[Michael Neno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Kirby's 1977 take on the character he created (or co-created with Stan Lee) in the '60s is pure, action-soaked fun. The series has an Indiana Jones vibe to it (years before the first Indiana Jones movie) and Kirby takes the character back to his science fictional roots. This volume reprints the first seven issues in the series. It's beautifully inked by Kirby's most faithful inker, Mike Royer, and partially colored by one of his best colorists, Petra Goldberg.

I'm normally not a fan of comic books or strips reprinted on shiny, glossy paper. The bright, candy-colored primary colors here, though, really pop on the paper, giving the original material an almost hyper, heightened, psychedelic look. I approve! Unlike nearly all reprints of Marvel's '60s material, this artwork is largely untouched and is true to the issues I bought new off the racks in the '70s.

Fortunately, there's little here profound, ideological or political. If you can wrap your head around that, you'll likely enjoy this work Kirby quite evidently enjoyed creating.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the character of Black Panther/T'challa king of Wakanda (and Storm's husband). I thought it would be interesting to go back to the beginning. What I forgot is that I would be reading Jack Kirby in all his weirdness.

The book begins in media res with the Black Panther & an associate with a comically large head searching for a golden frog which is actually an ancient time machine. Then there is a human from 60 million years in the future (complete with huge head & weird mental powers), some random aliens and a trip to King Solomon's burial chamber which contains a duplicate gold frog that allows for controlled time travel.

I loved reading this book even though it bears little resemblance to the Black Panther we've seen in comics for 20 years or so. It's a quick read & dip into classic Jack Kirby weirdness. Also this makes way more sense than "New Gods" which is a plus.

[matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't imagine ever giving a Kirby title less than four stars simply because there is at least one jaw-dropping image in each volume. It is such a pleasure to be reading one of Kirby's tales not knowing when it's going to happen, but eventually, one turns the page to find a most incredible two page spread filled with metallic wonder or an awe inspiring battle - Kirby had an enthusiasm for this medium that is palpable on the page.
Like most of his writer/creator stories, this one has a lot of goofy elements, and as time has shown - other writers have taken his initial ideas to much more relevant and interesting places - but still, Kirby is the man from which all of the raw material springs forth. There is no denying this man's imagination, talent, and influence.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

T’Challa, the current Black Panther, is called upon to help thwart treasure hunters seeking a fabled piece from King Solomon’s collection. But, as you’d expect, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. So, together with Mr. Little and Princess Zanda, Panther must fight the Collectors and the Six Million Year Man in this series of issues released in 1977-78 from Jack Kirby.

The story was a bit hokey but pretty standard fare given its age. What bugged me, though, was all the externalized internal monologuing on the part of Panther. It gets annoying having to read him speak every step he takes. Rely on the visuals, Jack! Please!

[Nate Deprey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kirby is a genius. Full stop. As an artist he basically invented modern comic art and the art in these first seven issues of Black Panther are as strange and great as anything in his cannon. That said this is some deeply odd storytelling that feels racially dated and not on par with the best of Kirby.