Fantastic Four #52

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: April 12, 1966
Cover: July 1966
12 cents
Script by: Smilin’ Stan Lee
Art by: Jolly Jackie Kirby
Inking by: Gentleman Joe Sinnott
Lettering by: Hammy Sammy Rosen
20 pages

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The time has come for the Black Panther to stalk once more!

I’m going to repeat something I’ve been saying for the last year’s worth of Fantastic Four stories: just how impressive this moment in time is. What they accomplish in four consecutive stories arcs is unparalleled in comics history. Unprecedented and unequalled. To introduce the Inhumans, then have that story bleed into introducing Galactus and the Silver Surfer, then have that story bleed into the seminal “This Man This Monster”, to then immediately follow that up with the introduction of the Black Panther. Next issue will introduce the villainous Klaw and tell the origin of the Black Panther.

That’s a run of 10 incredibles issues. This run was preceded by the famous wedding, which was preceded by an epic three-part battle with the Frightful Four, which was preceded by one of their most iconic battles against Dr. Doom over the previous two issues…

The comic has been on fire with a sustained level of quality no other comic series has ever reached.

It can’t last forever. Fantastic Four #54 is a solid but ultimately forgettable comic. Though the stretch of stories that follow is also excellent, on par with anything except this incredible 10-issue stretch.

Let’s dive into the story without further hyperbolic build-up, and then we’ll take some time at the end to reflect on this new character we’ve just met, the Black Panther.

The Story

We open with our first mention of this new character the Black Panther. We learn he is an African Chieftain, and has gifted the Fantastic Four a technologically impressive minijet.

He has invited them to be his guests in the African nation of Wakanda. The Wakandan Emissary promises the “greatest hunt of all time”; Reed has no follow-up questions.

In Wakanda, we meet this mysterious Chieftain and see a totemic sculpture emerge from the ground.

The Chieftain dawns a costume and becomes… the Black Panther!

Sending Johnny off to college poses a potential problem for these stories. How can he be galavanting off to strange lands with the Fantastic Four when he has classes to attend? He just started college two issues ago, and now it’s his first vacation. This implies a bit of time gap between last issue and this one. Perhaps it’s now December?

Since he’s on vacation now, the FF pick him up on the way to Wakanda. His roommate Wyatt comes along. Why not bring random college students off to Fantastic Four adventures? The Avengers used to bring Rick Jones into far more dangerous situations for no particular reason.

We check on the Inhumans, which is an interesting thing to do in a story not otherwise about them. It implies they are part of the supporting cast now, that this comic is about more than the four members of the team.

They remain stuck behind the barrier. Crystal is still pining for Johnny, as he is still pining for her. Karnak is investigating the barrier, as his talent is to perceive the flaw in all things.

Maximus is in prison, but still claims he is the actual king of the Inhumans. Many a deposed leader in history has still claimed to be the legitimate leader after being removed from office. It hadn’t happened in American history until Donald Trump claimed the 2020 election had been illegitimate. Donald Trump has a good chance of winning the next American election, and was recently convicted of several felonies. So the image of a leader ruling from behind a prison cell may yet prove prescient.

An interesting note from Gorgon is that Black Bolt has lost the power of speech, implying he used to speak. Maximus had previously referred to the accident that left Black Bolt speechless.

The Fantastic Four reach Wakanda. At first they see what they expected, a jungle without industrial development. But a closer look reveals more. Advanced technology is hidden everywhere. The branches are wires; the flowers are complex buttons and dials; the boulders are computer terminals… The machines are built to resemble a jungle.

Anyways, remember that reference to the hunt? It begins now. Black Panther is the hunter. And the Fantastic Four represent the most dangerous game.

The strategy is to divide and conquer. With a number of traps readied, the Fantastic Four fall one by one.

Invisible Girl has to turn visible to use her force field. I don’t think we knew about that limitation before. We’d learned of a couple related limitations. When she first learned to make invisible force fields, we learned she could make other objects besides herself invisible, but that she could only handle one object at a time. So she turned visible when trying to make something else invisible. Later, we see that when she projects her invisible force field around someone else, she turns visible. But that limitation seemed particular to projecting her field around someone else. Which implied she could be invisible while the force field was around her. Here we learn otherwise.

While I am learning about this vulnerability for the first time, Black Panther was already aware of it.

Though even when invisible, Black Panther could detect her by scent. Maybe she’s wearing strong perfume. “I do not consider females to be fair game.” says Black Panther.

The Four are almost defeated. It’s Wyatt Wingfoot who saves the day. Black Panther had underestimated him. I guess I had too. He had seemed like a random college kid brought on this adventure for no good reason.

The FF all bust free and are ready to challenge Black Panther outside of his technological jungle. Black Panther declares the hunt finished. Mr. Fantastic Four accepts this, believing Black Panther to be a man of honor for no particular reason.

Finally, Black Panther removes his mask to reveal the Chieftain of the Wakandas. Next issue, we will learn his story.

The Black Panther

The first thing to note about the Black Panther is that he’s Black. This is notable because literally every other superhero we’ve read about or that anyone had ever written about was not Black.

The most notable Black Marvel character in our reading prior to the Black Panther was Gabe Jones of the Howling Commandos. We talked about Marvel’s history with Black characters in our reading of Sgt. Fury #2.

Prior to this issue, there’s not much to add to it between 1963 and 1966. Though it’s worth noting we’ve been seeing more and more Black faces pop up in small roles. Ditko in particular has made an effort in Amazing Spider-Man to depict some minor characters like police officers and school students as Black.

Outside of Marvel, Dell had recently introduced the western hero Lobo, the first Black hero to be the title character in a comic.

A pretty detailed history of Black characters in that era of comics can be found here from Barry Pearl.

Here is an earlier sketch of the Black Panther by Kirby. You’ll notice a key difference in the face mask. The original had a half-face mask similar to Captain America. The final version has a full-face mask similar to Spider-Man. An effect of this is that you can’t tell just from seeing the character in costume that he’s Black. And you can’t tell just from the cover that he’s Black.

This decision to cover half his face may have been marketing-driven, to not hurt sales in certain markets by so plainly depicting a Black superhero on the cover.

The final form plainly owes a lot to previous Marvel villain, the Panther, who fought Two-Gun Kid.

An even earlier draft of the character was named the Coal Tiger.

The Coal Tiger would eventually be introduced into continuity as the Black Panther of a parallel universe.

Outside of Marvel, the phrase “Black Panther” is most associated with the militant political and civil rights organization. This nominal connection is almost certainly a coincidence.

The Black Panther Party most are familiar with was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, about 6 months after this issue came out. The organization drew its name not from the new superhero, but from an Alabama political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Party, which used a black panther for its logo, and was informally known as the Black Panther Party. This party had been founded in 1965, but there’s no reason to believe New Yorkers Stan and Jack had even heard of the newly formed Alabama party, let alone its nickname or logo.

Black Panther gained even greater international recognition when he appeared in his own 2018 film, portrayed by the late Chadwick Boseman.

In 1940, many, perhaps most, Americans were wary of entering the war in Europe. So when Joe Simon and Jack Kirby released a comic with a man named Captain America dressed in a flag-inspired costume punching Hitler in the face, that was a strong political statement against a policy of isolationism.

In 1966, America had passed both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in recent years to help transform America into a place where the color of one’s skin didn’t dictate their place in society. Both Acts, and that very idea, were controversial in 1966 (as today). Introducing a Black superhero, and then showing him hold his own in combat with Marvel’s premiere heroes the Fantastic Four, represented a similarly bold political statement by Lee and Kirby.

This is an incredibly progressive comic for its moment in time.

Beyond the mere existence of a Black superhero, Kirby wanted to challenge expectations and stereotypes, though he sometimes fell for stereotypes himself.

The fictional kingdom of Wakanda is not borne of any study by Kirby into the modern culture of any African nations. Rather, his starting point is American pop cultural depictions of African nations.

He recognized the stereotypes in these depictions, and sought to actively subvert them, by having Wakanda appear to be an agricultural jungle tribe, but then revealing it to be secretly an advanced technological marvel.

If you look to the reaction of the Fantastic Four to Wakanda, their surprise isn’t limited to the entirely justifiable surprise that a country in Africa would have impossible technology harnessing magnetic and cosmic waves; their surprise is that a country in Africa is anything but rural.

Africa did and does have rural and isolated areas. Yet there are plenty of modern cities in Africa in the 1960s.

Here are a couple photos of Lagos, Nigeria from 1966.

But Kirby’s points of reference come only from Western and likely fictional depictions of Africa. In fairness, I have Google, and Kirby did not.

Wakanda is a fictional kingdom, sometimes referred to in this issue as “The Wakandas”. We have seen many fictional nations in the Marvel Universe. Some are hidden kingdoms who would be unrecognized by other world governments. We’ve met several fictional Communist nations with governments for our heroes to overthrow. The most notable fictional nation so far is Latveria, ruled by Dr. Doom, and located in the Balkans, perhaps not far from Lichtenstein.

We as of yet get no real evidence for where in Africa Wakanda may be.

There’s much more to reflect on about Black Panther and the nation of Wakanda, but some of it can wait until next issue.

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Thank you, readers, for your patience, as this post is a few weeks late. Some posts I just kind of pump out and they can be done in spare time, but ones like this take a bit more work and I need to find a dedicated chunk of time sit down with them. The upcoming Spider-Man arc features similarly monumental issues, and will take a minute to get right. The Sgt. Fury story which follows that will get done relatively quickly.

Rating: ★★★★☆, 74/100
Significance: ★★★★★

I read this story in Fantastic Four Epic Collection vol. 4: The Mystery of the Black Panther.

Of course this makes the Best We’ve Read, displacing the story of Ragnarok from Tales of Asgard.

The cover above was supplied by Richard, one of our loyal readers, who shared scans of several covers from his collection with me. Thank you!

Characters:

• Thing
• Invisible Girl
• Mr. Fantastic
• Black Panther
• Johnny Storm/Human Torch
• Wyatt Wingfoot
• Gorgon
• Karnak
• Medusa
• Crystal
• Black Bolt
• Maximus

Story notes:

• Reed notes ship, a gift from an African Chieftain called the Black Panther, has amazing maneuverability and is powered by magnetic waves.
• Sue notes Ben is an ex-Air Force pilot.
• Black Panther’s emissary waiting on roof of Baxter Building.
• Sky-craft is the FF’s to keep if they accept Black Panther’s invitation to be his guests in the kingdom of Wakanda.
• Ben got air-sick.
• Emissary takes small device out of toga, which operates by CCW (Cosmic Channel Waves) which can blanket all of Earth, and can send a message from New York to Wakanda instantly.
• Chieftain receives message that his invitation has been accepted.
• Panther statue with electronic controls emerges from ground.
• Black Panther dons his “stalking costume”.
• Johnny can’t study when he misses Crystal; but he can’t see her until Reed finds some way to break the barrier.
• “How does an African Chieftain latch onto a plane that flies by magnetic waves?” — Human Torch
• Wyatt is a very sound sleeper.
• Inhumans remain confined in Great Refuge in a remote mountain fastness on the other side of the world.
• Karnak believes he can shatter “a negative zone” if he finds the one weak spot.
• Everything has a weak spot, except a negative zone, which can repel any postive matter.
• Karnak shatters seemingly unbreakable diamonds.
• Crystal wants to see Johnny and feel his arms around her, and have hope of one day rejoining the human race.
• Maximus taunts from prison he is the rightful king, and that his subjects remain trapped with him.
• Gorgon notes Maximus knows the secret of escaping from the negative zone.
• Emissary warns that things in Wakanda are not always as they seem.
• Sue wonders how the ship could have come from a land with no sign of technology, no industrial development.
• Hidden beneath giant-trees is a man-made jungle.
• Topography and flora are electronically-controlled mechanical apparatus. Branches are composed of wires. Flowers are highly complex buttons and dials. Boulders hum with the pulse of computer dynamos.
• Guide disappears beneath ground in elevator.
• Thing shocked by electric trap. Electric volts caused chain reaction which will weaken him for 5 minutes.
• Trap for Human Torch: asbestos door, vacuum blasts.
• Thing feels strong again after only 2 minutes; Black Panther underestimated his strength.
• Wingfoot says the blood of his ancestors, the greatest scouts of all time, flows in his veins.
• Wakandans hit FF with magnetic anti-polarity beams. The FF are forced to separate.
• Black Panther’s senses are as sharp as a jungle cat’s.
• Black Panther can detect Invisible Girl by scent.
• Invisible Girl must turn visible to use her force field.
• Black Panther’s claws emit a harmless sleep gas.
• Thing mistakes devitalizing fluid for water.
• Black Panther is boxing champion of the continent.
• Thing accidentally damages high-voltage refrigerator unit, which freezes him.
• Thing’s strength returning allowed him to survive.
• Wingfoot finds hidden observation post where Wakandans are monitoring the battle. Wingfoot destroys the communications gear. Wingfoot recognizes the FF must get out from the artificial jungle to the real one to even the odds.
• Wingfoot detects variations in heat below ground and realizes it must be a signal from the Torch.
• Mr. Fantastic in titanium cuffs.
• Black Panther thinks he has won, but Wyatt has freed the Torch.
• Black Panther is the hereditary Chieftain of the Wakandas and the richest man in the world. He will tell his story.

Previous	#531	Next
Daredevil #18	Reading order	Fantastic Four #53
Fantastic Four #51	Fantastic Four	Fantastic Four #53