X GON GIVE IT TO YA

[Mongrel]

We found it guys. We found her.

That one person who likes canned creamed corn.

[Büge]

[beatbandito]

[Mongrel]

He's good at this.

[Büge]

oh god

this whole thread

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

The tweet thread Buge posted is absolutely glorious madness BTW. Too magnificent to miss.

[Büge]

this one too

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

[mharr]

... Shit.

[Thad]

Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that hiding Black Panther's race is exactly why he has a full mask. Brian Cronin:

Notice the famous full face mask that the Panther wears.

Originally, that cover was penciled by Kirby with the Panther in a HALF-face mask, basically just like the cowl that Batman wears.

Here's a sample of what I'm talking about, from one of Kirby's old sketch books (courtesy of the Jack Kirby Collector and Roz Kirby's collection)...



However, for whatever reason, most likely because Stan Lee (or even Martin Goodman) felt that the book would be less controversial if they hid that it was, in fact, a black character (after all, the name itself doesn't really mean much when you already had a Black Widow and a Black Knight), Kirby's mask was re-drawn as a full mask.

(Course, we don't know for sure that's why they changed it. It could just be because they thought he looked too much like Batman.)

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that hiding Black Panther's race is exactly why he has a full mask. Brian Cronin:

Notice the famous full face mask that the Panther wears.

Originally, that cover was penciled by Kirby with the Panther in a HALF-face mask, basically just like the cowl that Batman wears.

Here's a sample of what I'm talking about, from one of Kirby's old sketch books (courtesy of the Jack Kirby Collector and Roz Kirby's collection)...



However, for whatever reason, most likely because Stan Lee (or even Martin Goodman) felt that the book would be less controversial if they hid that it was, in fact, a black character (after all, the name itself doesn't really mean much when you already had a Black Widow and a Black Knight), Kirby's mask was re-drawn as a full mask.

(Course, we don't know for sure that's why they changed it. It could just be because they thought he looked too much like Batman.)

The really wild thing about this is that Black Panther's introduction predates the official founding of the actual Black Panther Party by three months. Which begs the question - did either Lee or Kirby have their ears to the ground enough to notice a movement taking shape, or did the founders of the party actually riff on the Marvel character?

Was there some other connection? Or was it really all just a bizarre coincidence?

[zaratustra]

[Thad]

The really wild thing about this is that Black Panther's introduction predates the official founding of the actual Black Panther Party by three months. Which begs the question - did either Lee or Kirby have their ears to the ground enough to notice a movement taking shape, or did the founders of the party actually riff on the Marvel character?

Was there some other connection? Or was it really all just a bizarre coincidence?

The official line has always been that it was a coincidence (and indeed Marvel tried to change his name a couple times to avoid the association; Cronin has that story covered too: Comic Book Legends Revealed #41; When Black Panther Re-Named Himself 'Black Leopard').

I think the official line is probably the truth in this case. Kirby originally wanted to call him the Coal Tiger (as sort-of noted in the page Zara posted); "Black Panther" was a name change that occurred somewhere in the development process. So the jungle cat motif was there from the jump; they just tweaked it.

As for why they went with "Black Panther" over "Coal Tiger", the simplest explanation is that it's just a better name. It just sounds cooler. Plus a black panther is a real animal (well, sort of; "panther" is actually a blanket term for multiple species of big cat, and black panthers can be leopards or jaguars); WTF is a coal tiger?

1966-era Stan Lee sure doesn't strike me as a guy who'd intentionally draw comparisons to Huey Newton; he preached against the evils of racism in both his superhero stories and his "Stan's Soapbox" column, but he wasn't exactly a left-wing radical. Here are some other examples of comics he was working on around that time:





(TBF Lee's not entirely responsible for either of those; the Iron Man origin was plotted by Lee but scripted by Larry Lieber, while the Spider-Man one was scripted by Lee but plotted by Steve Ditko. But overall, Marvel's output was generally pretty pro-Vietnam War in those days, and Stan Lee was the guy signing off on everything.)

Kirby was a lot farther left than Lee and I suspect he probably would have appreciated the connection to the Black Panther Party, but he really doesn't strike me as a guy who was in on the ground floor of that movement. As for the influence going in the opposite direction, I don't think Huey Newton was thinking of Marvel Comics any more than Sabbath was when they wrote Iron Man.

[Mongrel]

TUNNEL TOTS

[Mongrel]

Reminds me of

[beatbandito]

I thought I stole this from here originally, but I don't see it on this page so it's free game.

[Grath]