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Sunday, March 13, 2016

Kirby's Black Panther collected

Admittedly this isn't British comics related but the news is too good not to post. With the imminent screen debut of the Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War later next month (and his own movie to follow), Marvel U.S. will be collecting Jack Kirby's 1970s run on the character in a Marvel Masterworks hardback in October.
Marvel Masterworks: Black Panther volume 2 will reprint superbly restored stories from Black Panther Nos.1 to 15, Marvel Premiere Nos.51 to 53, and material from Marvel Team-Up No.100. Most of the strips are written and drawn by Jack Kirby, with other material by creators such as Jim Shooter, Ed Hannigan and John Byrne. 

By this period in Kirby's career he was writing his own material and his pencils had a sympathetic inker in Mike Royer giving the true impact and power that the artwork deserved. With the high quality paper and printing that the Masterworks have, the colours often tend to be too garish but in this case they seem to suit Kirby's dynamic style. 
Some of this material has previously been collected in paperback form but the art will have been digitally remastered for this hardback version, bringing it to the high standard it deserves. 
These preview pages are from the Marvel Masterworks Resource Page, an excellent website for anyone interested in these collections of classic U.S. comics material. 
http://www.collectededitions.com/marvel/mm/bp/bp_mm02.html

I always liked the Black Panther when I was a kid in the 1960s. An African prince with hi-tech equipment in the middle of the jungle, he just seemed like the coolest character in comics. I didn't follow all of his 1970s stories as I was foolishly swayed by the negative opinions of comic fans who just didn't 'get' Kirby's solo work, but I'll be correcting that oversight by picking up this volume.

Those of you who liked the earlier series of the Black Panther by Don McGregor, Billy Graham, and others, will be pleased to hear that the run of Panther's Rage will soon be collected in hardback in an upcoming volume of the Marvel Graphic Novel Collection published in the UK by Hachette. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lew, almost all of those Black Panther stories were from the 1970's, not the '80s. Black Panther #1-15 ran from 1977 to '79 and only Marvel Premiere #53 (which I bought) was from the '80s - dated April 1980 but on sale in America in January 1980.

Lew Stringer said...

You're right of course. Thanks Colin. I had the 1980s on my mind for some reason. Corrected it now.

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