Dear White People
After making a point of keeping T’Challa in Wakanda for two years in real time, McGregor brought the Panther back to America. If it weren’t for the actual content of the stories serialized in Jungle Action 19-22 and 24, this would be a step backwards.[1] America was the cite of unremarkable Panther stories in which T’Challa rarely had much to do unless the the theme was racism; now McGregor launched a new serial called “The Panther vs. the Klan.” But this series was clearly an attempt to do right with the kind of story at which previous Panther writers failed. In an issue of the Avengers, the Panther fought Marvel’s go-to stand-in for the KKK, the “Sons of the Serpent.” The Sons of the Serpent were Marvels’ attempt to be anti-racist without actually offending racists, since none of their crimes are attributable to the Klan.
Even worse, these stories consistently deployed a trope that played down racism in favor of “colorblind” evil. In their first appearance (Avengers 32), the Serpents attack the African-American scientist (and future Giant-Man) Bill Foster, as well as Asian dictator General Chen. It turns out, however, that Chen is actually the group’s leader, cynically exploiting racism to advance his communist agenda. When the Serpents return in Avengers 73 (Monica Lynne’s first appearance), their white supremacy (and Black power!) is simply a scam perpetrated by two incendiary talkshow hosts, one white, the other Black. In their third appearance (Defenders 22-25, published between May and July 1975, during the tail end of “Panther’s Rage”), it is revealed that they are financed thanks to the machinations of a Black money manager as part of a money-making scheme. [2] Despite these comics' ostensible liberalism, their overall message was to downplay the reality of racism as an ideology, insulating white readers from the discomfort that could arise from a more trenchant critique while gaslighting Black readers with the narrative that people of color are partially responsible for their own oppression.[3]
McGregor would have none of that. As he puts in his introduction to one of the collected editions of his Black Panther stories:
“It was America’s bi-centennial, and I would joke that it was my birthday gift.
“And there was an uproar about the Klan.
“My response was, ‘Hey, you want white people, I gave you white people. There’s no satisfying you folks.’”
The storyline was cut off before it could be completed, whether because of low sales, or Jack Kirby’s desire to take over the character, or the reason McGregor claims was given to him at the time: “When I was taken off the Panther, I was told it was because I was too close to the black experience. I looked at my white hands.”
Nearly four decades later, not everything about the story has aged well. Monica’s mother greets T’Challa with a meal that makes sure the reader knows it is “soul food” (“country fried chicken, spare ribs, hamhocks, chit'lins, collard greens and homemade cornbread”) McGregor’s inclusion of a thinly disguised stand-in for himself, the painfully earnest white liberal reporter actually named Kevin Trublood, is certainly a detriment. [4]. But other moments seem uncomfortably contemporary, such as the scene in Jungle Action 20 when the Panther tries to stop a crime in a grocery store, only to be met with violence from some of the local whites (including an old lady who hits him on the head with a can of cat food) before the arrival of the police, who promptly point their guns at him. Monica berates them for “staging [their] own improvisation of “the Ox-Bow Incident,” but twenty-first century readers could easily provide more current referents.
It makes sense that Monica is the one who ties a bow onto that particular scene. In moving his characters to Georgia, McGregor reverses the premise of “Panther’s Rage”: now it is T’Challa who is the outsider, while Monica tries to provide him the local knowledge that might allow him to navigate his new surroundings. Monica has come home as a result of her sister’s murder, making the story intensely personal for her in a way that “Panther’s Rage” never quite became personal for T’Challa. Issue 19 starts in a cemetery, with everyone watching Monica. As Monica stares at her sister’s grave, five men from the Dragon’s Circle approach her from behind, while T’Challa stalks them from the trees and Kevin Trublood approaches by car.
Submerged in her own grief, Monica notices none of this at first. McGregor and Graham give her a lovely full-page spread in which Monica’s memories of her childhood with her sister are framed by the image of the adult Monica standing before Angela’s grave. While never letting the reader forget the racial context, McGregor lets Monica be an individual rather than a demographic. Thinking about a fight they had when they were pre-teens, Monica remarks:
“It’s obvious, dear sister, that we did not have the same childhood as James Baldwin or Eldridge Cleaver. Our bitterness did not come till much later…and it never was a part of our make-up! In fact, about the only thing I hated in the world that summer was…you!"
As in “Panther’s Rage,” the narrator only comes close to T’Challa’s consciousness when the Black Panther is being tortured. His selfhood is still very much about his body (which might explain the bizarre choice of having him go shopping at the grocery story with Monica while wearing his full costume). The last issue of Jungle Action has him tied to a wooden wheel that revolves him in and out of the river, mechanically water-boarding him almost to death. Even more resonant, however, is the scene issues 20 and 21, where the Klan ties T’Challa to a cross that they light on fire. As [find name later] points out, during the fight that results in his crucifixion, the Panther is merely a body fighting to the accompaniment of Kevin Trublood’s long, overly idealistic speeches to Monica (they are back at her family home, unaware of what is happening to T’Challa.” The Panther is being tortured to death, but it is Kevin’s heroism that is on (verbal )display:
“…others told me they’ll firebomb you, You don’t mess with the Klan."
[…]
“And they asked me what I hoped to change?
“Write your piece. The Klan’ll still be here.”
[…]
“I don’t want to be scared…but somebody.. somewhere… made a terrible mistake.
“They made me a moral man.
“I can’t turn away. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want my family hurt. I love them very much.
“But I also love freedom, and I know I couldn’t live with myself if I turned away from this and pretended it didn’t exist.
“I just hope I don’t have to die…because I believe…
“in America!”
Watching T’Challa tied to a burning cross is painful enough, but accompanying it with a speech from a white man standing in a kitchen and explaining his own heroism is a difficult pill to swallow. Issue 20 literally gives Kevin the last word, overshadowing the Panther’s physical battle with the writer’s moral posturing. The more time we spend with Kevin Trublood, the more McGregor’s choice of an almost all-Black cast for “Panther’s Rage” seems wise. Kevin is a sponge for meaning, virtue, and symbolism, leaving no room for the Panther to speak.
Notes
[1] Issue 23 was a reprint of a Black Panther story from an old Daredevil comic. Jungle Action was canceled after Issue 24.
[2] This was not Steve Gerber’s finest hour.
[3] When completing the “Panther vs. the Klan” years later without McGregor’s involvement, Ed Hannigan gestures in the same direction when he reveals that Monica’s father was a member of the Dragon Circle, a competing secret society whose goals were not explicitly white supermacist.
[4] By contrast, the cringe-inducing Trublood highlights the cleverness of Christopher Priest’s later run on the Panther, where the white viewpoint character he introduces as a possible figure of identification for white readers is funny, obnoxious, and prone to low-key racist assumptions and statements.