Birnin Zana
Honorary Wakandan
Rather interesting Coates interview about his BP run. Addresses longtime BP fans concerns directly. It's a lengthy interview, so I skipped the intro and pasted the main stuff. Interview will be split in two posts. Interviewer's questions are in bold.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/ta-nehisi-coates-explains-how-hes-turning-black-panther-1786632598
You’ve gotten a mixed response from longtime fans of the character. Some people assume that you’re kind of undermining this idea of T’Challa as a master strategist. Where you think that response comes from?
Coates: If we’re going to be straight and honest about it I think it comes from a couple of places. First of all I think there are very, very few African-American heroes, period. Certainly African heroes like T’Challa. That’s just definitely true. You’re not really going to see too many. I think in a lot of people’s minds T’Challa is a lot like Denzel [Washington].
He’s supposed to be smooth and effortlessly do x, y, and z. In addition to that, I think before my run, there were several things that happened at Marvel, like some bad things happened to Wakanda. First of all you’ve got Priest. Priest’s job is to get white folks to take T’Challa seriously. T’Challa ain’t no chump. He established that pretty well.
After that, Reggie comes in, he says, “Not only is T’Challa not a chump, but Wakanda ain’t to be fukked with, period.” Like ever. Don’t even think about it. We’ve been wrecking fools since time immemorial.
But between Hudlin and me, a lot of other things happened. I can’t answer for other writers... but other writers made decisions. Between doing Avengers vs. X-Men and Time Runs Out, there’s a lot of fukked-up shyt that happens to Wakanda. Then I come in as a writer.
I understand the need, particularly among black fans, to see T’Challa be a certain type of way, even to see him restored to a certain place. This is like in my bones. I feel a deep responsibility to history. I can’t act like that stuff didn’t happen. I guess I could.
Let me rephrase tha:. I could. What I could have done was said, “Okay, T’Challa used the Time Gem. He went back to x, y, and z.” This [kind of thing] is always open to interpretation to some extent. But for me, it couldn’t have been the Time Gem. Because if there was a Time Gem and he restored everything to perfection, why does the Squadron Supreme have to kill Namor, if the events leading up to Secret Wars actually happened?
If you read other books, if you’re paying attention to the Marvel Universe, it’s clear that this shyt actually happened. Okay, so that rules out the Time Gem. Maybe it’s a reality check. Maybe it was the Reality Gem. Maybe he changed as much as he could. He can’t take every little thing. But you can’t pretend it just didn’t happen because it’s clear that it did happen if you’re reading the other books.
I like how you’re taking this comic book shop argument approach to how you could have done some other shyt. These are the kind of conversations I used to have.
Coates: But, Evan, you know what? The real deal here is I started writing the Black Panther before I got the last script for Secret Wars. That’s the actual real deal—“Oh fukk. I don’t know how Secret Wars is ending.”
I literally did not know. I knew before everybody else. I had to figure out what the world was and the idea that everything would be wiped back to the beginning? I don’t even know if that was what Jonathan was trying to do.
But the idea of completely wiping the world just didn’t seem like that was going to actually fit. It’s clear, again, if you read the other comic books that the other writers did the exact same thing. They tried pretty much to assume that the history was a fact and that it happened. The editors obviously made a decision to do that. So you’re faced with this character, man, where these fukked-up things did happen.
It’s funny, even if you were to use the kind of outs that you are talking about, like T’Challa, a man of his conscience, that would have eaten away at him. He’s like, “Oh yeah, I restored the Realm to what it’s supposed to be ideally but I had to use some fukked up shyt to do that.” I think that would have eaten away at him too.
Coates: It just feels kind of cheap. I don’t know if this will make any sense, and I don’t know if comic book fans would think about it like this, but it does not feel artistically honest. My intuition [proceeded] from what actually happened. What that means is when you open your book, you don’t have Denzel, man. [Or rather] you got Denzel... what’s that movie where he’s a drunken pilot?
Flight.
Coates: Longtime fans of the character obviously got something out of seeing T’Challa a certain way, that we all need. [It’s what] white fans get out of seeing Captain America a certain way or seeing the Punisher a certain way.
They each represent certain ideals.
Coates: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. So you pick up the Black Panther and you’re not really getting that, so it’s like, “What the fukk man!” Where do I go to get my black—and I would add this because I think it’s very important—male machismo? Where do I go to get that feeling of power that I need to get reading Black Panther?
I think the first part is defensible. I think the less defensible element of it is that what I have come to really, really see is that a lot of times male comic book fans use comic books as a kind of male-bonding exercise. A kind of exercise in power, like power fantasy. I don’t think that’s particular to what folks want out of Black Panther, but I think that is something that happens in comic books.
In much the same way what people do with say football. Do you know what I mean? They are projecting things out into the character and they want certain things to be just so. I didn’t come to comic books in that way. I can only be who I am. In my formative period of reading, say X-Men, Spider-Man, these are not good times. The X-Men are divided. They’re everywhere. Everything is going wrong. Everybody is trying to kill them. That was the formative period to me.
This is horrible to say, [but] I can’t be responsible to the fans. I can’t write for them. The old fans from years ago are listening to this going, “What the fukk, man?” But I don’t think an artist can. I don’t think even I want to consume art where people are writing for me or to me. You have to write to the ages. I have to write in such a way that I think that five years from now somebody will pick this up and say, “Damn, that was incredible.”
That gives me a nice segue to start talking about the run, because part of the appeal of Wakanda and T’Challa both were you, as a reader, were getting perfection. You were getting a perfect country that’s never been conquered and a king that was arguably one of the best strategists on the planet, if not the multiverse.
Then your run begins with an open revolt in Wakanda. The country is more vulnerable in a way than it’s been in arguably centuries. I think it’s hard to read love for the character from that kind of a premise. But to me, the things that have happened in the comics have been really transformative for the character.
Coates: I would correct you: it’s hard to read veneration of the character from that perspective. I would distinguish love for the character and veneration for the character...
Fair. But you know at the end of the first issue we see his sister Shuri, dead or near dead and T’Challa can’t revive her. He can’t let go enough to let her make her journey. That was a first sign of letting me know that his head is not in the place where it has been.
Coates: Right. Again, picking the book up where it was, if you want be to writing human beings, I have to ask myself [to consider] “a human being is raised with an idea that their country is unconquerable.”
That has been proven to be untrue. In the process of that being proven to be untrue, the human being has lost his uncle, he’s lost two of his closest friends and colleagues, and he has abandoned his sister—not because he was a coward, but abandoned his sister because the world had to be saved. That meant leaving her to face Thanos, to face the worst possible people.
Here’s a guy whose father and ancestors turned on him. I’m writing human beings. I’m not writing robots. What does that do to you? Thanos decimates Wakanda. You know what I’m saying? I can’t come in and have T’Challa be like, “I’m still smacking fools.” That’s power fantasy. That’s not really real. Even as I say all this—so I don’t get caught up in this—I’ve got to acknowledge the fact that the book is selling really well. People who are buying the book must be feeling this too.
Having said that, we gotta be really clear, we are not addressing the majority of people. What we are addressing are people who love the character and who have loved the character for a long time. They’re important to the book. You want people who are part of carrying that legacy to be there but you don’t want make the mistake of thinking that’s the majority of the people who are reading the book.
The other thing that surprised me has been the Dora Milaje just being fed up and breaking away from the throne and no longer acknowledging the sovereignty of T’Challa. What inspired that?
Coates: It’s the same question I just asked you about T’Challa. Here’s an order that breaks from T’Challa. They actually break from him in previous events before I get there, right? They break the spears and symbolically disavow him. So the break actually happened before I was there. But some aspect of the fissure is already within the history once I get there.
Here you have an order that’s pledged itself to the king. They’ve given up whatever individual liberties you have in order to be part of it. They’re seeing that their king is treating with [Namor,] the guy who drowned God knows how many Wakandans. They’re seeing that their queen, as far as they know, has died trying to defend their country.
What is their relationship to Wakanda then? What’s their relationship to their king? How do they feel? I have to ask questions. I have to ask questions of human beings. What are their own private individual wants?
We talk about empowering women and sexism in comics. All it requires is you elevate characters as human beings. You don’t have to make them perfect. Ask human being questions of them.
Previously, they had mainly been arm candy for T’Challa—albeit arm candy that could kick ass. There was a certain shallow satisfaction to be had there.
Coates: People aren’t going to like this, but that’s what it was. They were accessories to T’Challa. I’m uncomfortable with that. I’m uncomfortable writing women... fukk it... I’m uncomfortable having any people who are just accessories to T’Challa, who are effectively extensions of his arsenal. I’m uncomfortable writing that.
I think the core of what we’re talking about has been the Priest execution on T’Challa, the fandom around that execution, and the idea that you’re executing, which is kind of in opposition to that. But if you read the Priest run, when T’Challa acts his most kingly, he’s also a major a$$hole.
When he confronts Nakia after she leaves the Dora Milaje and becomes the villain Malice, he tells her he’s got warships all over the region where she’s from, and is going to blast it to bits. That’s not a superhero move.
Coates: No, it’s not. This is probably the big interpretive difference between the two of us—I could be wrong about this—if you read Priest’s book, T’Challa is a king who happens to be a superhero. Mine is probably a superhero who happens to be a king.
Interesting.
Coates: I probably went in the other direction.
I think if you look at the whole history of the character tonally and in terms of his characterization, the Priest run is an anomaly. It’s a good one. But if you look at the character historically before that, T’Challa is empathetic and compassionate. He’s a compassionate, emotionally-driven ruler who hears out his people.
Coates: Priest can better comment on this himself, but again, if you’re going to take the task of getting people to respect him as mighty and powerful, part of that having him act like an a$$hole. That’s part of him as a ruler, right?
Yeah. What’s most interesting to me about issue #6 coming out is the page where you sort of do a reverse on the Avengers reveal from Priest’s run, where he tells the Avengers he only joined to spy on them.
You put this revelation in an entirely different context.
Coates: This is a scientist. The Avengers are going all over the galaxy. They’re doing all sorts of crazy shyt. To not be a part of that is to deny a huge part of himself. Do you understand what I’m saying?
You have this man who’s a genius. He can’t just stay home in the lab and on the throne. And that’s him being a superhero before being a king, as you said.
Coates: Right. There you go.
He has a hunger for adventure which is something that McGregor used to pepper in there sometimes. T’Challa and his crew used to fly around and he’d get on the wing of the plane. This is not a guy who’s been just a brooding tactician his entire life.
Coates: No. My thing was like, T’Challa repeatedly has left the country for long stretches of time. He has repeatedly chosen romantic interests or expressed romantic interests with women who are not Wakandan. What I’m saying is there’s a desire to get out among us. Here’s a guy who was hailing from the most advanced civilization in the world but goes to get educated in the West. What the fukk for?!
I remember that being written somewhere as T’Chaka’s decision. But you don’t go along with that unless you’re curious about the outside world.
Coates: For me, I was interested in all of those little undercurrents in T’Challa’s character. Okay, if you say he’s, I don’t know what, fifth, sixth, whatever, third or fourth smartest person in the world, let’s take that shyt. Let’s take that seriously. Let’s think about the science. Let’s think about whether the third, fourth, fifth most talented scientist in the world would necessarily make the best king. Would that person even want to be king? Those are the questions I really, really wanted to bring up with the run.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/ta-nehisi-coates-explains-how-hes-turning-black-panther-1786632598
You’ve gotten a mixed response from longtime fans of the character. Some people assume that you’re kind of undermining this idea of T’Challa as a master strategist. Where you think that response comes from?
Coates: If we’re going to be straight and honest about it I think it comes from a couple of places. First of all I think there are very, very few African-American heroes, period. Certainly African heroes like T’Challa. That’s just definitely true. You’re not really going to see too many. I think in a lot of people’s minds T’Challa is a lot like Denzel [Washington].
He’s supposed to be smooth and effortlessly do x, y, and z. In addition to that, I think before my run, there were several things that happened at Marvel, like some bad things happened to Wakanda. First of all you’ve got Priest. Priest’s job is to get white folks to take T’Challa seriously. T’Challa ain’t no chump. He established that pretty well.
After that, Reggie comes in, he says, “Not only is T’Challa not a chump, but Wakanda ain’t to be fukked with, period.” Like ever. Don’t even think about it. We’ve been wrecking fools since time immemorial.
But between Hudlin and me, a lot of other things happened. I can’t answer for other writers... but other writers made decisions. Between doing Avengers vs. X-Men and Time Runs Out, there’s a lot of fukked-up shyt that happens to Wakanda. Then I come in as a writer.
I understand the need, particularly among black fans, to see T’Challa be a certain type of way, even to see him restored to a certain place. This is like in my bones. I feel a deep responsibility to history. I can’t act like that stuff didn’t happen. I guess I could.
Let me rephrase tha:. I could. What I could have done was said, “Okay, T’Challa used the Time Gem. He went back to x, y, and z.” This [kind of thing] is always open to interpretation to some extent. But for me, it couldn’t have been the Time Gem. Because if there was a Time Gem and he restored everything to perfection, why does the Squadron Supreme have to kill Namor, if the events leading up to Secret Wars actually happened?
If you read other books, if you’re paying attention to the Marvel Universe, it’s clear that this shyt actually happened. Okay, so that rules out the Time Gem. Maybe it’s a reality check. Maybe it was the Reality Gem. Maybe he changed as much as he could. He can’t take every little thing. But you can’t pretend it just didn’t happen because it’s clear that it did happen if you’re reading the other books.
I like how you’re taking this comic book shop argument approach to how you could have done some other shyt. These are the kind of conversations I used to have.
Coates: But, Evan, you know what? The real deal here is I started writing the Black Panther before I got the last script for Secret Wars. That’s the actual real deal—“Oh fukk. I don’t know how Secret Wars is ending.”
I literally did not know. I knew before everybody else. I had to figure out what the world was and the idea that everything would be wiped back to the beginning? I don’t even know if that was what Jonathan was trying to do.
But the idea of completely wiping the world just didn’t seem like that was going to actually fit. It’s clear, again, if you read the other comic books that the other writers did the exact same thing. They tried pretty much to assume that the history was a fact and that it happened. The editors obviously made a decision to do that. So you’re faced with this character, man, where these fukked-up things did happen.
It’s funny, even if you were to use the kind of outs that you are talking about, like T’Challa, a man of his conscience, that would have eaten away at him. He’s like, “Oh yeah, I restored the Realm to what it’s supposed to be ideally but I had to use some fukked up shyt to do that.” I think that would have eaten away at him too.
Coates: It just feels kind of cheap. I don’t know if this will make any sense, and I don’t know if comic book fans would think about it like this, but it does not feel artistically honest. My intuition [proceeded] from what actually happened. What that means is when you open your book, you don’t have Denzel, man. [Or rather] you got Denzel... what’s that movie where he’s a drunken pilot?
Flight.
Coates: Longtime fans of the character obviously got something out of seeing T’Challa a certain way, that we all need. [It’s what] white fans get out of seeing Captain America a certain way or seeing the Punisher a certain way.
They each represent certain ideals.
Coates: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. So you pick up the Black Panther and you’re not really getting that, so it’s like, “What the fukk man!” Where do I go to get my black—and I would add this because I think it’s very important—male machismo? Where do I go to get that feeling of power that I need to get reading Black Panther?
I think the first part is defensible. I think the less defensible element of it is that what I have come to really, really see is that a lot of times male comic book fans use comic books as a kind of male-bonding exercise. A kind of exercise in power, like power fantasy. I don’t think that’s particular to what folks want out of Black Panther, but I think that is something that happens in comic books.
In much the same way what people do with say football. Do you know what I mean? They are projecting things out into the character and they want certain things to be just so. I didn’t come to comic books in that way. I can only be who I am. In my formative period of reading, say X-Men, Spider-Man, these are not good times. The X-Men are divided. They’re everywhere. Everything is going wrong. Everybody is trying to kill them. That was the formative period to me.
This is horrible to say, [but] I can’t be responsible to the fans. I can’t write for them. The old fans from years ago are listening to this going, “What the fukk, man?” But I don’t think an artist can. I don’t think even I want to consume art where people are writing for me or to me. You have to write to the ages. I have to write in such a way that I think that five years from now somebody will pick this up and say, “Damn, that was incredible.”
That gives me a nice segue to start talking about the run, because part of the appeal of Wakanda and T’Challa both were you, as a reader, were getting perfection. You were getting a perfect country that’s never been conquered and a king that was arguably one of the best strategists on the planet, if not the multiverse.
Then your run begins with an open revolt in Wakanda. The country is more vulnerable in a way than it’s been in arguably centuries. I think it’s hard to read love for the character from that kind of a premise. But to me, the things that have happened in the comics have been really transformative for the character.
Coates: I would correct you: it’s hard to read veneration of the character from that perspective. I would distinguish love for the character and veneration for the character...
Fair. But you know at the end of the first issue we see his sister Shuri, dead or near dead and T’Challa can’t revive her. He can’t let go enough to let her make her journey. That was a first sign of letting me know that his head is not in the place where it has been.
Coates: Right. Again, picking the book up where it was, if you want be to writing human beings, I have to ask myself [to consider] “a human being is raised with an idea that their country is unconquerable.”
That has been proven to be untrue. In the process of that being proven to be untrue, the human being has lost his uncle, he’s lost two of his closest friends and colleagues, and he has abandoned his sister—not because he was a coward, but abandoned his sister because the world had to be saved. That meant leaving her to face Thanos, to face the worst possible people.
Here’s a guy whose father and ancestors turned on him. I’m writing human beings. I’m not writing robots. What does that do to you? Thanos decimates Wakanda. You know what I’m saying? I can’t come in and have T’Challa be like, “I’m still smacking fools.” That’s power fantasy. That’s not really real. Even as I say all this—so I don’t get caught up in this—I’ve got to acknowledge the fact that the book is selling really well. People who are buying the book must be feeling this too.
Having said that, we gotta be really clear, we are not addressing the majority of people. What we are addressing are people who love the character and who have loved the character for a long time. They’re important to the book. You want people who are part of carrying that legacy to be there but you don’t want make the mistake of thinking that’s the majority of the people who are reading the book.
The other thing that surprised me has been the Dora Milaje just being fed up and breaking away from the throne and no longer acknowledging the sovereignty of T’Challa. What inspired that?
Coates: It’s the same question I just asked you about T’Challa. Here’s an order that breaks from T’Challa. They actually break from him in previous events before I get there, right? They break the spears and symbolically disavow him. So the break actually happened before I was there. But some aspect of the fissure is already within the history once I get there.
Here you have an order that’s pledged itself to the king. They’ve given up whatever individual liberties you have in order to be part of it. They’re seeing that their king is treating with [Namor,] the guy who drowned God knows how many Wakandans. They’re seeing that their queen, as far as they know, has died trying to defend their country.
What is their relationship to Wakanda then? What’s their relationship to their king? How do they feel? I have to ask questions. I have to ask questions of human beings. What are their own private individual wants?
We talk about empowering women and sexism in comics. All it requires is you elevate characters as human beings. You don’t have to make them perfect. Ask human being questions of them.
Previously, they had mainly been arm candy for T’Challa—albeit arm candy that could kick ass. There was a certain shallow satisfaction to be had there.
Coates: People aren’t going to like this, but that’s what it was. They were accessories to T’Challa. I’m uncomfortable with that. I’m uncomfortable writing women... fukk it... I’m uncomfortable having any people who are just accessories to T’Challa, who are effectively extensions of his arsenal. I’m uncomfortable writing that.
I think the core of what we’re talking about has been the Priest execution on T’Challa, the fandom around that execution, and the idea that you’re executing, which is kind of in opposition to that. But if you read the Priest run, when T’Challa acts his most kingly, he’s also a major a$$hole.
When he confronts Nakia after she leaves the Dora Milaje and becomes the villain Malice, he tells her he’s got warships all over the region where she’s from, and is going to blast it to bits. That’s not a superhero move.
Coates: No, it’s not. This is probably the big interpretive difference between the two of us—I could be wrong about this—if you read Priest’s book, T’Challa is a king who happens to be a superhero. Mine is probably a superhero who happens to be a king.
Interesting.
Coates: I probably went in the other direction.
I think if you look at the whole history of the character tonally and in terms of his characterization, the Priest run is an anomaly. It’s a good one. But if you look at the character historically before that, T’Challa is empathetic and compassionate. He’s a compassionate, emotionally-driven ruler who hears out his people.
Coates: Priest can better comment on this himself, but again, if you’re going to take the task of getting people to respect him as mighty and powerful, part of that having him act like an a$$hole. That’s part of him as a ruler, right?
Yeah. What’s most interesting to me about issue #6 coming out is the page where you sort of do a reverse on the Avengers reveal from Priest’s run, where he tells the Avengers he only joined to spy on them.
You put this revelation in an entirely different context.
Coates: This is a scientist. The Avengers are going all over the galaxy. They’re doing all sorts of crazy shyt. To not be a part of that is to deny a huge part of himself. Do you understand what I’m saying?
You have this man who’s a genius. He can’t just stay home in the lab and on the throne. And that’s him being a superhero before being a king, as you said.
Coates: Right. There you go.
He has a hunger for adventure which is something that McGregor used to pepper in there sometimes. T’Challa and his crew used to fly around and he’d get on the wing of the plane. This is not a guy who’s been just a brooding tactician his entire life.
Coates: No. My thing was like, T’Challa repeatedly has left the country for long stretches of time. He has repeatedly chosen romantic interests or expressed romantic interests with women who are not Wakandan. What I’m saying is there’s a desire to get out among us. Here’s a guy who was hailing from the most advanced civilization in the world but goes to get educated in the West. What the fukk for?!
I remember that being written somewhere as T’Chaka’s decision. But you don’t go along with that unless you’re curious about the outside world.
Coates: For me, I was interested in all of those little undercurrents in T’Challa’s character. Okay, if you say he’s, I don’t know what, fifth, sixth, whatever, third or fourth smartest person in the world, let’s take that shyt. Let’s take that seriously. Let’s think about the science. Let’s think about whether the third, fourth, fifth most talented scientist in the world would necessarily make the best king. Would that person even want to be king? Those are the questions I really, really wanted to bring up with the run.
. At that time I was so pleasantly shocked to see a cool ass looking character turn out to be Black. I had never seen that up to that point.
Because he pretty much acknowledged and addressed many of the essential talking points from there.