# data[].attributes.headline
The REAL Origin of Marvel's BLACK PANTHER! || Comic Misconceptions || NerdSync - YouTube

# data[].attributes.subject
The REAL Origin of Marvel's BLACK PANTHER! || Comic Misconceptions || NerdSync - YouTube

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The REAL Origin of Marvel's BLACK PANTHER! || Comic Misconceptions || NerdSync

# data[].attributes.headline
The women of ‘Black Panther’ are empowered not just in politics and war, but also in love - The Washington Post

# data[].attributes.subject
The women of ‘Black Panther’ are empowered not just in politics and war, but also in love - The Washington Post

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Panther’s feminism is more progressive than Wonder Woman’s.

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Panther’s feminism is more progressive than Wonder Woman’s.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Spoilers ahead.

One of Black Panther's many highlights is a Bond-like casino faceoff that turns into an Afrofuturistic car chase through the streets of South Korea. King T'Challa, undercover spy Nakia, and Okoye, the head of her team of bodyguards, the Dora Milaje, set out on a mission to intercept the smuggler Ulysses Klaue's sale of stolen vibranium and either kill him there or bring him to Wakanda to face the consequences. In spite of their lack of superpowers, Nakia and Okoye more than hold their own, using their adept fighting skills (not to mention resourcefulness with a wig and a high heel) to fend off Klaue's men. When they follow him into the streets, they get a helpful assist from T'Challa's sister, Shuri, who drives a high-powered car remotely from her Wakandan tech lab. Ultimately, they fail to bring Klaue to justice-T'Challa allows CIA agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) to take him into custody-but the staging of the showdown, with all four working together as a cohesive unit, subtly illuminates how groundbreaking the movieis within the Marvel universe. Black Panther confidently performs the tricky balancing act of writing fully realized women characters into a traditionally male-centered narrative by wholeheartedly believing that they are integral to the storytelling.

In its skeletal form, the movie's central conflict emerges from the fraught relationships between two pairs of male adversaries, the late King T'Chaka and his brother N'Jobu in 1992, and their sons T'Challa and Erik in the present day. There's much to mine from the depiction of fathers and sons (the opening montage is N'Jobu telling his young son the story of their ancestors), and there are no fewer than three one-on-one battles between T'Challa and a male opponent. But in Black Panther, women are just as crucial to the world of Wakanda and how it's governed as the men. It's Okoye, Shuri, and Nakia who have the ear of T'Challa more often than anyone else in the movie: Nakia attempts to nudge him away from his father's isolationist stance so that they can provide aid to other African countries. Okoye is his confidante, and she shares with him a strong sense of duty to the job and an easy rapport, as evidenced during their banter with one another in their native tongue in front of Everett at the police station. Shuri is his Q, consistently testing the limits of technological advancement and designing for him the ultimate suit and footwear for combat while serving up affectionate ribbings the way siblings do.

Moving as it was to see so many little girls dressing up as Wonder Woman, the fact that Black Panther has a wider variety of Wakandan women is a crucial step toward truly progressive feminism onscreen.

Even on the periphery, there's no discernible gender-based hierarchy among the tribal elders, who take turns voicing their opinions respectfully, if forcefully. Little in the script suggests that women are considered incapable of doing what the men can do merely because they aren't men: Shuri's undercutting joke about her corset at T'Challa's crowning ceremony seems a sly nod to her possible ascension to the throne; the other tribe members' laughter could be read as a reaction to the idea that the king's own sister would challenge him, rather than simply because she's a woman. When T'Challa is presumed dead, Nakia turns to the Jabari Tribe only after she tries and fails to team up with Okoye against Killmonger-even with the powerful heart-shaped herb she's managed to save from the new king's orders of destruction, a spy without an army is a setup for failure, she understandably reasons.

There are three fully realized women here, none of them exactly alike, and the film provides ample evidence of mutual respect between them and their countrymen. The casino and car-chase sequence devotes equal time to Black Panther's daring stunts as it does to Okoye's masterful spear tricks. Later, during the Wakandan civil war, it repeats this feat on an even larger scale-although the bloated set piece falls into the trap of stuffing too much muddled action into the third act of a Marvel movie, at least this time it's in the service of watching many skilled and powerful women join together in battle. And there's still enough time for each of them to demonstrate their individuality in the midst of it all: When Okoye insists that she has no reservations about killing her husband if he continues to support Killmonger now that T'Challa is shown to be alive, the moment is a brutal testament to her will and perfectly in keeping with her stance throughout the rest of the film.

This attention to detail, the clarity in personalities in the main characters and beyond, is what truly sets Black Panther apart from other comic book movies, including Wonder Woman.
The latter, for all its forward strides, still suffers from a singular exceptionalism-once Diana Prince leaves her Amazonian homeland, she becomes the film's sole example of female fortitude. Sure, it's nice to see a woman leading and outsmarting the men for a change, but the film still forces an uncomfortably hurried romantic subplot with one of her allies into the mix and has characters commenting upon her physical appearance every step of the way.
One could argue that these differences make sense given Wonder Woman's World War I backdrop and Black Panther's Afrofuturistic setting-also, everyone in Wakanda is stunningly beautiful, so there's no need to go on about it all the time-but even in the present day, Diana remains Justice League's sole female superhero. As moving as it was to see so many little girls and women dressing up as Wonder Woman last year, the fact that Black Panther has a wider variety of Wakandan women to identify with-are you insanely smart and tech savvy like Shuri, or a do-gooder with maternal instincts like Nakia?-is a crucial step toward truly progressive feminism on screen. The movie may be called Black Panther, but it's clear that the female characters' individual relationships to T'Challa move far beyond sidekick or love interest. Wakanda would be sorely at a loss without them.

Black Panther's road to success, both creatively and financially, relied on a lot of obvious factors and strategies: the usual Marvel marketing machine, a capable director, a strong cast, and a story that could satisfy both the fans and the audience members who couldn't tell you what vibranium was but knew this was not an event to be missed. Yet even with performers as talented as Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, and scene-stealer Letitia Wright, it was difficult to anticipate that this comic book movie might dare to become arguably the most feminist example of its kind to date. Women have played third or fourth fiddle (or just plain damsel in distress) in these movies much more often than not, and with very rare exception have black women played any significant part in the stories at all. Just as Wakanda is a utopian symbol for black people in its depiction of a nation relatively untouched by colonialism, so does it now represent an ideal world in which men and women coexist respectfully, on an equal playing field.

Read more in Slate about Black Panther.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Black Panther, Wakanda Is a Feminist Utopia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Spoilers ahead. One of Black Panther's many highlights is a Bond-like casino faceoff that turns into an Afrofuturistic car chase through the streets of South Korea. King T'Challa, undercover spy Nakia, and Okoye, the head of her team of bodyguards, the Dora Milaje, set out on a mission to intercept the smuggler Ulysses Klaue's sale of stolen vibranium and either kill him there or bring him to Wakanda to face the consequences.

# data[].attributes.headline
Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters

# data[].attributes.subject
Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Female characters appear in superhero comics less often than males - but when they are included, how are they depicted?

The recent theatrical release of Wonder Woman briefly catapulted the question of female superhero representation into the mainstream. For some, the character is a feminist icon - even Gloria Steinem wrote about her - and many fans (though not all) felt this wasn't just another superhero movie, but rather a pivotal moment in the portrayal of women in popular culture.

Why all the fuss? Well, the truth is that the comics industry has had a complicated relationship with female characters. They are often hyper-sexualized, unnecessarily brutalized, stereotyped, and used as tokens. They're also rare. Only 26.7 percent of all DC and Marvel characters are female, and only 12 percent of mainstream superhero comics have female protagonists.

I decided to look beyond the gender ratio to see if we could learn more about how females are represented. Using characters from DC and Marvel in the ComicVine database, I analyzed naming conventions, types of superpowers, and the composition of teams to see how male and female genders are portrayed.

Strong men; thoughtful women

Three out of five comic book characters have at least one superpower, regardless of gender. When we categorize these powers, we find that there are some clear gender imbalances.

The difference in male and female powers

Change in % pts

What's that?
Click on a bar and I'll explain the power!

Taking names?
Click on a circle and I'll list gender-titled characters!

NOTES: Percentages are determined only from characters with powers. In DC and Marvel, 62.4 percent of all male characters have powers, and 62.8 percent of female characters have powers.

ComicVine lists over 100 possible powers; however, we removed all powers for which the difference between genders is not significant at a 95 percent confidence level when performing a t-test. Definitions are from both Comic Vine and Superpower Wiki.

The data suggest that less-physical powers - such as empathy, intellect, and telepathy - tend to be more represented among female characters. Men however, often have highly physical powers, as well as those that involve gadgets. Female characters dominate in relatively few physical abilities; and those where they do are often tied to gender stereotypes. Pheromone control - the ability to generate and control pheromones that affect emotional and physical states, such as sleep, fear, and pleasure - occurs five times as often in a female character. Sonic scream appears in twice as many female characters as male; and prehensile hair - the ability to control one's own hair - appears in female characters seven times more often.

Token teams and team members

There are over 2,500 teams in DC and Marvel combined. Roughly half of all characters - male and female - are members of at least one team. The number of females on teams is what you would expect given the relatively low number of female characters. That doesn't mean, though, that female characters are evenly distributed. In fact, 30 percent of all teams have no women, and only 12 percent have more female team members than male. The majority of those 12 percent, however, are exclusively female teams. This means that in actuality, only 4.8 percent of all teams have both male and female characters and have more women than men.

Female percentage of every team

Each dot represents one of 2,862 teams in DC and Marvel.

Particularly interesting are the names of the exclusively female teams - Femizons, Lady Liberators, Female Furies, Holiday Girls, Doom Maidens. A third of all exclusively female team names reference their femininity in some way, and if we look at the all-female teams that are five or more members, that number jumps to half. These groups have gendered names in the way that the male teams generally do not. Only seven percent of their male counterparts with five or more members have a masculine naming reference. Given this highly gendered naming pattern, it seems that exclusively female teams are often specifically defined by their femininity.

Men will be men; women will be girls

Character monikers follow a similar pattern to team names. Consider some of the most popular comic characters of all time: Batman, Wonder Woman, Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man. Eight percent of both male and female characters have gendered names. However, not all gendered names are equal; some fit a "diminutive" category. These are titles that are the younger, or infantilized versions of another name. For example, "girl" is the diminutive version of woman.

Comparing the balance of gendered names

Let's look at the percent of female and male characters with equivalent gendered names. For example, we have paired "man" and "woman" as equivalent. Their usage, however, is not balanced: male characters are given "man" far more often than female characters are given "woman".

Interesting imbalances are found between many gendered naming pairs. Diminutive names - those that may infantilize or denote the younger version of a title - are highlighted.

Percent female

Percent male

NOTES: Percentages are determined only from characters with gendered names. i.e. 13 percent of women with gendered names have "girl" in their name.

The names considered "diminutive" are those in red text on the chart. They were chosen by the author, and there are good arguments for both keeping and removing many of these terms. However, the point remains: If we only consider "girl" and "boy" there is still a significant difference: 13 percent for females, 5 percent for males.

In some cases, a character with a gendered name will be listed in the Comic Vine database under their secret identity. For example, there is no Ms. Marvel or Batgirl in the chart above. They are listed in the data as Carol Danvers (and Kamala Khan, etc.) and Barbara Gordon.

If we compare the use of diminutive names for male and female characters, we see that 28.5 percent of female characters and 12.6 percent of male characters fit in the category. Females are more than twice as likely to be given a name that may make her seem weak, less dangerous, less aggressive and not on equal footing with male characters.

Marvel and DC are no longer simply convenience-store singles. Today, they're blockbuster movies, fast-selling merchandise, drama-filled tv shows, and popular video games. The more we see these characters appear in pop culture, the more their representation matters - especially because female characters form such a small fraction of the whole.

Carolyn Cocca, academic and author of the Eisner-nominated book "Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation", expresses clearly why this is such an important concern. She writes: "If the constantly repeated story is that women and girls are not leaders, are not working in professional settings, are not agents of their own lives but merely adjuncts to others, and are sometimes not even present at all, it can reinforce or foster societal undervaluing of women and girls... As there are fewer female characters to begin with, each is overburdened with representing women as a group."

To be fair, this problem does not affect comics alone: media in general - including children's literature, cartoons, computer games and even coloring books - have a history of poor female representation and gender imbalance. And often media reflect our world back to us: while only 27% of Marvel and DC characters are female, that number is only 19% for the United States Congress.

The good news is that things may be changing. Both DC and Marvel have slowly begun to increase the number of female characters in their output. Our analysis did not consider time-series data (we didn't have it), and characters change over time - Wonder Woman herself has been a feminist activist, a house-wife, a sexualized pin-up, and a kick-ass hero in her 76 years. However, while some features may be altered, established and traditional characters tend to maintain their names and powers. They continue to carry the representative baggage of their past.

Data and methodology
Using the ComicVine database, which is fan-edited, information was downloaded for all 34,476 characters in Marvel and DC. The choice of the "big two" was made to cover the greatest breadth and history of characters; these companies have both been around since the 1930s and together they are responsible for approximately 70 percent of the retail market (depending on the month). Data were gathered at the end of April, 2017.

This piece is, unfortunately, only focused on male and female gender. In the database there are designations for "female", "male" and "other"; however, the decision was made to remove characters that appeared in the "other" category. I had hoped this data would provide insight into non-binary or gender fluid characters in Marvel and DC. Upon closer inspection, however, it was clear that the category is not often used in a gender-inclusive way. Instead, it is primarily used as a label for non-human characters like robots, auras and spirits. Here's a brief, interesting read about battling this binary model in superhero comics.

Because I gathered every single character from both publishers, there are occasionally duplicates of characters. There's a good argument for removing them: They over-weight some of the big characters, because it's usually only the more common, popular characters that are replaced, reborn, or duplicated. However, there's a good argument for keeping them as well. They can be considered different characters (Batman-X is not the same as Batman, for example), and as such, they have distinct genders. Removing duplicates would mean missing out if the character changes gender. For example: There are many iterations of Robin, and not all of them are male.

Thank you to Tyler Shendruk, who provided invaluable assitance during the data analysis stage, and to Nicole Derksen, who created the illustrations and gifs used in this article.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Female characters appear in superhero comics less often than males - but when they are included, how are they depicted? The recent theatrical release of Wonder Woman briefly catapulted the question of female superhero representation into the mainstream.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why Black Panther’s box office success matters - YouTube

# data[].attributes.subject
Why Black Panther’s box office success matters - YouTube

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Black Panther’s box office success matters

# data[].attributes.headline
How Marvel's Black Panther Marks a Major Milestone

# data[].attributes.subject
How Marvel's Black Panther Marks a Major Milestone

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The first movie I remember seeing in a theater had a black hero. Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, didn't have any superpowers, but he ran his own city. That movie, the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, introduced Calrissian as a complicated human being who still did the right thing. That's one reason I grew up knowing I could be the same.

If you are reading this and you are white, seeing people who look like you in mass media probably isn't something you think about often. Every day, the culture reflects not only you but nearly infinite versions of you-executives, poets, garbage collectors, soldiers, nurses and so on. The world shows you that your possibilities are boundless. Now, after a brief respite, you again have a President.

Those of us who are not white have considerably more trouble not only finding representation of ourselves in mass media and other arenas of public life, but also finding representation that indicates that our humanity is multifaceted. Relating to characters onscreen is necessary not merely for us to feel seen and understood, but also for others who need to see and understand us. When it doesn't happen, we are all the poorer for it.

This is one of the many reasons Black Panther is significant. What seems like just another entry in an endless parade of superhero movies is actually something much bigger. It hasn't even hit theaters yet and its cultural footprint is already enormous. It's a movie about what it means to be black in both America and Africa-and, more broadly, in the world. Rather than dodge complicated themes about race and identity, the film grapples head-on with the issues affecting modern-day black life. It is also incredibly entertaining, filled with timely comedy, sharply choreographed action and gorgeously lit people of all colors. "You have superhero films that are gritty dramas or action comedies," director Ryan Coogler tells TIME. But this movie, he says, tackles another important genre: "Superhero films that deal with issues of being of African descent."

Black Panther is the 18th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a franchise that has made $13.5 billion at the global box office over the past 10 years. (Marvel is owned by Disney.) It may be the first megabudget movie-not just about superheroes, but about anyone-to have an African-American director and a predominantly black cast. Hollywood has never produced a blockbuster this splendidly black.

The movie, out Feb. 16, comes as the entertainment industry is wrestling with its toxic treatment of women and persons of color. This rapidly expanding reckoning-one that reflects the importance of representation in our culture-is long overdue. Black Panther is poised to prove to Hollywood that African-American narratives have the power to generate profits from all audiences. And, more important, that making movies about black lives is part of showing that they matter.

The invitation to the Black Panther premiere read "Royal attire requested." Yet no one showed up to the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on Jan. 29 looking like an extra from a British costume drama. On display instead were crowns of a different sort-ascending head wraps made of various African fabrics. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o wore her natural hair tightly wrapped above a resplendent bejeweled purple gown. Men, including star Chadwick Boseman and Coogler, wore Afrocentric patterns and clothing, dashikis and boubous. Co-star Daniel Kaluuya, an Oscar nominee for his star turn in Get Out, arrived wearing a kanzu, the formal tunic of his Ugandan ancestry.

After the Obama era, perhaps none of this should feel groundbreaking. But it does. In the midst of a regressive cultural and political moment fueled in part by the white-nativist movement, the very existence of Black Panther feels like resistance. Its themes challenge institutional bias, its characters take unsubtle digs at oppressors, and its narrative includes prismatic perspectives on black life and tradition. The fact that Black Panther is excellent only helps.

Back when the film was announced, in 2014, nobody knew that it would be released into the fraught climate of President Trump's America-where a thriving black future seems more difficult to see. Trump's reaction to the Charlottesville chaos last summer equated those protesting racism with violent neo-Nazis defending a statue honoring a Confederate general. Immigrants from Mexico, Central America and predominantly Muslim countries are some of the President's most frequent scapegoats. So what does it mean to see this film, a vision of unmitigated black excellence, in a moment when the Commander in Chief reportedly, in a recent meeting, dismissed the 54 nations of Africa as "sh-thole countries"?

As is typical of the climate we're in, Black Panther is already running into its share of trolls-including a Facebook group that sought, unsuccessfully, to flood the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes with negative ratings of the film. That Black Panther signifies a threat to some is unsurprising. A fictional African King with the technological war power to destroy you-or, worse, the wealth to buy your land-may not please someone who just wants to consume the latest Marvel chapter without deeper political consideration. Black Panther is emblematic of the most productive responses to bigotry: rather than going for hearts and minds of racists, it celebrates what those who choose to prohibit equal representation and rights are ignoring, willfully or not. They are missing out on the full possibility of the world and the very America they seek to make "great." They cannot stop this representation of it. When considering the folks who preemptively hate Black Panther and seek to stop it from influencing American culture, I echo the response that the movie's hero T'Challa is known to give when warned of those who seek to invade his home country: Let them try.

The history of black power and the movement that bore its name can be traced back to the summer of 1966. The activist Stokely Carmichael was searching for something more than mere liberty. To him, integration in a white-dominated America meant assimilation by default. About one year after the assassination of Malcolm X and the Watts riots in Los Angeles, Carmichael took over the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from John Lewis. Carmichael decided to move the organization away from a philosophy of pacifism and escalate the group's militancy to emphasize armed self-defense, black business ownership and community control.

In June of that year, James Meredith, an activist who four years earlier had become the first black person admitted to Ole Miss, started the March Against Fear, a long walk of protest from Memphis to Mississippi, alone. On the second day of the march, he was wounded by a gunman. Carmichael and tens of thousands of others continued in Meredith's absence. Carmichael, who was arrested halfway through the march, was incensed upon his release. "The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over," he declared before a passionate crowd on June 16. "We been saying freedom for six years and we ain't got nothin'. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!"

Black Panther was born in the civil rights era, and he reflected the politics of that time. The month after Carmichael's Black Power declaration, the character debuted in Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four No. 52. Supernatural strength and agility were his main features, but a genius intellect was his best attribute. "Black Panther" wasn't an alter ego; it was the formal title for T'Challa, King of Wakanda, a fictional African nation that, thanks to its exclusive hold on the sound-absorbent metal vibranium, had become the most technologically advanced nation in the world.

It was a vision of black grandeur and, indeed, power in a trying time, when more than 41% of African Americans were at or below the poverty line and comprised nearly a third of the nation's poor. Much like the iconic Lieutenant Uhura character, played by Nichelle Nichols, that debuted in Star Trek in September 1966, Black Panther was an expression of Afrofuturism-an ethos that fuses African mythologies, technology and science fiction and serves to rebuke conventional depictions of (or, worse, efforts to bring about) a future bereft of black people. His white creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, did not consciously conjure a fantasy-world response to Carmichael's call, but the image still held power. T'Challa was not only strong and educated; he was also royalty. He didn't have to take over. He was already in charge.

"You might say that this African nation is fantasy," says Boseman, who portrays T'Challa in the movie. "But to have the opportunity to pull from real ideas, real places and real African concepts, and put it inside of this idea of Wakanda-that's a great opportunity to develop a sense of what that identity is, especially when you're disconnected from it."

The character emerged at a time when the civil rights movement rightfully began to increase its demands of an America that had promised so much and delivered so little to its black population. Fifty-two years after the introduction of T'Challa, those demands have yet to be fully answered. According to the Federal Reserve, the typical African-American family had a median net worth of $17,600 in 2016. In contrast, white households had a median net worth of $171,000. The revolutionary thing about Black Panther is that it envisions a world not devoid of racism but one in which black people have the wealth, technology and military might to level the playing field-a scenario applicable not only to the predominantly white landscape of Hollywood but, more important, to the world at large.

The Black Panther Party, the revolutionary organization founded in Oakland, Calif., a few months after T'Challa's debut, was depicted in the media as a threatening and radical group with goals that differed dramatically from the more pacifist vision of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Lewis. Marvel even briefly changed the character's name to Black Leopard because of the inevitable association with the Panthers, but soon reverted. For some viewers, "Black Panther" may have undeservedly sinister connotations, but the 2018 film reclaims the symbol to be celebrated by all as an avatar for change.

The urgency for change is partly what Carmichael was trying to express in the summer of '66, and the powers that be needed to listen. It's still true in 2018.

Moviegoers first encountered Boseman's T'Challa in Marvel's 2016 ensemble hit Captain America: Civil War, and he instantly cut a striking figure in his sleek vibranium suit. As Black Panther opens, with T'Challa grieving the death of his father and coming to grips with his sudden ascension to the Wakandan throne, it's clear that our hero's royal upbringing has kept him sheltered from the realities of how systemic racism has touched just about every black life across the globe.

The comic, especially in its most recent incarnations as rendered by the writers Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, has worked to expunge Eurocentric misconceptions of Africa-and the film's imagery and thematic material follow suit. "People often ask, 'What is Black Panther? What is his power?' And they have a misconception that he only has power through his suit," says Boseman. "The character is existing with power inside power."

Coogler says that Black Panther, like his previous films-including the police-brutality drama Fruitvale Station and his innovative Rocky sequel Creed -explores issues of identity. "That's something I've always struggled with as a person," says the director. "Like the first time that I found out I was black." He's talking less about an epidermal self-awareness than about learning how white society views his black skin. "Not just identity, but names. 'Who are you?' is a question that comes up a lot in this film. T'Challa knows exactly who he is. The antagonist in this film has many names."

That villain comes in the form of Erik "Killmonger" Stevens, a former black-ops soldier with Wakandan ties who seeks to both outwit and beat down T'Challa for the crown. As played by a scene-stealing Michael B. Jordan, Killmonger's motivations illuminate thorny questions about how black people worldwide should best use their power.

In the movie, Killmonger is, like Coogler, a native of Oakland. By exploring the disparate experiences of Africans and African Americans, Coogler shines a bright light on the psychic scars of slavery's legacy and how black Americans endure the real-life consequences of it in the present day. Killmonger's perspective is rendered in full; his rage over how he and other black people across the world have been disenfranchised and disempowered is justifiable.

Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, also includes another important antagonist from the comics: the dastardly and bigoted Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis). "What I love about this experience is that it could have been the idea of black exploitation: he's gonna fight Klaue, he's gonna go after the white man and that's it-that's the enemy," Boseman says. He recognizes that some fans will take issue with a black male villain fighting black protagonists. Killmonger fights not only T'Challa, but also warrior women like the spy Nakia (Nyong'o), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the rest of the Dora Milaje, T'Challa's all-female royal guards. Killmonger and Shuri (Letitia Wright), T'Challa's quippy tech-genius sister, also face off.

T'Challa and Killmonger are mirror images, separated only by the accident of where they were born. "What they don't realize," Boseman says, "is that the greatest conflict you will ever face will be the conflict with yourself."

Both T'Challa and Killmonger had to be compelling in order for the movie to succeed. "Obviously, the superhero is who puts you in the seat," Coogler says.

"That's who you want to see come out on top. But I'll be damned if the villains ain't cool too. They have to be able to stand up to the hero, and have you saying, 'Man, I don't know if the hero's going to make it out of this.'"

"If you don't have that," Boseman says, "you don't have a movie."

This is not just a movie about a black superhero; it's very much a black movie. It carries a weight that neither Thor nor Captain America could lift: serving a black audience that has long gone underrepresented. For so long, films that depict a reality where whiteness isn't the default have been ghettoized, marketed largely to audiences of color as niche entertainment, instead of as part of the mainstream. Think of Tyler Perry's Madea movies, Malcolm D. Lee's surprise 1999 hit The Best Man or the Barbershop franchise that launched in 2002. But over the past year, the success of films including Get Out and Girls Trip have done even bigger business at the box office, led to commercial acclaim and minted new stars like Kaluuya and Tiffany Haddish. Those two hits have only bolstered an argument that has persisted since well before Spike Lee made his debut: black films with black themes and black stars can and should be marketed like any other. No one talks about Woody Allen and Wes Anderson movies as "white movies" to be marketed only to that audience.

Black Panther marks the biggest move yet in this wave: it's both a black film and the newest entrant in the most bankable movie franchise in history. For a wary and risk-averse film business, led largely by white film executives who have been historically predisposed to greenlight projects featuring characters who look like them, Black Panther will offer proof that a depiction of a reality of something other than whiteness can make a ton of money.

The film's positive reception-as of Feb. 6, the day initial reviews surfaced, it had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes-bodes well for its commercial prospects. Variety predicted that it could threaten the Presidents' Day weekend record of $152 million, set in 2016 by Deadpool.

Some of the film's early success can be credited to Nate Moore, an African-American executive producer in Marvel's film division who has been vocal about the importance of including black characters in the Marvel universe. But beyond Wakanda, the questions of power and responsibility, it seems, are not only applicable to the characters in Black Panther. Once this film blows the doors off, as expected, Hollywood must do more to reckon with that issue than merely greenlight more black stories. It also needs more Nate Moores.

"I know people [in the entertainment industry] are going to see this and aspire to it," Boseman says. "But this is also having people inside spaces-gatekeeper positions, people who can open doors and take that idea. How can this be done? How can we be represented in a way that is aspirational?"

Because Black Panther marks such an unprecedented moment that excitement for the film feels almost kinetic. Black Panther parties are being organized, pre- and post-film soirées for fans new and old. A video of young Atlanta students dancing in their classroom once they learned they were going to see the film together went viral in early February. Oscar winner Octavia Spencer announced on her Instagram account that she'll be in Mississippi when Black Panther opens and that she plans to buy out a theater "in an underserved community there to ensure that all our brown children can see themselves as a superhero."

Many civil rights pioneers and other trailblazing forebears have received lavish cinematic treatments, in films including Malcolm X, Selma and Hidden Figures. Jackie Robinson even portrayed himself onscreen. Fictional celluloid champions have included Virgil Tibbs, John Shaft and Foxy Brown. Lando, too. But Black Panther matters more, because he is our best chance for people of every color to see a black hero. That is its own kind of power.
Jamil Smith is a journalist born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in Los Angeles.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Revolutionary Power of Black Panther

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first movie I remember seeing in a theater had a black hero. Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, didn't have any superpowers, but he ran his own city. That movie, the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, introduced Calrissian as a complicated human being who still did the right thing.

# data[].attributes.headline
'Black Panther': Why Wakanda matters - The Washington Post

# data[].attributes.subject
'Black Panther': Why Wakanda matters - The Washington Post

# data[].attributes.headline
Why BLACK PANTHER’s Representation Matters, According to the Cast | Nerdist

# data[].attributes.subject
Why BLACK PANTHER’s Representation Matters, According to the Cast | Nerdist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
With great power comes great responsibility, and there is no denying the immense cultural power of Marvel Studios' Black Panther or the responsibility those who made it felt to viewing audiences.

The latest addition to the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe is particularly auspicious, not only because it is the first film in the MCU's tenth year of existence, but because it is the first film in the series headlined by a black superhero. And not just any black superhero, either; Black Panther was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics. Now some five decades later, King T'Challa, the Dora Milaje, and the people of Wakanda are ready for their close-up, one for which they have been ready for a long, long time.

The film, directed by Ryan Coogler, is a thunderclap, making a massive impact on audiences all over the world and generating a cultural conversation unlike any other Marvel film I've seen. While the film is on track to obliterate box office records- with a projected opening weekend of $200 million-there is something extra special about Black Panther. One need only look up the hashtag on Twitter and read the joyous, tearful responses of audiences who saw the movie last night to understand why. Black Panther is representation in action for millions of fans all over the world. It is more than just a superhero movie; it is a chance for fans to see themselves reflected on the big screen, to feel like their stories are being told. It was something that the cast and filmmakers behind Black Panther took to heart when making this film, and the results are quite simply astounding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowSv5R_fpU

To find out more about why Black Panther's cultural representation matters, our reporter Markeia McCarty spoke with director Ryan Coogler and stars Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, and Letitia Wright. The cast spoke about the impact they hope the film has on audiences, the aspirational qualities of the world portrayed in the film, and how it can offer a vision of what society could be.

"Cinema has an opportunity to show us where we've been, where we are, and where we could go," said Nyong'o. "And Wakanda is where we could go."

"There's no limitation," Wright explained. "I hope this film, being one of the first of its kind, can really open a door. You don't just go and watch it and just let your dreams die. I want young people to go and watch it and feel inspired and feel like they can do anything."

After seeing what not just the titular, Vibranium-suited superhero can do, but the cavalcade of ass-kicking ladies who constantly steal the spotlight, it's hard not to leave Black Panther feeling like you too can save the world.

Black Panther is in theaters now. Read our spoiler-free review.
Images: Marvel
Additional reporting by Markeia McCarty.
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. Follow him on Twitter (@DanCasey).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why BLACK PANTHER's Representation Matters, According to the Cast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With great power comes great responsibility, and there is no denying the immense cultural power of Marvel Studios' Black Panther or the responsibility those who made it felt to viewing audiences.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Superheroes Matter: Why 'Black Panther' Is Revolutionary - Rolling Stone

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Superheroes Matter: Why 'Black Panther' Is Revolutionary - Rolling Stone

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Standing in the bay of a speeding Wakandan jet, a member of the African nation's special forces unit - the Dora Milaje - advises their king, T'Challa: "Don't freeze." Calmly, the leader replies "I never freeze." He's assured, regal, radiating a near subzero-temperature sense of cool. And then, donning the mask of the legendary superhero known as the Black Panther, he torpedo-drops from the sky. A car explodes beneath him. He effortlessly somersaults through the air, lands sideways on a building in a neon-lit metropolis, races along the building's wall and sails right onto the speeding car. Then the Avenger skewers the driver's side tire and tosses it away like a bottle cap. Screen time: 10 seconds. How long have we been waiting to watch that moment become a reality? A lifetime.

Literally from the jump, director Ryan Coogler and Co. make it clear that we will be watching a black superhero fully in control and completely occupying the center-stage spotlight. Watch Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, and you'll see a charismatic character who fills a void in the conflicted do-gooder group. Watch the new trailer, however - the one that dropped months ago for his stand-alone film - and you'll see someone with the arrogance of Shaft, the coolness of Obama and the hot-headed impulsiveness of Kanye West. This T'Challa is accessible, awe-inspiring and perhaps most importantly, human. "I think the question that I'm trying to ask and answer in Black Panther is, 'What does truly mean to be African?'" the filmmaker recently told Rolling Stone. "The MCU has set itself in the real world as much as possible - so what does it mean for T'Challa to move around as this black man in a movie reality that tries to be a real world?"

All of which means that, after decades of trying to nail the modern black superhero, we may finally be getting what we've asked for - and getting it right. This journey hasn't been without effort. The Blaxploitation films in the 1970s gave black audiences their own heroes: Shaft, Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, Slaughter, Foxy Brown. They were inner-city vigilantes, detectives, nurses and ex-cons that waged anti-establishment wars against authority, drugs, gangs and corruption - one-man (or woman) hit-squads operating against the real-world political backdrop of Nixon's "law and order" campaign. Occasionally, movies like Shaft Goes to Africa, where Richard Roundtree wears an African dashiki and is equipped with a large unassuming staff that's a piece of advanced tech, and Dolemite (that broad hat, that flashy suit pimp-styleoutfit) had their protagonists don something like costumes and adopt something close to alter-egos to mete out justice.

These black men and women didn't cower in the face of danger, white power or guns; their combination of sex appeal and swagger made many audiences fall in love with them. To say that mileage may vary among these portraits of sticking it to the Man would be putting it mildly. But in hindsight, you can see how the Blaxploitation movies influenced a generation of black musicians and artists by selling a profoundly Afrocentric image, as well as spawning a legacy that can be seen in everything from hip-hop to stand-up comedy. And though the Black Panther first appeared during the Civil Rights era, the main wave of black superheroes that followed - think Luke Cage, Black Lightning, the Falcon, Storm of the X-Men - were children of the Blaxploitation age. They just weren't getting screen time. At all.

In the Nineties and the early 2000s, attempts to make black superhero movies tended to play like Blaxploitation-lite, running the gamut from intentionally hilarious (1993's Meteor Man and 1994's Blankman) or hilariously bad ( Steel and Spawn, both 1997). They were usually analogues of white superheroes like Superman and Batman at best, and a one-note joke at worst. The one exception, the Great Black Hope, was 1998's Blade, the first in a series about a leather-clad, mixed breed vampire hunter played by Wesley Snipes. It was critically embraced, commercially successful ($333 million in box-office receipts) and a high-water mark for an obscure superhero character in from an obscure comic book horror series. The franchise ended on a sour note - but it also provided a blueprint for what would become Marvel Studios' eventual MCU pop-culture takeover.

Still, even Blade's success wasn't enough to get more top-tier black superheroes films on the big screen. Audiences had to be content with Halle Berry's African-born mutant superhero Storm, Don Cheadle's War Machine, Anthony Mackie's Falcon - strong performances that still had the whiff of consolation prizes. Hollywood grapevine chatter pondered if Will Smith could play Captain America and Donald Glover campaigned to be cast as Spider-Man; cue widespread backlash from a largely white mainstream fan-base. The less said about poor Michael B. Jordan in that ill-conceived Fantastic Four reboot, the better.

Yet Black Panther already feels different from all of this. Coogler has set out to do something with the modern black superhero that all previous iterations have fallen short of doing: making it respectable, imaginative and powerful. The Afro-punk and Afrofuturism aesthetics, the unapologetic black swagger, the miniscule appearances from non-black characters - it's an important resetting of a standard of what's possible around creating a mythology for a black superhero. The trailers point to a new direction for depicting not only black superheroes, but also how we imagine our heroes. He's not being played for laughs. He's not a sidekick or born out of dire circumstances. His story, one of an ingrained birthright, legacy and royalty is a stark difference for how we tend to treat most black superheroes - and black superhero movies.

The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about "the danger of a single story" -about Africa, about black brilliance, our humanity and the black experience for too long. There would never be a time when this movie's creation wouldn't mean something to black people in particular, and the inevitable backlash that this movie will receive for its celebration, existence and confidence in blackness will be a reminder that there are no new conversations, merely new opportunities to remind us of who we collectively are. Yet that won't matter because the people this movie will speak most deeply to - a rainbow-coalition cross-section of black comic book readers, African-American movie audiences, Boseman/Jordan/Bassett/N'yongo fans, black-culture connoisseurs and pop-culture nerds - will see something of themselves in this movie. They will also likely be both familiar and resistant to the disdain it will receive for merely existing. Like anything black in America, Black Panther will be politicized for being black, which is to say for being and for announcing itself as a having a right to be here and to be heard.

Since the dawn of the modern Golden-Age superhero, we've been treated to over 30 iterations and appearances of Superman, Batman and Spider-Man (multiply that threefold if you count cartoons, cartoon movies and video games). We've had a stand-alone Howard the Duck movie, and a supergroup with a talking raccoon and a sentient tree as central characters. Wonder Woman, one of D.C's most iconic characters created in the 1940s, got a TV show in the 1970s ... and didn't get a movie until last June.

Fast-forward to 2016, however, and you can stream Netflix's unapologetically Afrocentric Luke Cage series, while shows like Cloak and Dagger, Black Lightning and the recently-announced series Raising Dion (co-produced and - starring Michael B. Jordan about a single mother discovers her young son has magical powers) in various stage of production. And now, finally, we have a Black Panther movie, one set to open on thousands of screens and get the full Marvel marketing-blitz treatment.

As a child in school, I rarely reached for the black or brown Crayola crayons in my superhero coloring books; I have a lifetime's worth of Halloweens where I weighed how often I could or should dress as the white superheroes. I couldn't find ones that looked like me both outside of and underneath the mask. An entire generation of children will now know that a black superhero, society, imagination and power can exist right alongside Peter Parker, Steve Rogers and Bruce Wayne. An entire generation of children will not know what it feels like to not see themselves reflected back on costume racks, coloring books or movie screens. We're at a pivotal time where these characters and stories are coming not out of permission or obligation, but necessity.

It has been someone's time before again and again and again. But 2018's late winter will belong to Wakanda much like 2017's early summer belonged to Wonder Woman. We've been waiting to see ourselves onscreen, flying through the air and running across buildings and dodging laserblasts from bearded colonialists our entire lives. The future is Ryan Coogler, Chadwick Boseman, T'Challa, Black Panther. The future begins on February 16th.
Originally published on October 17th, 2017

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Superheroes Matter: Why a 'Black Panther' Movie Is Revolutionary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Standing in the bay of a speeding Wakandan jet, a member of the African nation's special forces unit - the Dora Milaje - advises their king, T'Challa: "Don't freeze." Calmly, the leader replies "I never freeze." He's assured, regal, radiating a near subzero-temperature sense of cool.