Marvel's New Black Panther Revealed After T'Challa's Death (And It's Causing A Stir)

By Ryan Scott
Black Panther standing in the water on the cover of Marvel Knights: The World to Come Marvel Comics

This post contains major spoilers for "Marvel Knights: The World to Come."

For those who have any designs on reading Christopher Priest and Joe Quesada's ongoing comic book miniseries "Marvel Knights: The World to Come," turn back now. You've been warned.

Here's something nobody expected to say today: There's a white Black Panther now. Yes, really. As reported by Bleeding Cool, in the pages of the recently published "The World to Come" #3, we see a previously unknown son of T'Challa, the main Black Panther from the Marvel Comics universe, challenging his father for the throne of Wakanda. That challenge is successful, with the character we know as Ketema declaring, "I am king now, Wakanda is mine!" as T'Challa lies defeated on the ground. The catch? Once Ketema takes his mask off, we're looking at what appears to be a blonde, blue eyed white man.

We should say that there are three more issues of the book coming our way. Christopher Priest is one of the most influential "Black Panther" writers in the character's history, so one imagines this is all going to be explained. What we know for now is that the book begins in the future where T'Challa dies. Flashbacks then begin to fill in gaps. Ketema, it seems, may be the son of T'Challa and Monica Lynne, one of the character's early love interests, who also happens to be Black.

At present, we have more questions than answers. If this is T'Challa and Monica's child, why is he white? Does he just look white? For the time being, the synopsis for the book does offer some breadcrumbs regarding the story that's unfolding:

The King of Wakanda is dead, leaving unguarded the world's most advanced technology, most precious metal, and a cryptic vault of dark secrets while triggering global conflicts among Marvel's heroes, villains and mutants. With T'Challa gone, the future of the Marvel 616 Universe will be determined by a final tribal challenge for the Wakandan throne and the mysterious victor who will change Wakanda, and the Marvel Universe, forever.

The internet has some thoughts about the white Black Panther reveal

Black Pantheer fighting in the water on the cover of Marvel Knights: The World to Come Marvel Comics

One thing we know for sure is that mainstream comics love a good fake out. Marvel Comics kills characters all the time, and those characters often return. What we can say is that issue #4 is probably going to explain what's going on and, by the end of the series, whatever controversy is kicked up will probably be corrected in one way or another.

"Wait Marvel actually made a version of 'Black Panther' white?! Oh f***," Twitter user @BuntyHunterJayP said in response to the reveal. As one can imagine that folks all across the internet had similar, surprised reactions, some of them tempered, some of them less so. We've included a few below, but naturally, "white Black Panther" is going to inspire lots of thoughts and opinions.

It's been a bumpy few weeks for "Black Panther" fans, with EA recently canceling its video game based on the beloved hero as well. As for what Priest has to say about all of this? In a recent interview with AIPT, the writer did say that issue #3 is where things get fun. "Issues #1 and #2, not that they're not good, but there's a lot of worldbuilding," Priest said. "The fun doesn't really begin until issue #3. That's when it's like 'Oh, now we're having a good time!' And it just gets crazier and crazier from there." The writer also dove a bit deeper into the central story being explored in this series:

"We know sooner or later everybody dies. Now, the question is what happens to all the toys? It's very scary if Black Panther dies, because he's got a lot of toys that we know about and a lot of toys we don't know about. And we established in our series, 30 years ago, that in a desk drawer, he's got all these plans for how to defeat, you know, Batman. He knows how to take down Galactus. He's got all these like, contingency plans. Or as Jack Nicholson said, 'All these marvelous toys.' So the crisis is, what now? OK, Black Panther's dead, what now?"

You can grab "Marvel Knights: The World to Come" #1 from Amazon.

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