T’Challa’s Future Revealed in ‘The History of Marvel Comics: Black Panther’ Podcast

ON THE TRANSITION FROM CINEMA TO COMIC WRITING:

JEAN RIDLEY: I love [comics]. I love stories, I love characters, I love wish granting, I love all of that. It’s sequential art. And that’s really what filmmaking is, especially in the developmental stages when you’re – at the time, you were doing a lot of storyboarding and really thinking about how you tell a story? What shots do you need? What shots don’t you need? How do you verify this emotionality of the characters? There’s a thing called emotional mapping, where you really introduce a character that’s going to start here, and go here, and go here. And that seems really fundamental. But those were really important aspects of storytelling, of my mental and emotional development, of my desire to tell stories that had impact, cultural impact. And also ultimately stories that represent. Because when I was a kid, you didn’t see a lot of colored characters.

ON WAKANDA GONE GLOBAL:

Nick Stone: There are other fictional worlds in the Marvel Universe. Atlantis, Asgard. And sometimes we come back to Earth. But Wakanda – it seems to matter more than all. And I want to know why you think that’s the case.

JESSE J. HOLLAND: I think for me the appeal of Wakanda – and I think it might be for other people as well – is the idea that Wakanda is what Africa would have been without colonization and slavery. So when I look at Wakanda, I’m looking at a world that should be, because they have never been conquered. They didn’t need anything that Europe or Asia had. And they were allowed to grow naturally. And this fabulous place is the result. So, for me, that’s all the obsession I have with the land of Wakanda, because in my head, that’s the alternate history of the continent – ​​not a country – the African continent.

STEPHANIE WILLIAMS: So unlike Atlantis or Asgard– you know, those aren’t places where, as a black person, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I want to visit there.” Maybe Atlantis. I do not know. But with Wakanda, you see black people flourish in ways you may not have seen before. And it’s funny because what’s so great about comics, and just storytelling in general, is that conflicts or things that happen don’t have to be limited or have the same limitations that we have in real life. So in that, Wakanda presents this opportunity to play with what it would look like if we were really in power, if there was a conflict, or how we would handle things without white interference. And I think that’s something I like. It doesn’t need to be clean. This is almost never the case. But Wakanda does this in a way that Asgard never could, or Atlantis or wherever, you know, Doctor Doom is at…

EVAN NARCISSUS: You better respect the name of Latveria!

JESSE J. HOLLAND: I was going to say the same thing !

STEPHANIE WILLIAMS: Latveria, that’s it– you know what? It was disrespectful because I love Doctor Doom. But he stumbles.