Marvel continues to grow its Black Panther characters – this time, focusing on Killmonger. The villain, who has been dead in the Marvel comics for ten years, is due to have his own miniseries. Consisting of five issues, the comic will focus on his history and will be written and drawn by Bryan Edward Hill and Juan Ferreya respectively.
The comic promises to paint Erik Killmonger as a sympathetic and tragic figure.
Hill said of the character in an interview with Vulture:
I didn’t want to just recap what we had heard in his mythology. I wanted to explore the choices and the failures that lead a person to dedicate their life to revenge, and how that happens. Because with Erik, I feel like it’s really a tragedy. It’s a story of a guy who was failed a lot by Wakanda in certain ways, by the people he met outside of Wakanda, by his own conscience in other ways, and I wanted to paint a portrait of that.
In order to write the series, Hill draws inspiration from various sources and past Killmonger stories. These include Don McGregor’s and Evan Narcisse’s Black Panther runs. He also admitted that the recent film portrayal by Michael B. Jordan partly inspired his take on the character. In particular, the idea of Killmonger being “a soldier in his own cause” was an element that inspired the comic.
The story of the miniseries will begin with Erik graduating from MIT. From there on, Hill says it “begins with him having a fork in the road”. The story will show that Killmonger could have chosen a different path than the one of vengeance he eventually embarks on. For Hill, “that’s what a tragedy is” – when we can see a better, alternative path the character could have taken instead of the eventual bad route.
Kilmonger #1 will hit shelves on Wednesday, December 5th.
Will you read this comic miniseries? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
