Marvel Knights Black Panther: The Client / Enemy of the State

When Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti were handed creative control over some of Marvel’s B- and C-list characters in 1998, they offered the job of writing Black Panther to Christopher Priest…who didn’t want the assignment! But Priest was eventually convinced to take Quesada and Palmiotti’s Coming to America-inspired suggestion to bring T’Challa to Brooklyn and turn it into a radical reinvention of the character, years ahead of its time in merging superheroes with international political intrigue. Much of the basis for the MCU’s mega-popular take on Black Panther and Wakanda begins in this run, but Priest was convinced it wouldn’t work without a white point-of-view character directly inspired by one of TV’s Friends. We look at one of the sharpest, funniest, most daring ongoing series of the Iron Age.