Updated Apr 10, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and reading order for Marvel’s Black Panther in omnibus, hardcover, trade paperback, and digital. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated April 2025 with titles scheduled for release through June 2025.
T’Challa, The Black Panther. He was the marquee black hero of both Marvel and DC in the early 60s, invented by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as Reed Richard’s equal and then adopted into the cast of The Avengers by Roy Thomas & John Buscema.
Even with that pedigree, and a later solo turn by Kirby himself, Black Panther was never a major solo character for Marvel. He disappeared for most of the 1980s only to return in the anthology Marvel Comics Presents (1988) and in a pair of mini-series.
T’Challa wouldn’t have his real breakout moment until he was launched into his own series in 1998 by Christopher Priest. The wordy, range-y, and often inane tale took Panther from American inner-city streets to Wakandan Palace intrigue. Along the way, Priest created the vast majority of Panther’s supporting cast and Wakanda’s mythology out of whole cloth.
After that, T’Challa had a streak of solid solo series penned by Reginald Hudlin, Jason Aaron, and Jonathan Maberry before Jonathan Hickman adopted him as a main player in his universe-altering New Avengers (2013) in the drive to his Secret Wars.
Panther returned from Secret Wars as perhaps Marvel’s highest-profile character. He not only had an MCU film incoming, but also had his series piloted for five years by internationally acclaimed journalist and non-fiction literary star Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates and a list of literary luminaries he pulled in as collaborators gave us the biggest explosion of additions to the world of Wakanda since Priest.
Panther’s path has been slightly rockier since Coates’s departure in 2020. A brief run from screenwriter John Ridley fizzled with little noise, and a Wakanda-centered run from Dr. Eve Ewing was cancelled just as it found its footing. With T’Challa out of the MCU due to the tragic untimely passing of actor Chadwick Boseman, Marvel seems content to keep Black Panther as an anchor on The Avengers.
[Read more…] about Black Panther Reading Order & Collecting Guide