Fantastic Four #52 (1966)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
Readers wouldn’t get the real significance of this comic from the cover, but Black Panther is the first black superhero.
We begin with the Fantastic Three ready to leave New York to meet “an african chieftain”.
Surprisingly NOT on the Fantasticar, but on an equally sci-fi vehicle provided by said chieftain.
Reed is extremely impressed with the technology powering the vehicle, especially with the revolutionary technology of magnets.
Reed loves the aircraft SO much, in fact, that he pulls some crazy maneuvres that even make the Thing airsick.
It doesn’t happen as often as you’d think, but I always love it when I see an old comic coming up with an insanely advanced device that does something very trivial today.
Because while today your phone can easily call someone on the other side of the planet, that was impressive in 1966. Don’t even tell them you can keep your phone in your pocket now.
We have our first look at Wakanda. If you’re more used to modern depictions that show it as being something straight from OUR future, it looks massively more old-fashioned.
But that’s kind of the point, as the story’s theme is “looks can be deceiving”.
The chieftain (who hasn’t been named yet) has an extremely over-the-top way to change clothes.
Notice he’s calling this his “stalking costume”. The implication seems that this was originally considered to be the costume he would wear as part of this specific mission, not something inherently linked to his role as Black Panther.
The Human Torch is currently in college, but the rest of the team will bring him along.
After an Inhumans subplot, the team finally arrives in Wakanda.
We have a bit of an unfortunate implication with the whole team finding it absolutely baffling than an African country could have any level of technology.
But I’m giving this a pass because one of the points of the story is that the FF shouldn’t have made assumptions.
This is the first Fantastic Four adventure where they bring along Johnny’s college roommate (and eventually She-Hulk love interest) Wyatt Wingfoot.
Wyatt will interact SO much with the team in the rest of the Lee & Kirby era that he would have a legitimate claim to be the fifth member.
Which is particularly impressive because Wyatt doesn’t have any powers, he’s just a regular dude (aside from being a mountain of a man and a bit smarter than average).
One of the reasons why the FF shouldn’t have made assumptions is what is hiding beneath the jungle: an AMAZING Kirby panel.
Just look at this absolute masterpiece and try to argue agains my position that Kirby should never have done those awful collages when he was capable of deliverying THIS.
The team’s guide leaves them, confirming this was all a trap.
And here is the first Black Panther fight scene: doing splits so powerful they knock out half of the Fantastic Four.
This is why Wyatt is so awesome. He has no powers, he has no clue what’s going on, and he just saw a guy knock down the Thing… and he STILL doesn’t hesitate to run into the fight!!!
The Thing was severely weakened by electricity, and the trap for the Human Torch is his old nemesis… asbestos.
Bizarrely, the Black Panther doesn’t rush to finish the job. That should be your first clue that he has ulterior motives.
I was not exxagerating that Wyatt feels like a full member.
Oh come on Susan, have A LITTLE faith in your team!!!
The rest of the Wakandans attack with the most important technology of their kingdom… magnets.
No wonder Susan will lean more and more on her force fields over the years… does turning invisible actually EVER fool her enemies in the Silver Age???
This far back, she could only use the force fields if she wasn’t invisible.
Honestly I wouldn’t have minded if she kept that weakness, considering how incredibly overpowered her force fields eventually get.
Ben, I understand being thirsty… especially since this place is beneath a jungle… but COME ON, you KNOW this place is a trap!!!
You can tell the Thing was probably the favorite character of both Lee & Kirby, considering he’s the only one who requires so much effort to defeat.
Good thing we had Wyatt around. The only other way to sneak into the control center would’ve been for one of their members to turn invisible, but that would just be silly.
Seriously, as much as I love Wyatt, it’s painful to see Susan never doing anything.
Mister Fantastic is the last FF standing… for all the good he does.
Unfortunately for Black Panther, Wyatt managed to free the rest of the team.
And we end the issue by discovering that the Black Panther was only just testing the Fantastic Four because he needs their help.
In the following issue, Wakanda throws a big party for the team.
But more importantly, THIS is the issue that introduces Vibranium.
Black Panther, whose real name is NOT given in this story (!!!), gives the team his origin story about his father T’Chaka being murdered by future supervillain Klaw.
T’Challa is very casual about his fortune and his education, plus the mention of his “panther power” is just vaguely connected to “certain herbs”.
With the help of the FF, Black Panther does finally get some revenge on Klaw.
Who is still human at this stage.
In fact he doesn’t turn into “solid sound” in this storyline at all: he enters a machine that will transform him at the very last scene of FF #53.
Now that he has avenged his father’s death, T’Challa is ready to stop being the Black Panther… but the FF are the ones to convince him otherwise.
Historical significance: 10/10
It’s Black Panther!!!
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
If you gave Susan something to do, you could do basically the whole story today.
Incidentally, this is not because she’s a woman. If the team had a guy who consistently doesn’t contribute to any fight, whose main power is always useless, and who spends the majority of the time worrying that they’re going to fail, I would still be complaining about it.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
One of the most classic cases of “prove the new guy is a badass by making him defeat people significantly more powerful without breaking a sweat”. But I think it works here because it’s not coming out of nowhere: the FF consistently underestimate Black Panther and have to be proven wrong… and then BP is the one to be proven wrong when Wyatt saves the day.
Perhaps the fact that a civilian rescued the team is a bit far-fetched, but it’s not like Black Panther wanted to kill the Fantastic Four.
Considering he’s not the star of the book, it’s not too surprising that several key elements of the Black Panther mythos are not introduced immediately. While Vibranium only needs to wait for the second story, at this point the generational aspect has not been introduced yet: T’Challa decides to become Black Panther to avenge his father, but there’s no indication that his father was ALSO a Black Panther. He just takes the name because the animal is sacred in Wakanda.
He’s not even called T’Challa at any point: he’s either “the chieftain” or “Black Panther”.
How close is this to the modern character? 7/10
We know with absolute certainty that the character’s name wasn’t inspired by the Black Panther Party… because that wouldn’t be founded until October 1966, while Fantastic Four #66 has a cover date of April 1966.
Both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby claimed the have been the one to suggest creating the character.
I came up with the Black Panther because I realized I had no blacks in my strip. I’d never drawn a black. I needed a black. I suddenly discovered that I had a lot of black readers. My first friend was a black! And here I was ignoring them because I was associating with everybody else.
JACK KIRBY
I suddenly realized that there were no black superheroes, and I felt we ought to have one. There were no black heroes that I knew about, and there were certainly no black heroes who were the king of their own country in Africa.
STAN LEE
I think it’s likely that both had the idea of creating a black superhero, and who came up with the specifics of the character has been lost to time.
Both certainly had a history of wanting more black characters in comics: already in 1963, Gabe Jones was in the regular cast of Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos.
Adding to the sheer number of stories and interviews and soapboxes where they both spoke vehemently against racism, I have no doubt that both wanted a black superhero.
Kirby’s original design is wildly different, as was the name… he was supposed to be Coal Tiger.
Having an African king giving himself the name of an animal native to Asia is certainly a choice.
Notice that Coal Tiger didn’t wear a mask. And the unused version of the cover, which HAS been preserved, featured a different mask that did show T’Challa’s skin.
Stan Lee was reportedly hesitant to use this version because he expected backlash from having a black character on the cover. And I know that the usual Stan Lee haters would be quick to bash him for this, but for 1966 I don’t think this is reason enough to criticize him.
It also helps that this resulted in a much better cover; the original version is still very good, but the final cover does give Black Panther a far more mysterious vibe.
Black Panther would then have a couple of other appearances on Fantastic Four, but the most important storyline for the history of the character is in Captain America in 1968.
In fact, Captain America #100 is the first time we learn his name is T’Challa.
The same year he would join the Avengers, in the Roy Thomas & John Buscema run, under recommendation of Cap himself.
He does continue to show up on Fantastic Four from time to time.
We don’t talk about the time in 1972 where he decided to change his codename to Black Leopard.
This is from Fantastic Four #119, also by Roy Thomas & John Buscema… sometimes with creative teams you need to take the good with the bad.
Aside from his regular Avengers and FF appearances, Black Panther finally received his own series on the pages of Jungle Savage, written by Don McGregor.
The much-celebrated “Panther’s Rage” storyline ran from issues 6 to 18 (1973 to 1975) and to say it’s essential for the development of Black Panther would be an understatement.
It’s set in Africa, with a black cast, and it REALLY establishes a lot of interesting dynamics in Wakanda… from the struggle between tradition and innovation, between isolationism and globalism, to their relationship with technology.
It’s a very well written and gorgeously drawn book!
This is the story arc that introduced Killmonger, by the way.
The final storyline, “Panther vs the Klan”, is exactly about what you think.
Kind of depressing that the two most well-known stories about superheroes fighting the KKK are Superman in the 40s in the radio show and Black Panther in 1976… thirty years and the story still needed to be told.
This story goes HARD. This is not a dream sequence, this actually happened.
Black Panther spends the first FIVE PAGES of Jungle Action #21 crucified to a burning cross!!!
Seriously, Jungle Action doesn’t pull ANY punches.
Jungle Action concludes the Black Panther run with issue 22 (there is an additional issue, but it’s a reprint).
Six months after the storyline where Black Panther fought the KKK and dealt with INCREDIBLY serious issues… the first Black Panther series is quite the backlash.
Because this is during Kirby’s return to Marvel after his DC years, and he goes in a completely different direction: pure sci-fi and fantasy adventure.
It’s a fun romp, but following the Jungle Action series with this must have felt incredibly tone deaf.
Kirby would only do 12 issues, with the series only lasting an additional 3 until 1979.
Black Panther would continue being a presence in the Marvel Universe in the usual books, and he received a 4-issue miniseries in 1988, but he was never really in the spotlight.
That changed with Volume 3: written by Christopher Priest, it lasted a respectable 62 issues until 2003.
Not only it sold well and established more Black Panther lore (the Dora Milaje originate here), but Priest, being the first black creator to become an editor at Marvel, had A LOT to say about the character.
Priest had really established Black Panther as a key figure in the Marvel Universe, and there was a deliberate attempt to push the character.
Unfortunately that meant that Reginald Hudlin got to write Volume 4, and his run is… uhm… well it’s A LOT.
Lasting 38 issues until 2008, thje Hudlin run introduced T’Challa’s sister Shuri and more controversially includes the marriage between Black Panther and Storm.
Which sort of came out of nowhere as the two characters had BARELY interacted for DECADES, only to rush into marriage disregarding any previous romantic storylines with other characters.
It REALLY felt like “we have only two popular characters from Africa, they must be a couple”.
I have my problems with the Hudlin run… I find his T’Challa to be incredibly unlikeable.
I definitely soured on him right from the start, considering Hudlin included a scene where Wakanda’s council (at T’Challa’s presence!!!) clearly state that they have the cure for cancer but refuse to share it with the rest of the world.
I couldn’t POSSIBLY cover the ENTIRE history of Black Panther, but as of 2026 he’s had SEVEN regular series and there’s never a month where he’s not showing up somewhere (mostly on Avengers).
Especially after 2018, Marvel has REALLY pushed the character in every way it could.
I wonder what could possibly have happened that year to bolster his popularity.
As happy as I am with the cultural juggernaut that was the movie (which was a masterpiece on its own), I’m really glad Black Panther eventually got the attention he deserved.
Then again I’m a Doctor Doom superfan and when you think about it Black Panther is the closest thing to a heroic version of most of his tropes.
