Episode 1: Rogue Nation
(collected in Black Panther By Reginald Hudlin Vol 1)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by John Romita JR and Klaus Janson

Sorry, sugah, no appearances by everyone's favorite Bonnie Raitt impersonating mutant. This story focuses on the origin of The Black Panther, as well as how a US Government might act if they learned a technologically advanced African nation existed, and wasn't interested in any real diplomatic relationship. 

Episode 2: Wild Kingdom
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 1)
written by Peter Milligan and Reginald Hudlin, art by Salvador Larocca and David Yardin)

After a brief foray into House Of M (a mutant creates an alternate reality where mutants are in charge, and non-mutated humans  are the hunted minority, etc.), we return to the real world where a reporter is eaten live on TV. The X-Men (wait, NOW Rogue is involved? That last title feels wasted) journey to Africa to investigate, as does T'Challa. Things...escalate.

Serial 1: The Oncoming Storm
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 1)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by Gary Frank and Scott Eaton

After a team up with Luke Cage, T'Challa realizes he needs to get married, and debates a series of the Marvel Universe's most powerful women. Try not to let the title of this episode spoil the ending for you. 

2 episodes.

Serial 2: World Tour
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 2)
written by Reginald Hudlin, art by Scot Eaton and Manuel Garcia

The honeymoon is over quickly for T'Challa and Storm. An international mission of diplomacy brings the involvement of Dr. Doom, The Inhumans, and Namor building up to their involvement in Civil War. Hudlin does a really good job at having multi-dimensional characters, particularly  Doom being kind an inviting to the new couple but also institutionally racist. While there is quite a bit of time spent explaining the minutiae of the events leading up to Civil War, they're told really well.

2 episodes

Serial 3: Civil War
(collected in Civil War and Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 2)
written by Mark Millar and Reginald Hudlin, art by Steve Mcniven, Koi Turnbull, and Marcus To

The huge Marvel war over registration between Iron Man and Captain America pulls Black Panther and Storm into a brief membership with The Secret Avengers as they are decidedly anti-registration. This is followed by how Storm, Black Panther, and Sue Storm deal with the deaths and fallouts from Civil War. There's a balance of politics, grief, and relationship issues that holds this ugly portion of the book (Turnball's art is atrocious) together.


Serial 4: Fantastic
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 2)
wrtieen by Reginald Hudlin, art by Francis Portela, Andrea diVito, Cafu, Larry Stroman, and Ken Lashley

Storm and T'Challa team up with The Human Torch and The Thing to form an all new Fantastic Four team! There's Negative Zone bugs, Skrulls, Marvel Friggen Zombies, and even the possibility that all four of them die and are in the afterlife. This is a fun little sorbet after the Civil War stories.

Episode 11: Back To Africa
(collected in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 3)
written by Reginald Hudland, art by Francis Portela

Storm and T'Challa return to Wakanda where T'Challa must fight to regain his place int he kingdom. We've seen this happen in both of the previous seasons, but I enjoy Hudlin's version more than the previous two.

Serial 5: Secret Invasion
(collected in Secret Invasion, and in Black Panther by Reginald Hudlin Vol 3)
written by Jason Aaron and Brian Michael Bendis, art by Jefte Palo and Leinil Francis Yu

Skrulls!  Skrulls! So many Skrulls have been pretending to be marvel heroes. See heores die! See heroes you thought were dead turn out to have been impostors, which means the real heroes were alive the whole time! Watch T'Challa and the Wakandan military really take it to the green bastards.

2 episodes

Season 3 is thirteen episodes of universe expanding fun told in a completely simple-to-follow and engaging way.

If Black Panther isn't the Marvel movie you're most amped up to see, you're probably either a bigot or you have terrible taste in movies. The trailers are amazeballs. And, finally, after years of there not being very many Black Panther collections available, now most of his solo adventures are in circulation. So I'm cobbling together a five season Netflixization of a Black Panther chronology.

Season one introduced us to T'Challa through the lens of The Fantastic Four, had us spend some time with him as an Avenger, had him dispensing royal justice in Wakanda, and even had him battle the KKK. I really enjoyed Season One. I can't, in good conscience, condone this Season Two. I recommend you maybe flip through Episode 1 of this season in a store, and see if its humor and narrative devices intrigue you. Personally, I hated it. And it's so tonally different from what precedes it, and what follows it that it feels like an entirely different book. And, uh, The Black Panther isn't actually the main character. So, again, I would skip it. But some of my friends whose opinions I usually agree with really like this run, so you should at least see if it sparks your interest. But if you do skip direct to Season Three, you won't miss any pertinent plot points.

Episode 1: Advocate For The Devil
(collected in Black Panther The Complete Collection By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Mark Texeira

Last season we got to meet T'Challa through the eyes of some of Marvel's most famous superheroes. This season, we meet him through the eyes of a wise-cracking, dated pop-culture spewing lawyer. Wooooo. Fun, amirite? Oh, and Mephisto is around, and he helps the protagonist (not T'Challa) procure a pair of pants. That sure does sound like a Black Panther story, right?


Episode 2: The Hunter And The Hunted
(collected in Black Panther Complete Collection By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Joe Jusko

Continuing the story of Annoying Attorney and, oh also The Black Panther, Kraven The Hunter crashes a White House party that Black Panther and Not-Friend are attending and creates such havoc that it catches the attention of The Avengers (of which The Black Panther is a member).


Episode 3: Enemy Of The State
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Joe Jusko, Mike Manley, Amanda Conner, Mark Bright

The Annoying Attorney, The Avengers, and Black Panther discover that the money behind Kraven The Hunter is Wakandan, so they head to Wakanda to help King T'Challa stop yet another coup (that's three attempts and we're barely into season two). Jokes abound. And abound. And abound.


Episode 4: Turbulence
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto

I actually don't mind this "episode". Hydro-Man joins in the Wakandan political strife, and we spend some time examining The Black Panther's love life from season one, and some missteps he's made so far this season. 


Episode 5: Back In Brooklyn
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 1)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto

Hulk. Luke Cage. Iron Fist. Falcon. Goliath. They're all...well..they're...they're all IN this comic, and they're fighting...somebody. At a club? Maybe? They're definitely at a club at some point. Ooof, this is painful.


Episode 6: Economic Downturn
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto, Kyle Hotz, Bob Almond, and Tom Coker

It's that story about how The Black Panther's actions affect the economy that you've been waiting for. Also featuring several fights with Killmonger who, at the end of the episode is...the...new...Black...Panther? Maybe?


Serial 1: Home Is Where The Hate Is
(2 episodes, collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest and J Calafiore, art by Sal Velluto, J Calafiore, and Bob Almond

Moon Knight and Brother Voodoo show up to help Black Panther something something astral plane something something spirituality...and then Black Panther and and Annoying Attorney are Batman & Robin, and the villain has a hand puppet, and Deadpool is...OF COURSE FUCKEN DEADPOOL IS IN THIS MADNESS. Plus The Avengers.


Episode 9: Malice
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest and M.D. Bright, art by Sal Velluto, Bob Almond, and Walden Wong

Killmonger is still The Black Panther...sort of...but he and T'Challa go back to New York...together for some reason. And the one of The Black Panther's exes kills Killmonger. Again. Maybe?


Episode 10: Storm Und Klaw
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond

Yea, sure, let's get Storm in this story. And maybe Magneto. And Doctor Doom. And Namor. More characters means cooler story, right? Draw in a bigger audience. The plot? Oh, who knows? There is some threatening pointing and Storm is definitely in Wakanda, and we haven't seen Klaw since season one, so it's totally cool that he's...ugh, I can't wait to get through this.


Episode 11: Devil's Due
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 2)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond

This has got to be it, right? Annoying Attorney is giving testimony about all the adventures of the season, and Mephisto is back, and they reference pants for the first time in a while. And Malice is involved. Oh, and a white gorilla. We haven't seen one of those in a while. This is over, right? The big conclusion? Wait, who's The Original Black Panther? God damn it.


Episode 12: The Once & Future Kings
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 3)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond, and Jon Bogdanove

So we're in the future. And hand puppet guy is back. And the children that you didn't know The Black Panther had, because this is the future, are killed. And Luke Cage is old. And something is wrong with T'Challa besides his dead kids. You should really really care about all of this because dead kids that you never knew about is sad. You can tell because The Black Panther is kneeling with arms outstretched and crying. It's. So. Emotional. Also a Wakandan is in love with The Hulk? Why not?


Episode 13: Return Of The Dragon
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 3)
written by Christopher Priest, art by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond

Girls in skimpy uniforms fight. The Defenders are involved for some reason. It looks like Annoying Attorney is now Mephisto, or at least he looks like Mephisto. There's some sort of body switch and more pop culture references, and a dragon who is maybe Mephisto or Immortal Iron Fist. Who cares? This season can not be stopped. It's like being on a shitty rollercoaster that keeps ramping up, but all the drops are four or five feet, and then it's flat forever. How did this not get canceled?


Episode 14: The Kitchen Fucken Sink
(collected in Black Panther By Christopher Priest Vol 4)
written by Christopher Priest, art by people who deserved a better story

Look, Iron Man shows up. Wolverine, too. Thor. The whole fucken Avengers team. This goes on for about a dozen unreadably convoluted issues. If you keep reading, it will eventually stop, and you can get on with your life, reading Black Panther stories that actually focus on The Black Panther and have plots that make narrative sense. I think I find this so annoying because there are some good beats in this run, and the story wouldn't be awful if it wasn't told in constantly shifting fashion. It's referenced in the very first issue, but it really does seem like Christopher Priest was a middle schooler who saw Pulp Fiction, and thought "I wanna do that with super heroes!" but didn't have any outline or concept of how to make shifting time and points of view a necessary part of the story, instead of a distraction. I hope you either loved this "season" or didn't bother to read Priest's run. I promise, it's going to get better in Season Three.

Season Two is fourteen episodes that feel like fourteen thousand.

If Black Panther isn't the Marvel movie you're most amped up to see, you're probably either a bigot or you have terrible taste in movies. The trailers are amazeballs. And, finally, after years of there not being very many Black Panther collections available, now most of his solo adventures are in circulation. So I'm cobbling together a five season Netflixization of a Black Panther chronology.

The lists will seem shorter than some of my other "In Five Seasons" or "In Ten Seasons" because most of the Black Panther collections are three to four times the length of usual Marvel trades, and have the price point that reflects that difference. Also, unlike previous lists, this will contain Back Door Pilot episodes, the way DC television presented The Flash in an episode of "Arrow" before he got his own series, or the way Marvel/Netflix put The Punisher in "Daredevil" before he got his own series. 

Backdoor Pilot: Vibranium Frequency (an episode of The Fantastic Four)
(collected in Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther's Rage)
written by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby

What I hope will be the most successful Marvel-based movie character debuts in the comic home of the least successful Marvel-based franchise. And it doesn't seem promising that mid-1960s Stan Lee is the creator of the character. There are pages that, unsurprisingly, don't age well. But it does seem that The Thing, who says the most problematic shit, is being shown as out-of-touch when he refers to The Black Panther (who he hasn't met yet) as "a refugee from a Tarzan movie". The fun part of the story is that The Black Panther totally annihilates The Fantastic Four using technology, strategy, and brilliant pre-meditation. But he's never treated as a villain. He makes it clear as soon as the fight is over that he was prepping for a bigger fight, and The Fantastic Four immediately ally with him. All in all, it's a fun story. I have a difficult time with silver age books in general, and Stan Lee's books, in particular, but this one repeatedly acknowledged when it was being "cornball", and T'Challa really shows up Reed Richards and his whole team.

Episode 1: Zemoted
(collected in Captain America Epic Collection: The Coming Of The Falcon)

The first really cool run of Black Panther as a solo book refers to the fact that T'Challa has been away from Wakanda for a while, so we're going to start the series with his appearances in other Marvel books. In this story, T'Challa is still in Wakanda but is under attack and sends one of his amazing ships to New York to request the help of Captain America. Well, it turns out the villain is Baron Von Zemo, one of those Nazi shitheads who helped get Cap's partner killed (or sent to Russia to become The Winter Soldier, if you're going to be all modern about it), and got Cap, himself, frozen into a giant ice cube. So cap gets his revenge with Panther's help, and then T'Challa moves into The Avengers mansion to become a member of Marvel's Grade A superhero team.

Serial 1: The Avenger
(3 episodes, collected in The Avengers Epic Collection: The Masters Of Evil, and The Avengers Epic Collection: Behold The Vision!)
written by Roy Thomas, art by John Buscema and Gene Colan

T'Challah and the superbros fight crime around the world. It's utter madness with a ton of characters including pretty much all the Avengers from the movies, the classic X-Men lineup, Kang, The Masters Of Evil, The Sons Of The Serpent, even Ultron debuts in this series.  And The Black Panther, while not the central character is very important to the outcomes. 

If you are a continuity hound, you can check out Daredevil #69, which features The Black Panther helping Matt Murdock fight the first ever incarnation of The Thunderbolts, but it's problematic, and not a very long story, so you might want to skip it. He also shows up in Astonishing Tales to fight against Doctor Doom, but that's never been collected outside of the black and white Essential series.

Serial 2: Panther's Rage
(3 episodes collected in Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther's Rage)
written by Don McGregor, art by Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, Gil Kane, and Keith Pollard

While T'Challa was out in New York, one of the victims of Klaw's attack (from the backdoor pilot episode) has been sowing seeds of discord in Wakanda. Now The Black Panther must battle Killmonger and his many, many, many allies, including Venomm (a snake handler, not the Spider-Man villain), a white gorilla, a pack of wolves, and all sorts of others. This series is one of the earliest examples of epic storytelling in comics. It feels like the best of the dark 1980s superhero comics, but it came out in the mid-70s. 

Episode 8: The Panther Vs The Klan
(also collected in Black Panther Epic Collection: Panther's Rage)
written by Don McGregor, art by Billy Graham and Rich Buckler

Yea. That Klan. It's sad to think that this book would once again be considered controversial, but in the 70s, editorial didn't know if it was okay to have a black superhero battling the Ku Klux Klan. T'Challa goes back to America, along with his girlfriend (whom the Wakandans were happy to see leave) where he gets into a battle with some of America's biggest embarrassments.

Episode 9: The Collectors
(collected in Black Panther By Jack Kirby Vol 1)
written by Jack Kirby, art by Jack Kirby

From a realistic fight against racists, to a Really Weird battle against a bizarre set of villains in a quest for...Solomon's Frog? This is almost too weird to describe, and The Black Panther isn't as fleshed out as he is in better books, but it's a wacky ride with really cool Kirby art.

​Episode 10: The Musketeers
(collected in Black Panther By Jack Kirby Vol 2)
written by Jack Kirby, art by Jack Kirby

Every time T'Challa leaves Wakanda, somebody attempts a coup. This time, it's a family member, and we meet a great deal of T'Challa's family, some of whom will be major characters in the coming seasons. We also see, when T'Challa is otherwise engaged, a group of Wakandans who don their own costumes to protect the land in his absence.

Episode 11: Kiber The Cruel
(collected in Black Panther By Jack Kirby Vol 2)
written by Jack Kirby, Jim Shooter, and Ed Hannigan, art by Jack Kirby and Jerry Bingham

One of T'Challa's cousins is kidnapped by a mutated scientist named Kiber The Cruel, who first takes her, then The Black Panther, himself, to Kiber Island (that's right, he has his own island, what?) where they, naturally, must battle his minions in order to survive, and escape (in that order). This episode gets less fun as it goes on, as Kirby abandoned the story before it was over, and it got picked up by Marvel's most notorious editor, and an artist who was talented, but was not Jack Kirby. 

Episode 12: Panther's  Prey
(not yet collected)
written by Don McGregor, art by Dwayne Turner

This is a strange episode to end the season on, but it's a sequel to Panther's Rage, and it is entirely unlike anything that's going to happen in previous seasons. It even has a bit of the Kirby Weird factor, as it involves a sometimes invisible pteranodon man. But there's also drugs, there's T'Challa's mother dealing with her time as a sex slave, and there's T'Challa thinking of proposing to his girlfriend (who Wakandans still aren't super into). I had to read this online because it hasn't been collected, and I don't own the issues. It's not nearly as good as Panther's Rage or Black Panther Vs. The KKK, and while it has some problematic aspects, it's not terrible.

​
Season One is thirteen episodes (including the backdoor pilot).