Daredevil 101: Black Panther: The Man Without Fear, Part 1
Something a little bit different today, folks!
Like the entire rest of the world, I saw Black Panther and loved it. I’m not too well read on BP history (working on it, and loving the Ta-Nehisi Coates/Brian Stelfreeze series), but the movie did remind me that - somewhat surprisingly given how separate their respective spheres are - Matt and T’Challa are actually buddies from way back in the 60s. They’re tiny ear friends! T’Challa has bailed Matt out any number of times when he’s needed it, and Matt has…presumably also contributed to the friendship? I guess?
I thought about doing a DD101 about the history of Matt’s friendship with T’Challa, but I didn’t want to make Black Panther’s success into a story about a white guy. And then I remembered Black Panther: The Man Without Fear and Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive.
Basically, in 2010, both Matt and T’Challa were in pretty bad places. Matt had recently recovered from being possessed by a demon and ruling a dystopian Hell’s Kitchen with an iron fist. (I can’t wait to talk about the nonsense that is Shadowland, you guys, you don’t even know.) T’Challa had destroyed Wakanda’s supply of vibranium because of Reasons and temporarily abdicated both the throne and the mantle of the Black Panther in favor of Shuri.
Matt decides to leave Hell’s Kitchen to Find Himself, and asks T’Challa to keep an eye on it while he is also Finding Himself. Thus we get Black Panther: The Man Without Fear, an 11-issue series that, confusingly, picks up the numbering of the previous Daredevil series - so, the last issue of Daredevil v2 is #512, and BP:TMWF runs from #513-523. When Matt returned to NY and a new Daredevil book started (Daredevil v3, the beginning of the Waid run), the title was then changed to Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive, which ran from #523.1. (what the fuck, comics) to #529. All issues were written by David Liss and drawn by a few different artists, most notably Francesco Francavilla.
Anyway! We’ll be talking about both Man Without Fear and Most Dangerous Man Alive over the next few posts, so strap in!
CONTENT WARNING: Child abuse.
It’s good to know that T’Challa’s mission has been blessed by Matt’s Ghost Butt.
We open with T’Challa (in a much more subdued costume) explaining what he’s doing here:
Right, so: T’Challa’s jumping around warehouses in spec ops-style gear beating up organized crime goons to find out Who He Truly Is. There may be some toxic masculinity going on here, ahem.
In a flashback, we see T’Challa and Matt coming up with this arrangement: