Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

This was up for free on Comixology - I believe it still is - and I wanted to see what this book was like.   Call it morbid curiosity: Black Panther was okay, but I didn't think it was one of the stronger Marvel offerings.   I know that it got a lot of hype and that many, many people think this is the best Marvel movie ever.   What I mean is I may be in the minority.   I did appreciate how strong a role women - and women of color I should specify - took in the movie.   I appreciated seeing a Marvel movie that was all people of color, to be honest.

That being said, I think it dragged, I was already bummed about Vision's obvious role in Infinity War and I  knew he wasn't in this.  I also read Black Panther, but it's never been one of my go-to characters or books.   I didn't have the nostalgia factor or the emotional investment in this.   I also think that Civil War was a better movie that engaged me more, especially the parts with Black Panther in them.   

On a geek level, which I feel is less important than seeing strong black women in the movies, I enjoyed how Black Panther included so many of the characters from the comics while trying to minimize some of the racism in said comics.   (By having different tribes, the animal masks that represented different tribes and not using them much, they could have M'Baku - Man-Ape in the comics - without us thinking of him as an ape.  Or I didn't.   I saw him as a very human character with very human motivations, whereas in the comic booth his costume, the constant use of the 'Man-Ape' title and simplistic power-hungry motivations make him far less relatable and quite frankly make it easier to dehumanize him.)  

So I'm going over the movie because I saw it before reading the prelude.  I went in carefully: I was expecting to like but not love this.   The is the story of how T'Challa starts off as the Black Panther.   I found the storyline more engaging, but the lack of strong female characters was mind-boggling given how many strong women the movie is filled with.    In fact, I found the lack annoying in this comic. 

Good look at how he starts superheroing and what shapes and motivates Black Panther, but not sure I'll read the second.   Yes, it was good, but not great, and I am way, way behind on my comics right now.