Black Panther's Dora Milaje Team Up With Spider-Man in New Spinoff

The Dora Milaje, Wakanda's warrior women and protectors of T'Challa's throne, will star in an upcoming miniseries with Marvel's flagship character, Spider-Man.

Vogue revealed plans for the project, a three-issue miniseries written by acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor, with art by Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque and Terry Dodson. The series will be titled Wakanda Forever: The Amazing Spider-Man.

In Wakanda Forever: The Amazing Spider-Man, Okoye, Ayo, and Aneka head to New York to investigate a threat to Wakandan national security, and connect with Peter Parker in the process.

"Typically when you see them, they're with T'Challa, representing and protecting him," Okorafor told Vogue. "Now you're going to see the Dora Miljae for the first time as an independent entity; they're not under the shadow of the throne."

Okorafor made her Marvel debut last year as one of the high-profile writers assigned to Black Panther: Long Live The King -- a lineup that also included Creed screenwriter Aaron Covington.

The Dora Milaje were the standout characters in filmmaker Ryan Coogler's Black Panther movie, which last week topped the domestic box office for the fourth consecutive weekend and has already made more than $1 billion globally.

"This moment has been coming for a long time," said Okorafor. "People have craved these types of characters for a while, and I don't think that craving is going to pass; it's something that is here to stay."

This is not the first Wakanda-centric book to come along in recent years; Black Panther: World of Wakanda was cancelled after only six issues, five of which were written by writer and activist Roxane Gay.

The difference? Aside from a limited (rather than ongoing) series for the Dora, it could be argued that Wakandan characters -- and the title "Wakanda Forever" -- are much more powerful and popular following in the wake of the wildly popular movie than ever before.

The Dora Milaje, created by Christopher Priest and Mark Texeira, first appeared in 1998's Black Panther Vol. 3 #1. They are inspired in part by the Dahomey Amazons, the all-female military regiment of the former West African Kingdom of Dahomey.

Prior to their appearance in the feature film, the wider world had seen the Dora Milaje in the animated series Avengers: Ultron Revolution and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. A motion comic collecting the start of Priest's run, and thus their earliest appearances, was produced and released on DVD.