Which Comics Influenced ‘Black Panther’ Revealed

In comics, Black Panther is a character with a history almost as long as some of Marvel‘s other, arguably better-known characters such as the X-Men or the Fantastic Four, and when it comes to the upcoming Black Panther movie, some of that rich history had important influence on the Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

According to executive producer Nate Moore, the works of two specific Black Panther writers helped shape the Ryan Coogler-directed film: Christopher Priest and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

“Ryan and Ta-Nehisi have a friendship, so they’ve spoken,” Moore said during a visit to the film’s set. “Both Ryan and I have spoken to Chris, who’s incredibly smart and obviously, I think did the seminal run on the character, so far. We’ve talked to them. It hasn’t gone as far as consulting, but we always wanted to pick their brains as to what they found interesting about the character and the world. It turned out a lot of what they find interesting is what we also found interesting. We love Reggie’s [Hudlin] run as well, but we didn’t talk to him as much. It was really Chris and Ta-Nehisi’s runs that were really inspirational.”

Priest and Coates’ runs on Black Panther represent stories that brought the character into significant popularity, with many — including Coates — considering Priest’s turn-of-the-millennium work to be the definitive, classic run on Black Panther. Coates, who is currently writing the comics, even told Vulture that Priest moved the character from just a superhero to being a hero who also happens to be a king, and, based on what we’ve seen of T’Challa/Black Panther both in his first appearance in Avengers: Civil War and in various trailers and teasers leading up to Black Panther, that’s exactly how Coogler is presenting the character.

However, Moore explained that while Priest and Coates had influence on Black Panther, much of that blossomed into the look and feel of the movie, elements that are less about the stories and more about the world they are set in.

“I think there were definitely some inspiration points, especially design wise that we got from both Chris and Ta-Nehisi’s run,” Moore said. “Brian Stelfreeze is an amazing artist, and some of his version of Wakanda, and even Wakandan technology is stuff we borrowed pretty liberally from.”

Moore also explained that, even with the comic book inspiration, Coogler and production designer Hannah Beachler brought ideas outside of the publications as well.

“A lot of their ideas that are outside of publishing we found interesting, because again, one thing we really wanted to explore was real Africa, and real African inspiration, and grounding it in stuff that was terrestrial,” Moore said. “Sometimes comics are beautiful but feel so far removed from what we know as real that they become too heightened. One thing that Hannah, I think, did really well was exploring actual African culture, and actual African design, and infusing it with this cool new future tech to make it something completely new, which we think is really interesting.”

Black Panther currently has a ComicBook.com User Anticipation Rating of 4.17 out of 5, making it the second most anticipated upcoming comic book movie among ComicBook.com Users. Let us know how excited you are for Black Panther by giving the movie your own ComicBook.com User Anticipation Rating below.

Black Panther opens in theaters on February 16th.

Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include; Avengers: Infinity War on May 4th, Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.