Friday 16 November 2012

Cringeworthy Comicbook Moments: Black Panther Discovers the Cure for Cancer...

...And refuses to share it with the outside world out of spite.
We start off with a flashback of the previous Black Panther, T'Chaka, attending a Bilderberg Conference.




Ah, yes, those evil Westerners, so obsessed with profit that they would rather keep people sick and buying medicine than cure them. That's why we focused on keeping polio sufferers in iron lungs rather than virtually wiping out the disease via vaccines, amiright?

Also, given that this is the only scene of the conference itself, we have to just take T'Chaka's word for it that "every conversation here is framed in terms of profit and power". And I'm not that inclined to believe him, given how he clearly just arrived, and the man who spoke to him was pleading that he would pay any price, instead of trying to bargain the best deal for himself. Really, T'Chaka's the only one who looks to be concerned with power, considering his blatant invocation of his title to smack down the little person.

Now, here T'Chaka hints that Wakanda has the cure to some diseases, but doesn't specify which. That comes later in the issue, right after T'Challa has taken the title of Black Panther from his uncle and become king. What's the first thing on the mind of the ruler of this nation of such mature, spiritual people?

Vengeance!



Note too the old Wakandan muttering about how the west would somehow turn the cure for cancer into a weapon. This is pretty hilarious considering that the very first thing we learn about Wakanda in this run is that they've constantly been applying their technological advancement to weapons and making sure they have a bigger, better military than anyone else. Seriously, the first six pages of issue one take place in 5th-century Wakanda, showing that they had developed ways to kill people that the "barbarians" in England wouldn't devise for another five centuries.

2 2/3 pages from Black Panther 3, by the delightful Reginald Hudlin

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