Amanat called their conversation “fruitful” and some time later, Marvel reached out to Coates to begin conversations about the Black Panther series. The speculation around who will direct the Chadwick Boseman-starring movie set for a 2018 release has been swirling, with “Selma” director Ava DuVernay already bowing out of proceedings, and now Marvel has announced a new addition on the comic side of the franchise that’s turning heads.
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Maybe more importantly, he’s also a life-long comics nerd (and especially a fan of Marvel’s cast of black characters), and will undoubtedly bring the same attention to detail, intellectual rigor, and capacity for empathy (and badassery) to his comics work as to his prose. “It was this attractive place that I felt pop culture should look like”.
Black Panther is an important character in the history of comics. He says he expects his Marvel work to be similar to his other writing.
“I’m sure it meant something to see people who looked like me in comic books, he told the New York Times“. The series will be illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze, an industry veteran and prominent black artist at the old DC Wildstorm imprint. The writing usually lifts the weight. But Mr. Coates also has a not-so-secret identity, as evidenced by some of his Atlantic blog posts and his Twitter feed: Marvel Comics superfan.
Axel Alonso, the editor in chief of Marvel, says: “It’s going to be a story that repositions the Black Panther in the minds of readers…” A standalone Black Panther movie will follow in 2018.
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Coates wrote 2015 best-seller “Between the World and Me“, written as a letter to his son about what it’s like growing up black in America. “It really moves him forward.”
