Ultimate Black Panther #1

History

The series was announced publicly at Marvel's Next Big Thing panel at New York Comic Con in October 2023, where Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski and architect Jonathan Hickman — who had built the new Ultimate Universe through the miniseries Ultimate Invasion — unveiled the creative team of writer Bryan Hill and artist Stefano Caselli, with editors Wil Moss and Michelle Marchese overseeing the book. Hill, whose comics résumé already included a Killmonger miniseries and runs on Blade and Batman & the Outsiders, stated publicly that his inspirations ranged across decades of Black Panther comics, Ryan Coogler's MCU films, and Frank Herbert's world-building in Dune, describing his goal as 'a broader philosophical canvas' than the concurrent 616 title. The issue shipped February 7, 2024 — one month after Ultimate Spider-Man #1 launched the new Ultimate line — and demand was high enough that Marvel had a second printing, with a new cover by R.B. Silva, ready to arrive alongside issue #2 in March 2024. Caselli and colorist David Curiel designed the full visual identity of Ultimate Wakanda from scratch, including a new Panther Habit rendered in nanotech and an Afrofuturist architectural style drawing comparisons to both the MCU's Wakanda and Ta-Nehisi Coates's celebrated 616 run.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance (Earth-6160) of T'Challa / Black Panther, Okoye (here his queen and wife, not merely a warrior), T'Chaka (who dies in this issue), Princess Shuri, Killmonger (Erik Killmonger), Wind-Rider (Ororo Munroe / Storm), Matron Imala, the Vodu-Khan religious sect, the Dora Milaje, and the Moon Knight soldier forces — making this one of the densest single-issue debut rosters in recent Marvel history.
• Wind-Rider (Ororo Munroe) appears in this issue only as a lightning-shrouded silhouette; her full visual debut comes in issue #2, though her first canonical appearance is credited to Ultimate Black Panther #1.
• In this continuity, Killmonger is not T'Challa's adversary but a Wakandan-born revolutionary who left his homeland to fight Moon Knight's forces in the broader African continent, and is in a romantic relationship with Ororo Munroe — a complete inversion of the classic 616 dynamic in which Storm was T'Challa's wife and Killmonger his nemesis.
• Lord Khonshu and Lord Ra are reimagined as the twin divine rulers of an Egyptian theocratic empire called the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, collectively operating as the entity known as Moon Knight — a wholesale reinvention that relocates the Moon Knight mythos from street-level New York mysticism to continent-spanning African geopolitics.
• T'Chaka's death by suicide bombing at Wakanda's Celebration of Life is the inciting catastrophe that forces T'Challa to don the Panther Habit and formally declare war — functioning structurally as the Ultimate Universe's equivalent of the classic T'Chaka murder origin while placing it in a new political and religious context.
• The series was written by Bryan Hill (Killmonger, Blade, Batman & the Outsiders, Titans) with interior art and cover by Stefano Caselli (Avengers: The Initiative, Secret Warriors, X-Men Red), colors by David Curiel, letters by VC's Cory Petit, and edited by Wil Moss and Michelle Marchese under Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski.
• Ultimate Black Panther is the second ongoing title in the relaunched Ultimate Universe line, debuting one month after Ultimate Spider-Man #1 and one month before Ultimate X-Men #1; it is the only one of the three that has no counterpart in the original 2000s Ultimate Marvel imprint.
• The issue received a second printing with a new cover by R.B. Silva, released March 13, 2024, and was subsequently collected in the trade paperback Ultimate Black Panther by Bryan Hill Vol. 1: Peace and War, which collects issues #1–4.

Cast · 9 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Ultimate Black Panther

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#9 1st appearance — Sorcerer Supreme

Variants (11)