Ta-Nehisi Coates: Black Panther - A Nation Under Our Feet, Vol II

[bibliogramma]

Just a few pages into the second volume of collected Black Panther comics, I start mentally screaming at the page, “No, T’Challa, please don’t go there.” If it is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ intention to show us a man trying to figure out how to govern a troubled, even a broken nation, then T’Challa seems to be trying all the wrong things. I’m fascinated by the exploration of what it is to be a leader, of what are the key issues in governance and in building (or rebuilding) a nation, but I am finding it very hard to like this protagonist.

He doesn’t understand his people, he doesn’t listen to them, he doesn’t allow himself, as any good leader should, to be taught what must be done by the needs and hopes of his people, rather than by his own goals. It’s his job to take the best of what his people imagine and figure out out how to make it happen. But T’Challa is as broken as his country, and he is getting everything so wrong.

Not that the leaders of the rebellion are doing much better. I see them getting drawn away from good intentions, of losing their idealism. Power does corrupt, and one important part of figuring out how to lead, is how to put that natural process in check.

So, Volume II of A Nation under Our Feet leaves me very concerned about the future of Wakanda. But then, with a title like that, it’s almost a warning that governance will be an issue through to the end. That there is a road to a better understanding is clear, never so much as in one vignette, a part of the story of T’Challa’s sister Shuri. In a dreamquest if sorts, she experiences a fight practice between her mother and herself. The image of the Queen tells the story of how the early forerunners to the Wakandan nation resisted the first white imperialist interlopers. At the ends, she says “The point is power, and in that practice, either you are a nation or you are nothing.” T’Challa has forgotten, if he ever knew, that to lead, he must be the nation, and thus, in his struggles to lead alone, he has so far achieved nothing.

But I’m keeping faith with Coates, because I believe he has a longer view here, and intends to give us, in the end, a superhero/king who is flawed and human, but still represents a force for good, for his own people and for the world. He will be the nation, because he has let the nation become him.