What’s the best way to follow up a New York Times best seller, a book that’s driven racial, cultural and sociological discussion throughout the summer? If you’re Ta-Nehisi Coates — author of Between the World and Me and a renowned columnist and essayist for The Atlantic — the next step is to write a Marvel comic book.
As reported by the NYT‘s George Gene Gustines, Coates will write a new Black Panther comic book for the publisher. The timing is not only great because of Coates’ high current profile (Between the World and Me has been nominated for a nonfiction National Book Award, while prompting several TV and radio appearances), but the character (played by 42‘s Chadwick Boseman) will make his movie debut in next year’s Captain America: Civil War before appearing in an Avengers sequel and his own feature film in 2018. The Panther is about to become a huge deal and Marvel is ramping up his comic book presence to coincide with that.
This new series is set to debut next spring, likely around the same time Civil War hits theaters and moviegoers wonder who this new character is. That also gives Marvel and Coates — who has a considerable presence on social media, where he often lets his comic book geek flag fly — a good amount of time to promote the title. According to the NYT, Coates will write a year-long storyline titled “A Nation Under Our Feet.” The series will be illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze, perhaps best known for his cover drawings on many Batman comics.
Marvel Entertainment
Those familiar with Coates’ more serious work might find it curious that he wants to write a comic book. But fans of his who follow on Twitter know he’s often expressed his interest in comics. (Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, another prominent columnist on political and race issue who’s also a comic book fan, might be envious. Who’s giving him a title to write?)
Marvel Comics, especially, were “an intimate part of my childhood and, at this point, part of my adulthood,” he told Gustines. “It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.”
Earlier this year, Coates had a long interview in New York magazine with Abraham Reisman in which the two discussed his deep love for Marvel’s titles, the escapism they provided him, and the prominent African-American characters the publisher has created, along with an increased emphasis on diversity in the comic book pages (recent examples include a teenage Muslim Ms. Marvel and new Korean-American Hulk) and the creators behind them. (Coates actually interviewed Sana Amanat, who writes the new Ms. Marvel book, at a seminar this past May.)
Being a fan of a creative medium doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be good at contribuing to it. But Coates’ success has obviously provided the opportunity to put his own stamp on an endeavor he loves, which is tremendously exciting for him and readers. Comic books never suffer from having great writers (though some have been better at the unique form than others), and Coates has shown a great talent for creating narratives and illustrating characters. He’ll just be doing so in a fictional realm with this effort.
Besides the prospect of getting a good, potentially resonant and defining, comic book storyline for Black Panther, Coates writing for Marvel carries some intriguing crossover possibilities. Could fans and followers of Coates’ nonfiction work check out his comic book out of curiosity? Will comic book fans seek out Coates’ books and magazine content? Maybe Coates is just scratching a creative and fanboy itch, and we shouldn’t read anything more into it. But it’s also fun to think about the directions this could take.
