Black Panther by Priest Volume 3 and The Batman Adventures Volume 2

Black Panther by Christopher Priest Volume 3

by Christopher Priest, Sal Velluto and more

There are some neat inclusions in here: Issue 36 is the 100-page "monster," a 35-year anniversary celebration issue that throws the Black Panther into a neo-noir New York City with Everett Ross standing in as a Commissioner Gordon-type character. It's bookended with a Thor #370 story, from 1986, a story that Priest wrote back then under his pen name James Owlsley, that crossed over with the time travel story in Black Panther #46-47.

Here's a breakdown:

• The Once and Future King: A neo-noir murder mystery brings King T'Challa back to New York after a decades-long exile. See Old Man T'Challa match wits against a murderer of the throne!
• Return of the Dragon: Mad genius geneticist Nightshade resurrects the shapeshifting dragon Chiangtang to exact revenge on Iron Fist.
• Enemy of the State II: This is probably the main storyline, a five-part crossover with Iron Man, Wolverine and kind-of the Avengers. The clone Black Panther is featured here too, a Kirby-esque copy of T'Challa whose brain tumor has made him insane and jolly.

• Saddles Ablaze: A retroactive crossover with the 1986 Thor title.

 There's other fill-in storylines but that about covers it. The trade still suffers from the same non-linear storytelling which makes it hard to follow along. Some one-shots are decent slice-of-life style stories, but for the main issues, it'll pretty much take the whole story for you to just figure out what happened in the issues before, which hinders a lot of the enjoyment. The art is fairly contemporary, but the Kirby lines on the clone Black Panther offer a welcome visual break. The writing style isn't for everyone, but I only have one more TPB to go -- so see you then.

 

The Batman Adventures Volume 2

by Kelley Puckett, Mike Parobeck and more

 

The adventures continue in this series, solely pencilled by Mike Parobeck now. I've already stated before how some of his characters look like Go Blox action figures, but a lot of other times it captures that feeling of the animated series. Sometimes it feels like I can even hear Kevin Conroy's voice coming from the page, and that's exactly what I want when I read these stories.

 

In all, there's 10 done-in-one issues here, too many for me to list one-by-one, so a few notes:

• There's a neat hard-boiled story completely narrated by Jim Gordon as he works with Batman to save a police officer held hostage by Rupert Thorne, in # 15. It's such a different story to the others, completely from his perspective and a refreshing addition to the collection.
• It's really neat how, even when these are standalone stories, there are some references to previous issues. I wasn't expecting to get a little tickle out of understanding the continuity, but there it is, when in issue #17 Batman makes a reference to the central macguffin of issue #13 (which itself, I believe is a follow-up to the The Animated Series introduction of R'as Al Ghul!). What's so genius about this, is that it works whether you've read the previous issue or not. If you haven't, it's just a one-off piece of info, but if you have, it reminds you of this whole world of stories -- great comic stuff.
  
  
• Considering this was a comic book series based on an animated series, there isn't much room for growth in the characters and the status quo tends to dominate. But in one issue, Batgirl teams up with Robin and by the end of that issue, Barbara is starting her first day of college. While Bruce doesn't have much room for development, it's his supporting characters who offer us glimpses of growth.
• There's a plethora of three-panel pages, many of them without even dialogue or thought bubbles, but it never feels gratuitous. Each panel is important to the story, especially when the story wraps up neatly in a single issue, and these just feel good to read.

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