{"id":170258,"date":"2026-02-18T21:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/170258\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T21:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:00:07","slug":"austin-comics-creator-writing-milestone-black-panther-comic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/170258\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin comics creator writing milestone Black Panther comic"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Black Panther, Marvel\u2019s first Black superhero<\/a>, is celebrating the 60th anniversary of his comic debut this month \u2014 a milestone that perfectly coincides with 100 years of Black History Month.\u00a0To celebrate, Marvel is releasing a 60th anniversary one-shot issue featuring T\u2019Challa and his legacy, written by Austin-based comics writer Evan Narcisse.<\/p>\n

Narcisse has previously worked on Black Panther, who first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in 1966, along with other projects for Marvel and DC. A fan of Black Panther since his youth, Narcisse said he was honored to helm the project alongside several other writers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI probably first encountered Black Panther as a teenager or a pre-teen… as a team member of the Avengers, not in a solo book,\u201d Narcisse said. \u201cThat was enough to get me hooked. The way he spoke, the kind of remote, exotic nature of Wakanda when compared to other locations and comic books, really pulled me in. I wasn’t able to articulate it then, but it felt like there was a cultural connection for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Narcisse\u00a0said T’Challa acted as “a little bit of like a side dish or seasoning for a story” until the 1970s book “Jungle Action” by Don McGregor, where he and his homeland took center stage.<\/p>\n

“What happens in that run is that you see more insight into what kind of politics and culture they have; the idea that they’re kind of xenophobic really takes off there,” Narcisse\u00a0said. “It was a little bit of subtext in previous stories, but during this era, they really start to show up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Narcisse\u2019s love for the character further continued throughout the years with runs written by Jack Kirby, Christopher Priest and Reginald Huldin. However, it wasn\u2019t until a blossoming friendship with author Ta-Nehisi Coates that his connection to the character felt closer. It also opened the door to\u00a0Narcisse’s first Black Panther project.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis editor at Marvel said, \u2018Hey, Evan really seems to know his Black Panther stuff. Do you think he’d be interested in writing a project for us?\u2019\u201d Narcisse said. \u201cThat turned into \u2018Rise of the Black Panther.\u2019 My comics career would not have happened without my friendship with Ta-Nehisi. I had to prove myself, my own merits, but he consulted on \u2018Rise of the Black Panther.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Narcisse said that having a Black character who is an immigrant seeing what life is like in the United States, along with famous stories of him fighting racist hate groups, made him connect with the character, since his family has a Haitian background.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The idea that a character like that could be shown in the spotlight was really important to me growing up, back in the day, comics were exceedingly white, the main characters and the creators,” Narcisse said. “This is like a little bit of light that lets me understand that stories from my culture and background can be told through this medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Narcisse further elaborated on the cultural significance of the character and how he has impacted popular culture and the approach of Black characters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Black creators started to become more of a professional class in comics, you saw a deeper understanding and expression of Black history and the Black diaspora across the world,\u201d Narcisse said. \u201cT\u2019Challa is a character that serves as a nexus for all these different characters and cultures and people from different walks of life who share an ancestral background to kind of talk about what it means to exist in the world as a Black person. You can talk about deeper themes, and I think that’s one of the reasons the character has lasted for 60 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

After working on \u201cRise of the Black Panther\u201d and other projects for Marvel, Narcisse was curious to see what Marvel had in mind for Black Panther\u2019s 60th anniversary, also describing his role as the writer of this story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a little bit proactive and emailed an editor I knew over there to see if they were going to be working anything up to celebrate T\u2019Challa\u2019s anniversary,\u201d Narcisse said. \u201cSo, this is kind of an anthology, but there’s a framing story that ties everything together. My job on this issue was to do the framing story that ties various individual chapters together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Narcisse described more of what to expect with the upcoming release, saying that the celebration is going to be worthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a framing story by me and there are other chapters done by different creative teams that are going to focus on T\u2019Challa\u2019s relationships with different characters across the Marvel Universe,\u201d Narcisse said. “Different stories that explore different themes, and it’s a great celebration of the character. There are a few other Black comic characters that predate him, but in the modern era, he’s a super important character, and this special makes a point to celebrate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Black Panther 60th Anniversary Special is scheduled to hit the shelves on Feb. 18, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0Black Panther, Marvel\u2019s first Black superhero, is celebrating the 60th anniversary of his comic debut this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3564,4283,132,134,133,5604,63052,14210,223,36427,27],"class_list":["post-170258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-community","tag-arts","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-what-you-need-to-know","tag-black-history-month-2026","tag-human-interest","tag-news","tag-rhett-brady","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}