Is There A Sorcerer In The House? — Reviewing ‘Ultimate Black Panther’ #10

A king dreams of killing a potential god as the war between Wakanda and their unearthly foes continues to drag. Ultimate Black Panther #10 brings the series ever closer to the big year mark with an issue from Bryan Hill, Carlos Nieto, David Curiel, and Cory Petit.

There is a line within this issue about ships being a slow method of travel. Quite an apt line since the pace of this book remains quite slow.

It’s wild how Hill will break a bit beyond the confines placed upon himself in some issues to give us some morsels in which to sustain ourselves. Then those moments are followed by issues like this that slow to an arctic crawl. They are meant to be character-developing or -affirming issues, but that is hard to accomplish when so many aspects of these characters remain stunted. They’re shells and caricatures of the versions we already know within the pages of other (often better) comics.

We get a small beat with T’Challa, but once more it’s just him and Okoye going back and forth. Their relationship is as hollow as it was when we first were introduced to these versions nine issues ago. Only the situation of the nation and the content of their stilted conversations has changed.

At least the beats with Storm, Killmonger, and the finally named Sorcerer Supreme Inan carry some interest. Storm and Killmonger are still blank canvases, the former less so than the latter, but Inan has some spark to her. Even if it’s just mostly about her being “above” others because of her ability to realize her overall “smallness” to the universe. In fact, these three get the bulk of the issue, leaving all other stuff pretty much untouched.

I still maintain this whole jumping months thing is only working for some of the Ultimate books right now. This is not one of them. Skipping over that time means a lot of developments are happening off panel. We’re only privy to the aftermath or the dragged-out nature of it all. At this point Wakanda has been at war with Moon Knight (Ra & Khonshu) for months and we’ve seen very little of it and there has been no real forward movement or actual confrontation.

Nieto steps up again to tap in for regular artist Stefano Caselli, aiming to pull at a lot of similar threads.

Plenty of dynamic energy is felt in the artwork as it flows and breathes, giving the small amount of action some life. A healthy amount of roughness mixed with the more superhero friendly whimsy can be seen throughout. There is a lot of depth and detail on display with adequate energy given to the emotions and body language of the characters. While, in some cases, the character depth can be lacking, the physical nature is where it should be.

With the trio on the boat taking up a good chunk of issue, Curiel has a chance to deal with some lighter fare this time. There is still quite a bit of darker, more muted color choices in the palette, the story is tonally darker as usual, but room for more. This ship and the open space is like the middle ground between the usually brighter Wakanda and the darker portions of Africa where Ra/Khonshu have their hold.

Some deviations in characters are quite apparent at this point, as Petit works to give them something lettering wise. These voices are clear and concise as they move around the page, even if there is still some real depth and reason missing with a lot of them. We can at least start to feel some emotional beats here. This is not a really flashy book overall, so there isn’t a lot of flair to be found with the lettering but what is there helps set things apart and punch it up a bit.

Ultimate Black Panther #10 is now available from Marvel Comics.