Black Panther #1: The Dora Milaje Come Center Stage

***Some spoilers for Black Panther #1, which you totally should have read by now because it’s really good*** So there I was yesterday, like most of the Black nerdosphere, reading the latest, greatest incarnation of Black Panther from the power team of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Brian Stelfreeze, and Laura Martin. Having just finished re-reading the Hudlin series, the comic felt like coming back to some place I’d been, and wanted to dig deeper into. The real wonder of the world set in after the title page, where the Queen Mother is disciplining a Dora Milaje who has gone too far in her duties.

I love the metaphor of the Dora Milaje as the Blood Alloy of Wakanda. It says so much about how vibranium is embedded in their language. Also, it to sets us up for the Dora Milaje to play a more useful role in this series than in past ones. They are not solely bodyguards and warriors, they are a center of power in their own right. This gets me all kinds of happy, because I’ve always felt that the Dora Milaje were under-utilized in the Wakandan mythos, particularly in those instances when they are portrayed as little more than the Black Panther’s harem. So this is a start of something more, maybe building on the Midnight Angels. That’s promising. Fast forward a few pages and we see the condemned woman, Aneka again, this time with her friend Ayo breaking her out of prison.

Hold on. Did she call her Beloved? Now that’s usually what the Dora Milaje call the Black Panther…Beloved. Hm. Maybe that’s…