Black Panther: World of Wakanda #3 Review

Writers: Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates / Artists: Alitha E. Martinez, Roberto Poggi, Rachelle Rosenberg / Marvel Comics It is unsurprising that we at Black Nerd Problems are here for Wakanda. We have well developed theories about it, have imagined our favorite barbershops and corner bodegas. Even those of us who aren’t walking comic book encyclopedias have a soft spot for it, not as it has always been portrayed — which, let’s be honest, has had a heavy dose of deepest darkest exotic AFRICA — but as it could be, as an imaginary place where the past and the Afrofuture live in harmony. It is this Wakanda, at its best and worst, that Black Panther: World of Wakanda brings us. The entire frame of this series is that it brings the life of Wakanda, not from the perspective of the King or the Queen, the usual viewpoints, but from the perspective of two Dora Milaje, an experienced Captain Aneka, and an impulsive newcomer, Ayo. Starting before Queen Shuri’s “death”, the three opening issues run through Namor’s flooding of the Golden City and the invasion of Thanos’s Black Order, which is a lot of backstory to dig through in just a few side references. Roxane Gay tells a story that is strong enough that I care more about Ayo and Aneka’s story than anything else. The two women, fighting enemies and saving their countryfolk, develop a deep bond that is at times one of conflict — they rarely seem to see eye to eye right away — but that has become one first of lust, and then of romantic …