Black Panther: World of Wakanda #5 Review

Writers: Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates / Artists: Alitha E. Martinez, Roberto Poggi, Rachelle Rosenberg / Marvel Comics One of the best things for a critic, I think, is when you make a criticism of an issue and the writer addresses it in the very next issue. It feels like someone is listening. Like someone — *sniff* — cares. My big beef with #4 was that the story was starting to get flat, that it was starved for the kind of fighting action for which the Dora Milaje are famous. Well, open issue #5, with Folami trying to kill our girl Ayo, and getting her ass KICKED. In case you didn’t know, Ayo is a beast hand-to-hand and a smart fighter to boot. Folami has really let her nanites go to her head if she thought she could get the better of Ayo in a fist fight.

As Ayo is fighting for her life, Aneka has finally come around on the love thing, inspired by her impending execution for killing the chieftain. So that “I want you but can’t have you” melodrama is put all the way down. In just a few panels, the word “beloved” goes from title to endearment with Gay’s characteristic style and passion.

Meanwhile, the people of Wakanda start calling on the Dora Milaje to be way more useful as a police force than as the King’s handmaidens. The women answer this need, with pages dedicated to them breaking up a protection racket in Birnin Azzaria, busting supply thieves outside of Birnin Bashenga, and hunting down a human trafficking ring in Birnin S’yan. These moments illustrate so much of wh…