I'm really surprised to be writing this review. I thought I was done with Black Panther as of last issue, as I had been pretty happy with the art team and direction of the series up until this point, and I had planned on using this change to jump off the book, expecting to be very unhappy with the changes. But while it's still not what I'd have liked to have seen in an ideal world, and it is a completely different book from what has gone before, Black Panther is still a very good book. Fraga's artwork looks better here than it ever has before, and Priest's writing and characterization is as sharp and strong as ever. Though they didn't renumber the book as a new #1, it is for all intents and purposes chapter one of a new life in this character, with a new art team, new supporting cast, new tone and even a new protagonist... all of which, remarkably, are almost as interesting as the many great stories and characters that have gone before.
Priest has been writing Black Panther as a political book, one of the only ones out there, and the tone has now shifted to more of a crime/urban vigilante book. The shift wouldn't have worked with the same character, so exit T'Challa (in his trademark most mysterious way possible) and enter a new character with some of T'Challa's tricks but wholly different goals and personality traits. Priest has tackled this kind of thing before, most notably in the first (and unfortunately only) issue of Black Lion: Legend of the Concrete Jungle, and it's just as much up his alley as the political stuff has been.
This issue definitely serves notice that something very different is going on. The first time we see Panther, he's holding a pair of smoking .45s, John Woo style, and he's got a build and slight costume differentiations that tell us for certain that T'Challa isn't in the costume, long before the character is actually unmasked in the issue. When the character is unmasked, however, Priest gives us a pretty quick update on who he is and why he's doing this. He layers the book with street cop lingo that sometimes makes it hard to figure out, but the context and explanations come later, and as always, if you're patient and hang on, it'll start to make sense. It's also clear that Priest hasn't shifted completely away from what built this book up, as appearances by Sgt. Tork and the White Wolf show that the baggage this new Black Panther has picked up isn't limited to a few high-tech toys.
See, I expected Priest to continue the high level of quality, however. He's disappointed me in the past, but it's a rarity. What I didn't expect is that the artwork would be so solid. I mostly know Dan Fraga as a graduate of the Rob Liefeld school of pencilling, and even his recent Wolverine work hasn't done much to change my mind. The work here, though, is fantastic. He conveys some fairly difficult storytelling moments in a tightly plotted script, he gives the new Black Panther a very distinctive look and he handles the action sequences very well. His work here, while retaining elements of his earlier style, particularly the energy, has more discipline to it, reminiscent of the work of Mike McKone or Chris Cross. It's a good match for the new book.
And in the end, that's what Black Panther #50 must be viewed as. Though the title and the writer remain the same, everything else has changed. This is a new book, with little carrying over from the old book so far. Fortunately, this makes it more accessible to new readers, and while old readers may miss the old tone or the old characters, I think that those who give it a chance will find that the strengths of Black Panther, such as the dialogue and the intelligence of the stories, remains intact.
