Black Panther Volume 2 Issue 3
Date Published: January 1999
Cover Price: $2.50 US, $3.75 Canadian
Writer: Christopher J. Priest
Artist: Mark Texteira
Inker: Mark Texteira
Cover Art: Mark Texteira
Editors: Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
Editor in Chief: Bob Harras
Quote of the Issue: Page 6, Ross to Nikki on whether or not 'Bob' the Psycho farmer is Achebe, "It's just a rumour. Kinda like Lionel Richie's career."
Panel/s of the Issue:
The issue starts off with Ross telling Nikki about the history of Achebe. Some guerillas, badly beaten moved across the border where they were safe. A man whom Ross calls Bob nursed them back to health and they repaid his kindness by stabbing him 32 times and burning his farm to the ground. To add insult to injury, Bob's wife fell in love with the rebel leader. He didn't die from the stab wounds. In fact, he survived out of sheer hatred - he made a deal with the devil.
Did he go after the guerillas? No. Too easy. He went after his wife's mother and father, her brothers, sisters and their wives and children. He stabbed them each 32 times and burned their homes to the ground. He didn't stop there. He killed her friends...her teachers, every person his wife had encountered until there was no one left...except a merchant from a nearby village who sold Bob's wife shoes. That's where the story begins, with Bob chasing down the shoe saleman.
With Achebe's past out of the way, the story moves seamlessly into the present where Wakanda is in turmoil. Refugees have been pouring into the country as strife and hate oppress the groups forced into Wakanda. However the groups are of differing tribes, and dislike each other. Their only similarity is that they both dislike the Wakandans.
T'challa however does not return to his seat of power, but instead continues his search for the killer of the child. His search led him to Delroy Richmond, the man who actually killed little Jamie Robins. After lighting the man's apartment on fire, T'challa hurled him out the window, letting him fear his life was ending. Of course it was a ruse, and was just the quickest way to get to the ground. Catching the crook, T'challa landed without a sound and thrust him into his waiting limousine. He brings the man to the home of Jamie Robins' mother, and though she wants to, she doesn't kill him. Her daughter had taught her better than that. Thanking T'challa for the closure, the scene returns to the limousine and shifts to T'challa's memories.
The flashback returns to T'challa's boyhood, and the scene where Klaw and T'chaka meet for the first time. The scenes flow seamlessly through T'challa's memories, with an unknown figure narrating the voice of the central figures. From the Fantastic Four, to the Avengers, the figures' words flow freely, trying to convince T'challa that he is not fit to rule. It shifts finally into T'challa's former love, Monica Lynne, and they are kissing passionately. When his senses returned to him he finds that he is actually kissing Nakia, one of his Dora Milaje. The role he believed ceremonial was moved into the next level by his whimsy. Leaving the car, he began to run up the side of a nearby building.
Emerging on his heels, from literally out of nowhere, are two figures, similarly dressed...except in white.
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