Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Introduced by Walter Mosley

Artwork by Brian Stelfreeze

Written by award-winning author and commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet showcases one of Marvel’s most iconic Super Heroes. Folio is proud to publish this groundbreaking tale featuring art by Brian Stelfreeze and an introduction by novelist Walter Mosley.

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‘A subversive way of looking at Black Panther and long overdue.’
  1. The Guardian

 

Discover the saga that sank its claws into a new generation of graphic novel readers. Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet presents all twelve issues of the groundbreaking series written by National Book Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize-finalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. Featuring T’Challa, the Black Panther – scientist, Super Hero and ruler of the Afrofuturist state of Wakanda – this is a story that heralded a more diverse, more politically astute age of Super Hero comics. Walter Mosley, one of the most respected novelists in America, provides an incisive and heartfelt introduction to this complex drama about T’Challa’s responsibilities as a hero and his obligations to his people. Following the success of Folio’s Marvel Age and Marvel Heroes series, this majestic slipcased edition also features award-winning sequential art by veteran comic-book artist Brian Stelfreeze in a graphic novel truly fit for a king of Marvel Comics.

Bound in blocked laminated paper

Prelims set in Miller with Benton Sans as display

296 pages printed 4 colour throughout

Metallic foil blocked slipcase

10½˝ x 7˝ 

‘In his five- year run of Black Panther, Mr Coates has tried to understand our love of tyranny contrasted with our desire for freedom; the betrayal of our hearts in spite of the love we feel for our blood.’
  1. Walter Mosley from his Introduction

Created by Marvel legends Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, Black Panther first appeared in Fantastic Four #52 in July 1966, a month after the American Civil Rights Movement’s ‘March Against Fear’ brought the notion of Black Power to the nation’s attention. The first Black Super Hero to appear in American comics, Black Panther was not the secret identity, but the ceremonial title of T’Challa, ruler and protector of Wakanda. Though a man of preternatural senses and athletic prowess, T’Challa’s chief weapon was his prodigious intellect; he was both Super Hero and statesman. Published 50 years later in 2016, during the final months of the Obama administration, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet finds the Wakandan ruler facing a rebellion by his own people. The King himself must hunt down the superhuman insurgents responsible, knowing that should he fall in battle his entire nation will fall with him. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the conflict between the individual and the state, between Black tradition and Black autonomy.

Artist Brian Stelfreeze won a prestigious Glyph Award in 2017 for this saga’s intense, dynamic artwork, with vibrant colours by Laura Martin. Their vision of Wakanda is open to further exploration in this edition, thanks to a detailed map devised by Ta-Nehisi Coates in collaboration with Marvel designer Manny Mederos. Hidebound in supple Balathane Algora, the book itself presents a blind-blocked cover image of T’Challa in brooding silhouette with gleaming silver highlights. Sinuous tribal designs in T’Challa’s signature black and purple envelop the blind-blocked slipcase. One of the most important Marvel comics of recent years, this is a graphic novel from an author and commentator whom The Washington Post named ‘one of the most important Black minds of a generation’. In Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, Ta-Nehisi Coates brings a penetrating and authentic voice to one of the most resonant Marvel Super Heroes of the 21st century.

Ta-Nehisi Coates was born in Baltimore, the son of William Paul Coates, a former Black Panther and founder of Black Classic Press. Coates attended Howard University in Washington DC, before leaving to become a journalist. He wrote for several publications including The Village Voice and Time, but it was his essays on racism and the African American experience for The Atlantic that won him global attention and critical acclaim. He has published several works of non-fiction, including a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle (2008), and Between the World and Me (2015), for which he won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. He has written several Marvel Comics including Black Panther and Captain America. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was published in 2019 and he received a MacArthur Fellowship in the same year.

Brian Stelfreeze grew up on the coast of South Carolina. He worked as an editorial cartoonist and airbrush artist before studying at the Art Institute of Atlanta. He quit to join a commercial illustration studio before publishing his first comics work in 1988, drawing the sci-fi series Cycops for writer Julie Woodcock. He became a prolific cover artist for several comic book publishers and painted over 50 consecutive covers for the DC Comics series Batman: Shadow of the Bat (1992–2000). He moved on to interior work with the Marvel miniseries Domino in 2003 before starting work on Black Panther with Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2015. Stelfreeze was part of the Atlanta-based comic artist collective Gaijin Studios and is currently Art Director at indie publisher 12-Gauge Comics. He received an Inkpot Award in 2014, and a Glyph Award in 2017 for his work on Black Panther.

Walter Mosley was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish mother and African American father. He earned a degree in political science at Johnson State College in Vermont before moving to New York. While working as a computer programmer for Mobil Oil, Mosley became inspired by Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. He enrolled in a writing course at the City College of New York where he was tutored by Irish novelist and playwright Edna O’Brien. He published his first novel in 1990, Devil in a Blue Dress, a hardboiled noir featuring African American private investigator ‘Easy’ Rawlins. Mosley went on to publish over 60 books ranging from non-fiction to science fiction, each offering a unique racial perspective on both genre and American history. Mosley has also written for television and theatre and has won over a dozen awards. In 2013 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. A lifelong comic book fan, Mosley has over 30,000 in his collection.

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