The Black Panther (1973–1976): Rewriting “The Black Experience” in Panther’s Rage and The Black Panther Takes on the Klan

Produced at a point of significant change in literary representations of what was called “the black experience,” the comic book series Panther’s Rage and The Black Panther Takes on the Klan each represent an ambitious collaboration between Don McGregor, the white writer of the series, and Billy Graham, the black series artist. As a revision of “black experience” novels published by Holloway House during the early 1970s, this comic book series significantly alters the ways in which mourning, memory, and mental fortitude are represented in a world of almost entirely black characters. Fighting villains who create phantasmic illusions that evoke self-doubt, The Black Panther, one of three black superheroes introduced by Marvel comics during the 1960s and 1970s, brings to light and then revises traumatic historical memories. The hero’s journey around the provinces of Wakanda, a black kingdom in Western Africa, requires the Panther to defeat a variety of villains and their proxies and to posit an alternative to revolutionary self-hatred. We learn from this journey that tradition and modernity can coexist and that traumatic memories need not repeat themselves endlessly. Instead, they can be revised and incorporated into narratives that celebrate the power of the disciplined imagination to imagine a better future.