The Black Panther spends the next twelve months with the Avengers and thus returns to the spotlight, although he isn’t always given very much to do. His personal life remains as unexplored as his kingdom of Wakanda, though that will soon change. His association with the Avengers brings him into conflict with a wide variety of menaces, from street-level organized crime to supervillains such as Magneto and Kang to more cosmic-level threats like Dormammu and Thanos, as well as his seemingly annual fight with his arch-enemy, Klaw. His neglect of his royal duties, however, will soon drag T’Challa into a world of hurt.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now continuing… The True History of the Black Panther!
January 1966 – The Black Panther is sparring with Iron Man in the Avengers’ combat-simulation room as Captain America, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch look on. Suddenly, Thor enters and summons the Scarlet Witch to the communications room, promising her tidings of great joy. The Avengers are pleased to find Quicksilver calling from the Great Refuge of the Inhumans. Standing next to him on the large viewscreen is Crystal, the Human Torch’s ex-girlfriend and a member of the Inhumans’ royal family. Scarlet Witch is visibly relieved to learn that her twin brother is alive and well, and she’s thrilled to hear that Quicksilver and Crystal have fallen in love after she saved him from the Sentinels’ Australian base last October. However, when the Scarlet Witch declares that she, too, has fallen in love—with the Vision—Quicksilver objects angrily, leading to an argument that makes the rest of the Avengers rather uncomfortable. After Quicksilver hangs up on her, Scarlet Witch starts to cry and the Vision moves in to comfort her. Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man move to the other end of the room to give the couple some space. Iron Man feels the team may be a bit shorthanded now that they’ve lost both Quicksilver and Hawkeye, but Thor dismisses his concerns. The discussion is cut short when the team receives a transmission from the X-Men’s secret headquarters, which has been trashed in a battle. The mutants’ leader, Professor X, speaks defiantly to the villain who is filming him, but then the screen goes dark. The Avengers agree to seek out the X-Men’s mansion and do what they can to help their fellow superheroes.
When they arrive at the secluded estate in Westchester County, the Avengers quickly discover Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, and Iceman in the wreckage, all of whom appear to be comatose. Iron Man carries out a winged man they assume to be the Angel, only to face four rampaging dinosaurs that are under the control of a sort of Pied Piper figure who emerges from the woods. After defeating the dinosaurs, the Avengers try to capture the Piper but are stopped by Magneto, who is wearing the Angel’s black-and-white costume and laughing about how he fooled Iron Man with a pair of false wings. Announcing that he is abducting the X-Men, Magneto grabs the Scarlet Witch and uses his powers to send Iron Man crashing into Captain America, knocking them both out. The villains then escape with their prisoners in the Quinjet while the Vision and Thor are busy keeping the Black Panther from being crushed by boulders. The three remaining Avengers return to the mansion and try to recruit some back-up for a rescue operation. When the Black Knight can’t be reached, they turn next to the Falcon, Spider-Man, and Luke Cage, but none of them can be located. At the Black Panther’s suggestion, they fly out to San Francisco to seek help from Daredevil and the Black Widow. Hawkeye is there as well, but he angrily refuses their request and storms out. Black Widow vents her frustration on the Avengers, and T’Challa is annoyed by all the unprovoked hostility. Nevertheless, Daredevil and the Black Widow reluctantly agree to lend a hand, and so the five heroes board the Quinjet and head back to New York.
At Avengers Mansion, Black Panther, Vision, and Thor discuss the situation with Daredevil, though the Black Widow seems to have other things on her mind. As the team’s butler, Edwin Jarvis, serves coffee, Black Panther explains to Daredevil how Magneto kidnapped the X-Men as well as Captain America, Iron Man, and the Scarlet Witch. Scanning a newspaper on the table with his fingers, Daredevil announces that a special conference of the Atomic Energy Commission is being held that very day in a house not 50 miles from New York City. Thor realizes it’s a likely target for Magneto, given his interest in atomic energy and its resulting mutations, so they decide to check it out. When they arrive, though, they are unable to stop Magneto from kidnapping the commissioners, as he has Captain America, Iron Man, the Scarlet Witch, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, and Iceman under some form of mind control. Black Panther suggests that Magneto must have a lair near the X-Men’s headquarters where he kept the dinosaurs, so they head back to Westchester County to search the area. However, they are concerned by the Vision’s disappearance during the fight and fear he was captured. In the woods behind the X-Men’s mansion, Daredevil’s radar sense detects a large cavern beneath the surface. Thor uses his enchanted hammer to smash a tunnel down to the cavern, where they discover Magneto and his hypnotized prisoners. During the ensuing fight, Black Panther tries to subdue Cyclops, only to be battered into unconsciousness by Iceman. When he comes to, T’Challa finds that Magneto has been defeated and his prisoners released. The others explain that the Vision phased inside the Piper and was able to sneak up behind Magneto and take him out with a karate chop to the back of the neck. Professor X then appears, having also been held prisoner, and puts Magneto into a telepathically induced coma. Taking charge of the defeated villains, the X-Men return to their nearby headquarters, intent on searching for the Angel, whose disappearance remains unexplained. Captain America conveys the Avengers’ thanks to Daredevil and the Black Widow and offers them full membership on the team. Daredevil declines but the Black Widow accepts, causing a rift between them. Daredevil leaves in a huff, and later the Black Panther arranges for a Quinjet to take him back to San Francisco.
Soon after, a mob of African-American militants pounds on the front door of Avengers Mansion, demanding that the Black Panther come outside. Before the Avengers can react, the mob breaks down the door and opens fire with rifles. Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch drive them back, but they continue to chant that the Black Panther must return to Africa, where his people need him. As the situation escalates, a man in a trenchcoat emerges from the crowd and demands that the Black Panther bow down to him. The next thing T’Challa knows, he is chained up in a cave, facing the armored form of the Lion God, whom he recognizes from Wakandan mythology. The Lion God is intent on replacing the Panther God as the chief deity of Wakanda and so, in order to demoralize T’Challa, sets out to destroy the Avengers. The Lion God teleports T’Challa and himself back to Avengers Mansion, where he attacks Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and the Black Widow in the team’s underground conference room. After quickly taking out Thor and the Vision, the Lion God causes two lions to materialize and sets them on the rest of the team. Iron Man leaps to the Black Widow’s defense, knocking out one of the lions with a repulsor beam. However, the Lion God shoots him in the back with a blast of energy from his totem-stick, taking the Golden Avenger out of the fight. Fearing that his friends have been killed, Black Panther breaks out of his chains and saves the Scarlet Witch from being mauled by the second lion. Luckily, Thor revives and calls down a lightning strike that hits the totem-stick, apparently overloading it and causing a tremendous explosion. T’Challa assumes that the Lion God has been destroyed. Black Widow then announces that she has decided to return to San Francisco to work with Daredevil, preferring their partnership to being a member of a large group. Black Panther, however, affirms his commitment to the team and says he plans to remain in New York for a while.
T’Challa continues to date Monica Lynne, and their relationship gradually becomes more serious. Though he often assists Monica with her work in the civil rights movement, he decides not to revive his “Luke Charles” identity or try to return to his old teaching job in Harlem. When not engaged in Avengers business, Black Panther battles street crime while patrolling New York’s African-American neighborhoods.
February 1966 – In the middle of the month, Quicksilver comes to Avengers Mansion to try to talk his sister out of her love affair with the Vision, which proves to be very contentious. Jarvis is serving Sunday brunch to the Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver when the entire building is suddenly transported to the 23rd century by Kang the Conqueror. With the element of surprise, Kang is able to knock out everyone in the mansion. T’Challa awakens sometime later to find himself and his teammates in the shattered remains of a bank of stasis tubes in Kang’s fortress. Iron Man is now among them, obviously having been captured as well. They have been freed by Black Bolt, Gorgon, Karnak, and Triton of the Inhumans, while Kang lies defeated under some rubble nearby. Spider-Man then enters, having captured Thor’s old foe Zarrko the Tomorrow Man. However, as Spider-Man hustles everyone out of the citadel for transport back to the 20th century, they discover that Kang tricked them with a robot double and made good his escape. The voice of the real Kang then mocks them over the loudspeaker. As Zarrko is turned over to the local authorities, Spider-Man explains how he and the Human Torch tracked down and destroyed three chronal-displacement bombs that Zarrko sent back to the 20th century to destroy civilization, after which Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus the Mad, was able to convert one of the bombs into a crude but effective time machine. Suddenly, with a blinding flash of light, Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Spider-Man, and Jarvis find themselves back on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, standing outside Avengers Mansion. Assuming the Inhumans returned directly to their Great Refuge in the Himalayas, Thor notes that the team owes them a profound debt of gratitude. Feeling slighted, Spider-Man makes a wise-ass remark and swings away. Entering their headquarters, the Avengers find they’ve been gone for two days. Realizing that his arguments are falling on deaf ears, Quicksilver returns to the Inhumans’ hidden city.
Black Panther joins Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch when the Avengers are called in by the city to make repairs to the Statue of Liberty, which was heavily damaged by a giant monster a few months ago. A mishap causes the statue’s right hand to break off and plummet toward the Scarlet Witch. Vision swoops in to rescue her as their teammates deal with the falling debris. To the shock of the crowds watching from below, Vision and Scarlet Witch embrace and kiss. By the time the heroes return to Avengers Mansion, news of the romance between the mutant woman and the android man has spread like wildfire. The next day, they receive mountains of mail expressing all manner of views on the relationship, much of it negative. Some of New York’s more obnoxious residents appear at the mansion’s front door, but the Black Panther and Iron Man send them away. After a few days, the hubbub dies down.
March 1966 – When a gang of neo-Nazis goes around beating up Jews on the street, Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Vision, and Scarlet Witch go out to put a stop to it. The Avengers make short work of the neo-Nazis, but suddenly they are rushed by a suicide bomber who detonates the explosives strapped to her chest and seriously damages the Vision. Cradling the Vision in his arms, Iron Man flies at once to the Long Island laboratories of Stark Industries. Thor announces that he will fetch the surgeon Donald Blake and departs. Black Panther and Captain America escort the distraught Scarlet Witch to the factory complex, where T’Challa joins Tony Stark and Don Blake in a sophisticated laboratory. The three men set to work making repairs to the Vision, guided by the schematics Ant-Man drew up after his explorations of the synthezoid’s interior last year. However, more suicide bombers storm the building, intent on finishing the Vision off. Captain America and Scarlet Witch are quickly outnumbered, forcing Stark to step out to summon Iron Man to help. When Stark returns several minutes later, he suggests that Blake see if he can find Thor. After Blake has left, Stark encourages T’Challa to join the fray as well, insisting that he can finish the repairs on his own. Thus, Black Panther lends his teammates a hand until the last of the bombers detonate their explosives and kill themselves. The Avengers are shocked by such reckless fanaticism. A few minutes later, Stark emerges from the laboratory to announce that the Vision should make a full recovery. T’Challa is startled when the Scarlet Witch reacts with indignant rage, ranting about the way the Vision has been treated—even by her own brother—despite his many heroic acts. The way she complains about “humans,” apparently oblivious to her own bigotry, is also disturbing. With all the suicide bombers dead, the Avengers are unable to learn anything more about their motives.
April 1966 – Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Vision are about to start a search for the missing Scarlet Witch when she suddenly comes striding through the front gate with an Asian woman called Mantis and their old enemy the Swordsman. T’Challa is intrigued when the Swordsman insists that he’s reformed and petitions to join the team (legitimately this time) as Hawkeye’s replacement. Cap tells the former supervillain to keep dreaming, but the Scarlet Witch objects, accusing Cap of being ruled by his prejudices. Iron Man is forced to concur, pointing out that the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye, and the Black Widow were all considered “villains” before getting a shot at redemption. When Thor volunteers to take full responsibility for the Swordsman’s behavior during a probationary period, Cap grudgingly bows to the will of the majority. Iron Man asks Mantis if she wants to join the team too, but she insists she is merely the Swordsman’s companion. Glad to have another woman to talk to, Scarlet Witch assures Mantis that she’s welcome there. After a week of working closely together, Thor recommends that the Swordsman be granted all the privileges of Avengers membership. Despite Cap’s reservations, the team votes to induct him into their ranks and all agree to trust that the Swordsman really has reformed.
A week or so later, the Avengers see a news report of Hawkeye and the Hulk on the waterfront battling a giant creature made of electricity. They discuss the fact that the archer has returned to New York without contacting them, indicating that he really does intend to go his own way from now on. Suddenly, the Lion God smashes into the chamber, apparently abetted by the Swordsman and Mantis. T’Challa is disturbed that the team was completely taken in by two traitors and is astonished when Mantis takes out Thor with her martial arts skills. The Lion God then blasts Iron Man into unconsciousness with searing energy rays from his hunting spear. As the Vision falls to the Swordsman, Mantis knocks Captain America out with a nerve-pinch. Triumphant, the Lion God is about to burn the Black Panther at the stake when he is mesmerized by the Swordsman and Mantis. This gives Iron Man a chance to revive, whereupon he triggers an adamantium containment cylinder installed in the ceiling after the last time the mansion’s security was breached. Iron Man then suggests to the groggy Thor that he send the Lion God into another dimension before he breaks free, and the thunder god uses his enchanted hammer to do so at once. In the aftermath of the battle, Mantis explains that she had sensed a malignant force lurking around the mansion and worked with the Swordsman to lure it out into the open. They then pretended to cooperate with the Lion God, planning all the while to turn the tables on him at the crucial moment. Impressed by the couple’s daring, Thor expresses the team’s profound gratitude. Captain America is clearly still suspicious, but the others agree that, if nothing else, the Swordsman and Mantis have earned the benefit of the doubt.
May 1966 – Realizing that no one’s heard from the Black Knight in several months, the Avengers decide to return to Garrett Castle in England to check up on him. As soon as their Quinjet enters British airspace, though, they are harassed by S.H.I.E.L.D., which objects to the Swordsman and Mantis, both of whom have criminal records, entering the United Kingdom. Fortunately, the Avengers are able to clear the matter up and soon touch down in a meadow outside the castle. However, they are surprised to discover the entire structure is surrounded by an invisible force field which they are unable to penetrate. Mantis performs some kind of mystic probe and determines that the barrier was erected by Doctor Strange. Suddenly, a large group of ragged, primitive-looking men with medieval weapons streams out of camouflaged holes in the ground and attacks the heroes, knocking them out with crude bombs that release a potent toxic gas. When he comes to, Black Panther finds himself and his teammates being held prisoner in a network of caverns, presumably beneath the Black Knight’s estate. The primitives are upset because the force field is preventing them from looting the castle’s storehouses, which is how they’ve sustained themselves since retreating underground to escape persecution hundreds of years ago. T’Challa realizes that generations of inbreeding has caused the cave-dwellers to become savage barbarians, but their toxic gas prevents most of his teammates from fighting back. Luckily, Thor, Vision, and Mantis seem immune to its effects, and they hold off a giant insectoid monster long enough for the Black Panther to force their captors to surrender. The Avengers march the defeated barbarians back to the surface, where they call in medical and government aid for the lost tribe. The barbarian king informs the Avengers that the Black Knight was taken away by people in weird costumes before the castle was sealed off by the invisible wall. The heroes decide to head at once to Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum back in New York to ask him about it.
However, when the Avengers reach the sorcerer’s home in Greenwich Village, they are repelled by a mysterious force. Thor smashes down the front door with his hammer and forces his way inside, where Mantis roughs up Doctor Strange’s Chinese butler. They catch of glimpse of the Black Knight in an interior room, having apparently been turned to stone, and assume that Doctor Strange is responsible. Before they can react, though, the Avengers are ejected from the building by hurricane-force winds. Thor rages at the unseen sorcerer, saying they will return when they’ve figured out how to overcome his magic, and then the Avengers go back to their headquarters, seething with indignation. Shortly afterwards, a psychic projection of Loki materializes in the mansion to warn the Avengers that Doctor Strange is leading a cabal of super-powered misfits on a quest to obtain the six segments of the legendary weapon known as the Evil Eye of Avalon, which has the power to destroy the world. Joining the mysterious master of black magic is the bestial Hulk, whose hatred for humanity is well known; the savage Sub-Mariner, who has long warred against the human race; the Silver Surfer, the bitter alien imprisoned on Earth; the Valkyrie, who desires revenge for her defeat at the hands of the Avengers a couple years ago; and even their former teammate Hawkeye, who wants to strike back at those he believes betrayed him. Though Thor is not inclined to believe anything his adopted brother says, the other Avengers convince him that they should check it out.
Thus, Black Panther and Mantis fly to Fort Wayne, Indiana, while their teammates cover the other five locations provided by Loki. After arriving, they receive a transmission from the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, reporting that they were attacked in Polynesia by the Silver Surfer, who made off with a segment of the Evil Eye. With Loki’s tale apparently confirmed, Black Panther and Mantis commence their search in a large cornfield outside the city, where Mantis’s mystic senses have led them. They soon confront Doctor Strange, despite his attempts to evade them. Black Panther manages to wrest the Evil Eye segment from the sorcerer’s grasp while Mantis deals with a shotgun-wielding farmer. Unfortunately, Doctor Strange casts a spell that incapacitates his opponents long enough for him to escape with the segment. T’Challa is frustrated and hopes the rest of the Avengers fared better.
Black Panther and Mantis then rendezvous with Captain America, Iron Man, the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, and a wounded Swordsman. They have been joined by the Sub-Mariner, who has convinced Cap that both teams have been played for fools by Loki. Returning to New York, Sub-Mariner leads the Avengers into Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum without incident, where they find the sorcerer, Hawkeye, the Silver Surfer, and the Valkyrie in a well-appointed sitting room. T’Challa notices the Black Knight, turned to stone, standing in a corner of the room. Sub-Mariner informs his shocked teammates that Loki told the Avengers that their team, which they call the Defenders, was out to conquer the world. Valkyrie assures the Avengers that they sought out the Evil Eye so they could use its mystical power to release the Black Knight from the petrification spell placed on him by the Enchantress. T’Challa is confused, since he remembers the Valkyrie being merely an illusion the Enchantress used to disguise herself, but such matters are explained as the two teams get to know each other better over the next half hour. Finally, Iron Man realizes that Thor and the Hulk are still out on the battlefield and could be laying waste to Los Angeles at that very moment. Thus, Doctor Strange weaves a spell that teleports everyone out to California.
There, they find Thor and the Hulk locked in a stalemate, each one’s super-strong muscles straining against the other’s as they grapple, but Doctor Strange convinces them to stand down. The Avengers and the Defenders then compare notes and realize that Thor was fighting Loki in Rutland, Vermont, last Halloween at the same time that the Defenders were battling Dormammu there. They speculate that the two arch-villains must have teamed up. Their suspicions are confirmed when the six segments of the Evil Eye are suddenly stolen by Dormammu’s servant Asti the All-Seeing. Despite the best efforts of the assembled heroes, Asti escapes with the segments into another dimension. Almost immediately, the city around them begins to transform into a nightmarish world of horror, the people metamorphosing into monstrous demons. An image of Dormammu’s flaming head appears in the sky, announcing that he is using the Evil Eye to bring Earth into his Dark Dimension, thereby enabling him to conquer the planet without violating his oath to never invade our universe. The Avengers and the Defenders vow to prevent this at any cost. However, the transformed bystanders begin to attack the heroes, forcing them to fight back. Black Panther helps keep the monsters at bay while Doctor Strange casts a spell to prevent any of the 14 superheroes present from changing into monsters themselves. The sorcerer then tries to convince Captain America that both teams need to take the fight directly to Dormammu in the Dark Dimension. Cap is reluctant to abandon the earth in such a time of crisis but relents when Nick Fury and the forces of S.H.I.E.L.D. arrive on the scene. Leaving Fury and his agents to deal with the monsters, Doctor Strange casts a spell to transport the Avengers and the Defenders into Dormammu’s realm.
In the weird landscape of the Dark Dimension, Doctor Strange yells at the headstrong Avengers to keep them from blundering to their doom, prompting Thor to order his teammates to defer to the sorcerer’s expertise. Then, after beating off the numberless hordes of the Mindless Ones, the heroes find Dormammu, brandishing the Evil Eye, with Loki imprisoned in a cage of flames. To everyone’s surprise, the Watcher is also present, looking on enigmatically. Doctor Strange manages to breach the mystic barrier separating them, but with one wave of his hand, Dormammu’s augmented magic instantly renders the six Defenders unconscious. Undaunted, Thor leads the Avengers in a desperate charge, but Dormammu turns the ground under their feet into quicksand. Thor, Iron Man, and Scarlet Witch avoid the trap and press onward, but the two men quickly fall to Dormammu’s power. However, Loki suddenly frees himself from the flaming cage and grapples with Dormammu, enabling the Scarlet Witch to cast a hex bolt at them. There is a flash of light and then Dormammu is gone, leaving Loki gibbering like a madman. The Avengers and the Defenders regroup, and the Watcher congratulates the 14 heroes on their great victory. He explains that the hex caused the Evil Eye to malfunction, whereupon it disintegrated Dormammu, absorbed his mystical energies, and blasted them out again straight through Loki’s brain. The Asgardian god’s mind has been shattered, leaving him with the intellect of an infant. And though Dormammu’s corporeal form has been destroyed, the Watcher warns, he will eventually reintegrate himself with the aid of his many black-hearted worshipers. Doctor Strange then retrieves the Evil Eye and casts a spell that returns the two teams to Los Angeles.
The Avengers and the Defenders materialize on the same street in L.A. to find the crisis is over. The people who had been transformed into monsters have reverted to normal and are wandering around the rubble-strewn streets in a daze. Nick Fury offers the two teams his congratulations on their victory. However, wishing to keep the existence of the Defenders a secret, Doctor Strange removes all memory of their involvement from Fury and his agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as any bystanders who witnessed their presence earlier in the day. Furthermore, he combines the power of the Evil Eye with his own sorcerous might to undo all damage and destruction the world over caused by Dormammu’s scheme, leaving everyone believing they had just suffered a mass hallucination. Finally, after bidding farewell to the Avengers, Strange teleports his team back to his Sanctum Sanctorum to attend to the Black Knight. The Avengers borrow a jet from S.H.I.E.L.D. and return to New York as well. Unfortunately, since they do not arrive in a Quinjet, the Avengers are unable to deactivate their mansion’s rooftop security systems ahead of time. Luckily, Black Panther is able to do it manually. Scarlet Witch complains again about “humans,” and T’Challa is annoyed by her attitude. As they enter the mansion, Thor informs Jarvis of Loki’s condition and explains that he will need constant care. Since Loki has been banished from Asgard, Thor asks Jarvis to set him up in Hawkeye’s old bedroom. The Avengers are extremely wary at first, expecting treachery from their old foe, but as time passes, Loki gives no sign of faking his mental disability. Eventually, Thor decides to take his brother on an extended camping trip to Scandinavia.
Near the end of the month, Iron Man informs the Avengers about the threat of Thanos, a renegade from a utopian society hidden inside Saturn’s moon Titan. Thanos is planning to conquer the solar system, he reports, and he has already battled two of Thanos’s agents, vicious aliens called the Blood Brothers. With the help of another alien called Drax the Destroyer, Iron Man drove the villains off and destroyed their New Mexico base, but Thanos is reputed to lead a mercenary army assembled from the dregs of interstellar society and thus remains a clear and present danger to Earth.
June 1966 – Black Panther is with Captain America, Iron Man, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch at Avengers Mansion when Rick Jones’s girlfriend, Lou-Ann Savannah, shows up on the verge of exhaustion and babbling about Thanos. The young woman passes out, and while examining her, Iron Man discovers one of the Controller’s slave-discs attached to the nape of Lou-Ann’s neck. Realizing his old foe has returned, Iron Man places her under a device intended to partially inhibit the disc’s operation. She is still there a little while later when Captain Marvel arrives at the mansion. He quickly switches interdimensional places with Rick Jones, who informs the Avengers that he, Lou-Ann, and Captain Marvel have indeed gotten mixed up with Thanos, who sees conquering Earth merely as a stepping stone to galactic domination. Rick trades places with Captain Marvel again as they head to the Avengers’ conference room for a full briefing. The Kree hero informs the team that Thanos has come to Earth in search of the Cosmic Cube, which the Avengers know could make him invincible. The meeting is interrupted by the Controller, who has broken into the mansion. Black Panther is knocked out in the fight, and when he awakens, he discovers that part of their headquarters has been completely demolished and he and his teammates are buried in the wreckage. As they dig themselves out, the heroes are frustrated to learn that the Controller kidnapped Lou-Ann and escaped. The Avengers notice that Captain Marvel’s hair has changed from silver to blond, but he says only that he’s had a strange experience that’s given him a new perspective. Work on reconstructing Avengers Mansion begins immediately, coordinated by the various charitable foundations Tony Stark has set up for such emergencies. Captain Marvel soon defeats the Controller and rescues Lou-Ann.
July 1966 – Black Panther agrees to serve another term as Avengers chairman, taking over from Captain America. Soon after, chaos erupts in the Middle East when a group of super-powered terrorists dubbed the Elementals seals off the Egyptian capital, Cairo, behind an impenetrable force field. The United Nations requests that the Avengers mobilize when the terrorists launch attacks on neighboring countries like Israel and the Sudan but is reluctant to send the team in for fear of making international tensions in the region worse. Ultimately, freedom fighters within Cairo manage to liberate the city and defeat the Elementals, though details remain sketchy.
August–September 1966 – T’Challa supervises the reconstruction of the team’s headquarters, working closely with the Stark charitable foundations. He decides to upgrade many of the mansion’s security systems with Wakandan technology.
October 1966 – When Thor returns from his Scandinavian camping trip with the catatonic Loki, he agrees to take over as Avengers chairman, bringing T’Challa’s relatively quiet second stint to a close.
On Halloween, Mantis senses mystic emanations that portend great danger in Rutland, Vermont. Remembering the events of previous years, the Avengers decide they’d better check it out. When they arrive, Tom Fagan, one of the parade’s organizers, asks them to ride on one of the floats. Black Panther, Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man agree, hoping to draw out the source of the unknown danger, but the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, the Swordsman, and Mantis decide not to participate and wander off into the crowd. Two hours later, as the parade is winding down, T’Challa is frustrated that nothing has happened. Fagan then leads the four heroes through the woods toward his house, only to suddenly reveal that he is the villain in disguise. Catching the Avengers off guard with some magic pellets, he knocks them out and takes them prisoner. When he comes to, T’Challa discovers that they have been captured by the Collector, but the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, the Swordsman, and Mantis have come to the rescue. The Collector activates two magic stones that produce a swarm of vampire bats that threaten the entire town, hoping to barter for his freedom. However, Mantis kicks the villain in the face and knocks him out, then uses the magic stones to make the bats vanish again. The real Tom Fagan thanks the Avengers for saving the city and offers them any further assistance he can provide. Thor asks Fagan if he would be willing to take over caring for Loki, feeling that Rutland would be a more appropriate setting for his near-catatonic brother. Fagan agrees, so the Avengers return to their Quinjet and fly back to New York. Unfortunately, the Collector escapes as soon as he regains consciousness.
November 1966 – In the morning, Captain America and Thor take a Quinjet and fly Loki up to Rutland, Vermont. Sometime later, Cap holds a strategy session in which the team reviews their clash in the spring with the Defenders and how they all worked together to defeat the combined might of Loki and Dormammu.
Captain America meets with T’Challa at Avengers Mansion to discuss the power imbalance between himself and his partner, the Falcon, who feels he needs to be more than a mere costumed athlete to work effectively alongside Cap. As an African American, the Falcon was uncomfortable asking for help from a white scientist and requested that Cap approach the Black Panther. T’Challa says he would be happy to help. Thus, the next morning, he lands a Wakandan airship in Harlem to pick up the Falcon and his girlfriend, Leila Taylor, and take them back to his kingdom in Africa. When they arrive, T’Challa has one of his court handmaidens, Tanzika, give Leila a tour of the Wakandan capital while he and the Falcon set about creating a high-tech flight rig for aerial combat. The next day, however, Leila is bored out of her mind and has a temper tantrum. T’Challa defuses the situation by arranging a shopping trip for Leila (along with a retinue of bodyguards) to the bustling metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, on the Atlantic coast. Unfortunately, a couple hours later, T’Challa receives a report that Leila has been kidnapped and her escort gunned down in the street. Thus, Black Panther and Falcon head to Nigeria at once. Upon arrival in Lagos, the two heroes learn that Leila is being held prisoner by the exiled American gangster known as Stone-Face, whom the Falcon and Captain America busted in Harlem two years ago. They storm into Stone-Face’s headquarters, but during the fight, the Falcon loses control of his new flight rig and collides with the Black Panther, knocking them both out. When he comes to, T’Challa finds that the gangsters have brought them to a cliff on the coast to kill them. Both heroes are pushed off the cliff, but the Falcon is able to activate his flight rig, save the Black Panther, and soar back up to attack the gangsters. Black Panther scales the rock face and helps the Falcon finish off Stone-Face and his goons. After the gangsters have been turned over to the Nigerian authorities, Black Panther flies the Falcon and Leila back to Wakanda, where they make some final adjustments to the flight rig. T’Challa then arranges to have one of his pilots return the American couple to Harlem while he meets with his regent, N’Gassi. His advisors Taku, Zatama, and W’Kabi all urge T’Challa to remain in Wakanda, but he disregards their entreaties and is soon on his way back to New York.
Black Panther arrives at Avengers Mansion and finds the Swordsman, confined to a wheelchair, telling Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch that he’s determined to join them in the hunt for the international crime cartel Zodiac, as he wants revenge on them for injuring Mantis. However, it is clear that the Swordsman is in no condition to go anywhere. T’Challa is concerned when the Avengers inform him that Captain America has been framed for the murder of the small-time super-crook known as the Tumbler and is currently a fugitive from justice. Nevertheless, the Avengers split up to search the city for Zodiac’s hidden lair. Just before dawn, Thor summons them to a warehouse in New Jersey, where they find seven members of the cartel meeting with the crooked financier Cornelius Van Lunt. The Avengers crash through the window to take their foes by surprise, but Van Lunt slips out during the fight and seals off the warehouse, revealing it to be a deathtrap. Before the Avengers or the seven members of Zodiac can react, Van Lunt launches the building into orbit. Thor tries to smash through the side of the warehouse, only to discover the building is surrounded by the same kind of force field that Zodiac used when they held Manhattan hostage two years ago. His enchanted hammer passes through the field but then is unable to return to him. Appearing to panic, Thor dives behind some crates and hides under a tarp. The other Avengers and Zodiac are confused by the thunder god’s behavior. Scarlet Witch is able to create a momentary weak spot in the field with her mutant hex power, which allows Iron Man to fly out and retrieve the hammer. Before Iron Man can get back inside, though, Libra arrives in Zodiac’s spaceplane, the Star-Cruiser, and rescues them. Once Thor emerges from his hiding place, everyone joins Libra aboard the Star-Cruiser, and he flies them to Van Lunt’s penthouse. There, Van Lunt is revealed to be Taurus, and though he conspired with Capricorn, Gemini, and Virgo to kill off the other members of the cartel, he convinces his erstwhile partners-in-crime to put aside their differences long enough to destroy the Avengers. However, the Avengers win the fight, which ends when the Vision knocks Taurus into his swimming pool. Taurus panics, though, because he can’t swim, but the Vision makes no move to rescue him. Luckily, Mantis charges in at that moment, dives into the water, and hauls Taurus to the surface. Thor is angry with the Vision, but the synthezoid offers no defense, even when the Scarlet Witch presses him on it. Disgusted, Thor demands that Libra explain why he betrayed Taurus and saved them all. Libra admits that it was something of a mistake; he really just wanted to rescue Mantis, having assumed she was with the Avengers—because she is his daughter.
The Avengers turn the rest of Zodiac over to the police and free Sgt. Damian Link, the team’s new liaison officer with the NYPD who had been taken prisoner, but they take Libra back to Avengers Mansion for questioning. There, he explains how he met Mantis’s mother when he was fighting in the First Indochina War as a member of the French Foreign Legion. After a whirlwind romance, they were married, but her brother, the crime lord known as Monsieur Khruul, objected to the match and tried to have them killed. Mantis was born while they were on the run. Eventually, Khruul’s assassins caught up to them and killed Libra’s wife, but he and his daughter found refuge in a remote monastery. The monks, who called themselves the Priests of Pama, raised Mantis, teaching her their unique form of martial arts. Finally, Libra admits, he left her there and returned to Europe. Consumed with rage, Mantis attacks Libra, but he subdues her, having learned the same fighting techniques that she did. Suddenly, the Avengers realize that the Swordsman has taken a Quinjet and is heading to Vietnam to take vengeance on Monsieur Khruul. Before they can follow, Iron Man must fly to Van Lunt’s property in New Jersey to retrieve their other Quinjet. When he returns, the Avengers set off, accompanied by Libra.
When the Avengers arrive at Monsieur Khruul’s villa on the outskirts of Saigon, they find the Swordsman tied to a chair. He admits he broke under torture and told the crime lord about the Priests of Pama and how to find them. Libra then leads the team to the remote monastery, but they arrive too late—all the monks have been slaughtered by Khruul’s assassins. The Avengers defeat the assassins, but Khruul flees deeper into the temple, only to be killed by the Star-Stalker, a dragon-like alien who has come to feed on the planet’s life-energies now that the Priests of Pama can no longer prevent him from doing so. The Star-Stalker shrugs off the Avengers’ initial attack, then spins a cocoon around itself in order to transform into its energy-absorbing form. Black Panther contacts S.H.I.E.L.D. and arranges for them to deliver Zodiac’s ‘Star-Blaster’ weapon, which the agency has impounded. Unfortunately, when it emerges from its cocoon, the Star-Stalker proves to be impervious to the weapon’s rays. The creature slams Iron Man and Thor into each other, knocking them both out, then uses its tail to take out the Black Panther and Libra. When he comes to, T’Challa finds that Mantis and the Vision figured out how to defeat the Star-Stalker and were able to kill it. Leaving the Swordsman to recover in a Saigon hospital, the other Avengers return to New York, though Iron Man elects to remain in Vietnam on personal business.
December 1966 – Black Panther is at Avengers Mansion when Captain America returns from his recent battle against the Secret Empire in Washington, D.C. The team congratulates Cap on clearing his name, but he is in no mood to celebrate. Cap says cryptically that there was more to the situation than was revealed on the news, but he refuses to discuss it further. Thor soon returns from a trip to visit Loki in Rutland, Vermont, and then Mantis brings in the Swordsman, who is just back from Vietnam. A little while later, the Avengers meet with Captain Marvel, Drax the Destroyer, and their enigmatic friend Moondragon to discuss the problem of Thanos. Mar-Vell reports that Thanos has conquered the colony on Titan and worse, is now in possession of the Cosmic Cube. However, the strategy session is cut short when Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Drax, and Moondragon suddenly vanish into thin air. The Avengers realize they must have been kidnapped by Thanos. Though unable to find any trace of their missing friends, the Avengers learn from the space station Starcore One that an armada of spaceships is heading toward Earth from the vicinity of Mars—presumably Thanos’s fleet of space pirates that Captain Marvel warned them of. Deciding to intercept the armada before it reaches Earth, the Avengers take their spaceworthy Quinjet and Zodiac’s confiscated Star-Cruiser out to meet the threat. As the battle is joined, Thor leaves the Quinjet and smashes into the command deck of the fleet’s flagship, where he takes on an army of armored aliens singlehandedly. T’Challa pilots the Star-Cruiser, using its devastating Star-Blaster weapon against the invaders, but the armada still manages to reach Earth. In high orbit, the Quinjet blasts one of the alien ships, but it plummets down through the atmosphere and crashes in New York City. The Avengers then detect an amorphous area of utter darkness nearby, which proves to be a cloaking field around the ship that serves as the armada’s central universal translator. Vision, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, and Mantis don spacesuits and penetrate the cloaking field. Several minutes later, the field collapses, revealing the ship within. The Star-Cruiser and the Quinjet destroy the ship, causing the aliens to lose their ability to communicate with each other. Gaining the upper hand, the Avengers press their attack, and within the hour, the fleet of invading ships has been destroyed, with a handful of survivors in full retreat. Victorious, the Avengers soon land on the roof of their Manhattan headquarters.
Unfortunately, the team quickly discovers that Thanos has used the Cosmic Cube to shift the entire planet out of phase to prevent them from interfering with his plans. The space armada, they realize, was merely a distraction meant to lure the Avengers off Earth while Thanos caused the phase-shift. Still, Mantis is able to contact Captain Marvel and tell him what happened. Captain Marvel and Drax the Destroyer then attack Thanos, their fight soon carrying them away from Avengers Mansion as the team watches helplessly. Mantis sets off after them, and a few minutes later, the phase-shift is abruptly cancelled out. Entering their headquarters, the Avengers discover that Iron Man has returned as well, though he’s not sure how he got there. After comparing notes, they track Mantis to a nearby rooftop, where they find her with Captain Marvel and Drax. Captain Marvel has somehow defeated Thanos by smashing the Cosmic Cube, though he and Mantis give only vague and evasive answers to the Avengers’ questions. As Drax flies off into the night sky, Captain Marvel trades places with Rick Jones, who accompanies the others back to the mansion. Not long afterward, Captain America and Iron Man bring a vintage cryogenic chamber to the team’s headquarters after discovering it in the rubble of an old government research facility that collapsed a few blocks away. Iron Man decides to have some technicians from Stark Industries examine it after the holidays. Rick then says goodbye to the Avengers and sets out on a 15-city concert tour as part of the opening act for a more famous rock-and-roll band.
Having received yet another telegram from Wakanda inquiring about the length of his stay in America, Black Panther is brooding at Avengers Mansion when Ambassador Ronald Pershing of Rhodesia comes seeking the Avengers’ help. Though the ambassador refuses to shake hands with a black man, T’Challa ignores the insult and listens as Pershing describes the death threats sent recently to the staff of the Rhodesian embassy. The threats took on a new urgency that morning, he reports, when their groundskeeper was found burnt to a crisp. On behalf of the team, Vision agrees to look into the matter. Out in the street, however, Black Panther, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Swordsman, Mantis, and Pershing are suddenly trapped in a force field made of solid sound. Klaw, seemingly grown to giant size, looms over them and gloats as his new partner-in-crime, Solarr, hovers nearby inside an energy bubble. Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man emerge from the mansion and learn that the villains are threatening to roast their hostages unless the Black Panther surrenders the throne of Wakanda to Klaw, after which he intends to declare war on Rhodesia to pay them back for the harsh treatment he suffered there last year. When the giant Klaw proves to be a sonic illusion, the three senior Avengers search the neighborhood for the real villain, but Black Panther deduces that he is, in fact, masquerading as Ambassador Pershing. With their scheme revealed, Klaw and Solarr are quickly defeated, but Black Panther decides that he must take a leave of absence and return to Wakanda for a while. Thor, as current team chairman, grants the request and calls the Avengers to gather to toast their valiant African comrade. Unfortunately, their celebration is marred when the Scarlet Witch and the Vision get into an argument about the Swordsman’s assertion that the Vision is trying to steal Mantis away from him. T’Challa is frustrated with the Scarlet Witch’s bad attitude of late and the discord it has caused. The atmosphere around the mansion is still a bit tense a day or two later when the Black Panther joins the others for the Avengers’ fifth annual Christmas charity benefit.
A few days later, T’Challa is preparing to depart for Wakanda when Jarvis informs him of a large, mysterious aircraft coming in low towards the city from the south. Since the rest of the Avengers are out on another mission, T’Challa agrees to check it out. Taking a Quinjet, Black Panther intercepts the craft and saves Spider-Man from falling to his doom. Spider-Man then explains that the airship is under the command of someone called Stegron, the Dinosaur Man, who is using it to bring an army of dinosaurs to New York City from the Savage Land. After conferring with Stegron’s former research partner, Dr. Curt Connors, Black Panther and Spider-Man work together to devise an extra-strong web formula to use against Stegron’s dinosaurs. Their work is cut short when a radio bulletin announces that the prehistoric horde has rampaged through Central Park and is heading toward Times Square. Racing to the scene, Black Panther fights with Stegron while Spider-Man tries to web up the dinosaurs. Connors arrives soon after and tells Stegron that his transformation into a Dinosaur Man is irreversible, prompting the villain to flee the battle on a pterodactyl. Spider-Man pursues him out over the harbor. When the Black Panther and Connors catch up to Spider-Man on the waterfront, they can see the pterodactyl webbed to the torch of the Statue of Liberty. However, Spider-Man reports that Stegron has drowned in the harbor. He clearly feels dejected that he was unable to save the mutated scientist. Black Panther then arranges with the authorities to have the captured dinosaurs returned to the Savage Land.
Returning the Quinjet, Black Panther learns that the Scarlet Witch has apparently found her birth parents: the World War II era heroes known as the Whizzer and Miss America. The Whizzer had come to Avengers Mansion to reclaim the vintage cryogenic chamber, as his radioactive mutant son had been kept in suspended animation in it for the last 18 years. The capsule had opened, though, and the mutant went on a rampage, dubbing himself “Nuklo.” He was recaptured by the Avengers and returned to cryogenic stasis, although the Whizzer suffered a heart attack and is resting upstairs. T’Challa is happy for the Scarlet Witch and hopes that this discovery will improve her attitude.
On the last day of the year, T’Challa asks Monica Lynne if she would like to accompany him back to Wakanda. Though she is not sure about giving up her career as a social worker, he convinces her of the many benefits of spending some time in Africa. T’Challa promises to have his people see to the settling of Monica’s affairs in New York so they can depart immediately. When they arrive in Wakanda, Monica is amazed by the royal palace and the adjoining “technological jungle” that T’Challa has constructed. However, during a grand feast to celebrate his return, T’Challa quickly realizes that his retinue isn’t too sure about their king bringing in his American girlfriend. He assures himself that they will warm up to Monica once they get to know her.
Notes:
January 1966 – The Avengers’ battles with Magneto and the Lion God span Avengers #110–112, with a detour into Daredevil #99 and an additional flashback in Captain America #173. The Lion God is most likely the Nubian god Apedemak, who is related to the Egyptian pantheon. The Panther God worshiped in Wakanda is of the same pantheon, being a composite figure of the goddess Bast and her son Mahes.
February 1966 – The Avengers are rescued from Kang and Zarrko by Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Human Torch, and the Inhumans in Marvel Team-Up #9–11. The Avengers then repair the Statue of Liberty at the beginning of Avengers #113.
March 1966 – The Avengers save the Vision from the suicide bombers in the rest of Avengers #113.
April 1966 – Mantis and the Swordsman turn up and help the Avengers defeat the Lion God in Avengers #114. Apparently, the Lion God never manages to return from the dimension to which Thor banishes him.
May 1966 – The Avengers and the Defenders team up to defeat Loki and Dormammu in Avengers #115–118 and Defenders #8–11. Additional information is provided in a flashback in Avengers #157, and the Avengers return home in the first few pages of Avengers #119. While the Avengers are searching for the Evil Eye segments, Wakanda is doubtless caught up in the global wave of violence caused by the invading demons of Sominus, as seen in Adventure into Fear #14–15. Iron Man warns the Avengers about Thanos shortly after Iron Man #56.
June 1966 – The Avengers and Captain Marvel battle the Controller in Captain Marvel #27–30.
July 1966 – The United Nations places the Avengers on standby as the Elementals terrorize Cairo in Supernatural Thrillers #13. T’Challa and his teammates remain behind the scenes, though.
October 1966 – The bulk of Avengers #119 covers the last Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade story.
November 1966 – T’Challa is behind the scenes during Captain America’s strategy session in Defenders #13. Black Panther teams up with the Falcon to defeat Stone-Face in Captain America #169–171, then helps the Avengers battle Zodiac, defeat Monsieur Khruul, and save the world from the Star-Stalker in Avengers #121–124.
December 1966 – The Avengers team up with Captain Marvel and his friends to battle Thanos and his space armada in Captain Marvel #31–33 and Avengers #125. Confusingly, three different time periods are mashed together in the first three pages of Avengers #125—Lou-Ann Savannah’s arrival at the mansion (in June), Libra being taken away by the police (in November), and Captain America returning to the Avengers after defeating the Secret Empire (in December). This is clearly done for dramatic effect. Captain America and Iron Man bring Nuklo’s cryogenic chamber to the mansion in a flashback in Giant-Size Avengers #1, then Rick Jones says goodbye in Captain Marvel #34. Klaw and Solarr attack in Avengers #126. Rhodesia is once again fictionalized as “Rudyarda,” named after the British author Rudyard Kipling. The Scarlet Witch and the Vision’s argument is seen in one of the many flashbacks in Avengers #280, in which T’Challa remains behind the scenes. Black Panther then helps Spider-Man defeat Stegron the Dinosaur Man in Marvel Team-Up #20. The Avengers’ encounter with the Whizzer and Nuklo is depicted in Giant-Size Avengers #1. Monica Lynne’s presence in Wakanda is revealed in Jungle Action #6, the start of the Black Panther’s first solo feature.
Jump To: The Black Pather – Year Five
Jump Back: The Black Panther – Year Three
Next Issue: Power Man – Year Two
Wednesday
Monday
OMU: Black Panther -- Year Three
The Black Panther returns to his kingdom of Wakanda for much of the next twelve months and thus largely drops out of sight, as he didn’t have his own solo series at this point. Even so, we do get to see more of his developing friendship with Daredevil, which underscores the fact that T’Challa remains something of an outsider among the Avengers. As far as battling supervillains goes, he has rematches with Klaw and the Grim Reaper, as well as starting an interesting rivalry with his fellow monarch Doctor Doom. But we continue to wait for a more in-depth examination of Wakandan society.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now continuing… The True History of the Black Panther!
January 1965 – T’Challa returns to Andrew Jackson High School in Harlem when the new semester starts and resumes his identity as teacher “Luke Charles,” wanting to finish up a few things before tendering his resignation and going home to Wakanda. He is concerned that his student Lonnie Carver continues to cut class consistently and remains a discipline problem. Feeling he has somehow failed the boy, T’Challa decides to try to find out where Lonnie goes when he skips school. However, the Black Panther is summoned to an Avengers meeting by Captain America and his new partner, the Falcon. When he arrives at Avengers Mansion, T’Challa is joined by Goliath, the Vision, Thor, Iron Man, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Cap and Falcon request assistance investigating a mystery in the Pacific Ocean, which they learned of while rescuing an old friend of the Falcon’s from a voodoo cult in New Orleans. T’Challa begs off, wanting to go back to Harlem to search for Lonnie. Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver also opt out, having promised Mister Fantastic they would keep an eye on the Baxter Building while the Fantastic Four are vacationing in Las Vegas. Even so, T’Challa feels that five superheroes should be enough for the mission Cap has proposed, and thus he returns to Harlem.
A few nights later, Black Panther discovers Lonnie roaming the neighborhood with the Thunderbolts street gang. Bitterly disappointed, he decides to confront Lonnie about it the next time the boy is in class. Unfortunately, Lonnie does not show up for school at all over the next several days. Black Panther checks on Lonnie’s home and finds that his older brother, Billy Carver, doesn’t seem to be living there anymore. He is disturbed, though, to overhear Lonnie on the phone discussing an upcoming warehouse robbery. T’Challa decides to delay his return to Wakanda in hopes that he can save Lonnie from a life of crime.
Held up by a routine Avengers meeting, Black Panther is late arriving at the scene of the warehouse robbery and finds that Daredevil has already busted it up. However, Lonnie has been badly injured after driving a truck into a brick wall, so the two heroes rush him to the nearest hospital. While Lonnie is in surgery, Black Panther and Daredevil go up to the roof to talk. T’Challa explains his history with the Carver brothers and his dual identity as “Luke Charles,” as well as revealing that he knows that Daredevil is Matt Murdock. When it seems that Lonnie has lost the will to live due to Billy having joined the Thunderbolts gang, Daredevil leads the Black Panther to another warehouse where they find Billy and the gang preparing to rob the local armory. The two heroes defeat the gang and rush Billy to Lonnie’s hospital room, where the older brother finally reveals that he was working undercover for the district attorney’s office to gather evidence against the Thunderbolts. With his faith in humanity restored, Lonnie’s condition begins to improve. Black Panther and Daredevil then get a bite to eat at a nearby all-night diner, where they get to know each other better.
T’Challa leaves New York a day early when he learns that a long-dormant volcano in Wakanda has suddenly become active again. He tries to calm his panicky subjects and vows to investigate the cause of the disaster. Thus, he descends into the volcano, where he discovers a highly advanced tunnel-boring machine belonging to Doctor Doom. Black Panther confronts Doom, who has come to steal vibranium from the sacred mound. Unfortunately, Doom easily overcomes his fellow monarch and has him chained up inside the machine. Realizing that Doom could trigger a catastrophic natural disaster by tunneling into the mound, T’Challa knows that he may have to match the tyrant’s ruthlessness in order to defeat him. Breaking free of his bonds, Black Panther takes a weapon from one of Doom’s henchmen and threatens to fire into an exposed vein of unstable raw vibranium, which could set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire nation. Determining that T’Challa would indeed sacrifice Wakanda to prevent him from enslaving the world, Doctor Doom accepts defeat and withdraws. As the tunnel-boring machine disappears into the earth, T’Challa breathes a sigh of relief, wondering if he really could have pulled the trigger.
T’Challa then presides over a lavish state funeral for his uncle N’Baza, the late regent. By strictly adhering to tradition, T’Challa hopes to reassure those among his subjects who have felt disconcerted by his modernization efforts. Then, knowing that attempts by supervillains such as Klaw and Doctor Doom to steal vibranium are likely to persist, he turns his attention to developing a weapon he calls a ‘vibrotron,’ which can weaponize vibranium by generating a metal-disintegrating beam. This is based on the properties of the vibranium alloy found in the Savage Land dubbed the ‘anti-metal’ by the British scientist Lord Plunder. T’Challa becomes very disturbed when he watches TV coverage of the Avengers testifying before a congressional subcommittee on their involvement with aliens from outer space. The conservative politician in charge of the proceedings, H. Warren Craddock, seems to go out of his way to cast suspicion on the Avengers, who are represented by Goliath, the Vision, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Rick Jones. The Fantastic Four also testify and are less than supportive of their fellow heroes, which T’Challa finds disappointing.
February 1965 – A few weeks later, T’Challa is contacted by the Vision after the Avengers find Hercules suffering from amnesia. Though he gives the matter his full attention, T’Challa is unable to come up with anything likely to help. Soon after, he is summoned by Rick Jones to rendezvous with all other members of the Avengers at Garrett Castle in England, home of the Black Knight. When he arrives, Black Panther joins Captain America, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Hawkeye (who has abandoned the Goliath identity), the Vision, Thor, Iron Man, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and even the Hulk. The Black Knight leads them into the depths of the castle, where he summons up the spirit of his ancestor, Sir Percy of Scandia, the original Black Knight of legend. Sir Percy’s ghost reveals how Ares, the Greek god of war, came into possession of the magical Ebony Blade and teamed up with the Enchantress to conquer three worlds: Earth, Asgard, and Olympus. Their first move was to transform the gods of Olympus into crystalline statues and banish Hercules to Earth, bereft of his memory. Unexpectedly, the Swordsman swings down from the rafters and claims his Avengers membership, demanding to help stop Ares. Captain America is not inclined to trust the Swordsman, but Thor accepts him into their ranks. The thunder god then chooses the Vision, Iron Man, the Black Knight, and the Hulk to accompany him to Olympus while the rest remain behind to guard Earth. Black Panther’s squad soon detects an interdimensional portal opening in the center of London and speeds to the scene, where they find an army of demonic creatures pouring through a hole in space. The demons are quickly driven back into their own realm, at which point Thor’s squad emerges through the portal, having rescued Hercules and defeated the villains. However, Hercules must remain in Olympus to help Thor close the portal. Having won the day, the Avengers go their separate ways, and the Black Panther returns to Wakanda.
March 1965 – Not long after the vibrotron has been completed, a small plane crash-lands in the Wakandan jungle. Bucking tradition, T’Challa has its two passengers—a black man named Nathan Kumalo and a white man named Jeth Robards—brought to the palace to recover. However, the two men steal the vibrotron that night and flee the country. A palace guard reports that he overheard the thieves planning to meet with their buyer in Rhodesia, but he was discovered and knocked out before he could apprehend them. Frustrated, T’Challa suits up as the Black Panther and pursues the thieves into the British colony notorious for its white-supremacist government. Unfortunately, he is arrested in the capital city, Salisbury, and given a harsh sentence when the authorities assume his Black Panther costume marks him as a member of some secret terrorist sect. In prison, T’Challa worries that his subjects will attempt to invade Rhodesia and rescue him, possibly starting a war. He is relieved when the Thing and the Human Torch turn up instead to help him recover the vibrotron. The Black Panther, the Thing, and the Human Torch then track Robards—who has already betrayed his partner—to an abandoned factory, where the buyer turns out to be Klaw. The villain immediately attacks the three heroes, and in the confusion, Robards tries to escape with the vibrotron in Klaw’s helicopter. Without hesitation, Klaw blows up the helicopter, killing Robards and destroying the vibrotron. The Thing crushes Klaw’s sonic blaster, after which he is easily defeated. Some white security guards appear and take Klaw into custody. They thank the Thing and the Human Torch for their help but ignore the Black Panther. Annoyed, the Thing smashes down a wall containing racially segregated doorways. T’Challa appreciates the gesture, and the three heroes leave the country together.
April–September 1965 – For the next six months, T’Challa focuses on governing Wakanda with the help of his royal advisors N’Gassi, Taku, and Zatama. He spends much of his time negotiating among the various factions in Wakandan society and comes to rely on the insights offered by W’Kabi, the hotheaded captain of the palace guard. The royal physician Mendinao is encouraged to bring his expertise in traditional herbalism to the new state-of-the-art medical facility, which is run by T’Challa’s young cousin Joshua Itobo, who has a degree in western medicine. With the traitor M’Baku in prison in America, T’Challa’s half-brother Jakarra has been promoted to a position of authority in the military, but the estranged siblings rarely speak to each other. T’Challa is concerned about rumors of unrest among the villages in the western hill country, though a multitude of other issues compete for his attention. When he needs a break, T’Challa retreats to his “technological jungle,” where he can indulge his fascination with high-tech gadgets.
October 1965 – Chafing under the yoke of kingship, T’Challa announces that he will be returning to the United States and rejoining the Avengers for a time, though he refuses to say how long he intends to stay away. He appoints N’Gassi to serve as regent during his absence, then departs. After settling in at his townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, T’Challa suits up as the Black Panther and walks over to Avengers Mansion. When he arrives, Black Panther is immediately recruited for a mission to Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America, in search of the missing Quicksilver. Scarlet Witch has learned that a trio of Chilean scientists doing research there has been abducted by strange men with superhuman powers, and she wants to check it out. Thus, Black Panther joins the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, the Vision, and Iron Man, as well as Thor and his Asgardian lover Sif, aboard a Quinjet for the flight south. Along the way, T’Challa gets caught up on what the Avengers have been doing since January. When they arrive, the team discovers a tunnel that leads them into the mysterious Savage Land. While making their way through the prehistoric jungle, they are attacked by the Savage Land Mutates—Amphibius, Barbarus, Brainchild, Equilibrius, Gaza, Lorelei, and Lupo. Black Panther defeats Lupo while his teammates take care of the rest of their foes. Freeing the scientists, the Avengers march the Mutates out of the Savage Land and turn them over to the Chilean authorities to face kidnapping charges.
The next day, back at Avengers Mansion, T’Challa meets Thor’s other friends who have joined him in exile from Asgard—Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun the Grim, Balder the Brave, and Hildegarde, as well as two aliens called Tana Nile and Silas Grant. They are all currently staying at the mansion while they figure out what to do with themselves. Thor and Sif go off together, saying they have an important appointment elsewhere. Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch continues to search for clues to her brother’s disappearance. She soon calls the Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Iron Man into the communications room to show them a news broadcast their butler, Edwin Jarvis, had recorded while they were away. Suddenly, however, the console shorts out, and Iron Man discovers that the device has been completely rewired. Fandral, who has been hanging out there the whole time, insists that he saw no one sabotage the console. While Iron Man makes the necessary repairs, the other Avengers leave to check out the new lead, but it proves to be another dead end. Later, Thor reports that he and Spider-Man rewired the console while battling a group of Asgardian Trolls who had stopped time with a magic crystal.
A few days later, T’Challa receives a phone call from Daredevil, asking him to come out to San Francisco to help with a ruse to safeguard his secret identity. Since moving out to California, Daredevil explains, he has been seen in the company of the Black Widow in both his civilian and superhero identities, and people are starting to speculate. T’Challa agrees at once and takes a Quinjet out to the west coast. When he arrives, he disguises himself as Daredevil and fights off a Japanese assassin called the Blue Talon while Matt Murdock speaks with TV news crews on the scene. The Blue Talon is killed when he strikes a gas main with his steel hand blades, causing an explosion. The fake Daredevil then joins Murdock in front of the cameras and listens as he gives his elaborate cover story to the San Francisco police commissioner. After changing out of Daredevil’s costume, T’Challa returns to New York, glad to have been able to help a friend in need.
T’Challa looks up Monica Lynne to let her know he’s back in the states. He finds her still pursuing her career as a social worker while moonlighting as a nightclub singer in Harlem. True to her word, she is also very active in the civil rights movement. T’Challa and Monica start dating on a regular basis, but being a very private person, he does not discuss his personal life with the Avengers.
On Halloween, Black Panther joins the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Iron Man in Manhattan’s East Village to investigate yet another mysterious disappearance. However, they are tricked into fighting each other by the Space Phantom, whom T’Challa remembers reading about in the Avengers’ files. While the Avengers are distracted by the Space Phantom’s boasting about his convoluted revenge scheme, the Grim Reaper sneaks up and hits them with a paralysis beam. The four heroes are taken back to the villains’ lair and imprisoned in an anti-gravity field. Black Panther is shocked when the Grim Reaper suggests that the Vision is working with them against the Avengers. He struggles to free himself from the anti-gravity trap, but to no avail.
November 1965 – Some hours later, Black Panther is relieved when Captain America and the Vision come to the rescue. The Avengers then storm through the underground complex and fight with a horde of HYDRA agents under the Space Phantom’s command. Unfortunately, the Space Phantom’s alien technology is able to subdue the Avengers, and they soon find themselves trapped once again in the anti-gravity field. The villains leave to hunt down the Scarlet Witch, who has escaped. Vision explains that the Grim Reaper had offered to use the Space Phantom’s machines to transfer the Vision’s mind into Captain America’s body, in exchange for help destroying the Avengers. The synthezoid decided to play along until he could devise a plan to defeat the villains. Soon, the Space Phantom and the Grim Reaper return, having captured the Scarlet Witch, Rick Jones, and Edwin Jarvis. The Space Phantom decides to assume Rick’s form while he kills the heroes but is unexpectedly thrown back into Limbo due to Rick’s shared existence with Captain Marvel. Materializing in Rick’s place, the Kree-born superhero frees the Avengers, and they make short work of the HYDRA goons. The Grim Reaper surrenders, and he and his henchmen are all turned over to the authorities. When the team returns to Avengers Mansion, T’Challa is surprised to learn that the Vision and the Scarlet Witch have fallen in love.
A week or so later, T’Challa is shocked by reports that Hank and Janet Pym have apparently died in a house fire, but Ant-Man soon turns up alive, fighting with a supervillain called Doctor Nemesis in the lower levels of Avengers Mansion. When his foe is defeated, Ant-Man leads the Black Panther, Captain America, the Vision, and Iron Man to rescue the Wasp from a secret A.I.M. installation on Long Island. The Avengers then invite the Pyms to return to active duty, but they decline, saying they prefer their private lives.
December 1965 – Two days after Hawkeye abruptly disappears from Avengers Mansion, an oddly worded letter arrives in the mail informing the team that the archer has accepted a business opportunity with a notorious corporate tycoon known as Champion. Knowing Hawkeye to be impulsive, T’Challa doesn’t think much of it.
A couple weeks later, Black Panther attends the fourth annual Avengers Christmas charity benefit with Captain America, the Vision, Iron Man, and the Scarlet Witch. T’Challa decides not to invite Monica to the party at the mansion but takes her out for a night on the town instead. After a day or so, Scarlet Witch convinces her teammates that Hawkeye’s letter is a forgery and he may be in trouble. Black Panther, Vision, Thor, and Iron Man join her in traveling to California, where they find Hawkeye held prisoner by Champion in the Mojave Desert. The Avengers overcome Champion and his gang of masked henchmen and foil their plot to detonate a string of bombs along the San Andreas Fault. Hawkeye refuses to rejoin the team, though, so the Avengers leave him in California and fly back to New York.
Notes:
January 1965 – The Black Panther and Daredevil team up against the Thunderbolts street gang in Daredevil #69. The Avengers meeting takes place in Avengers #88. T’Challa then returns to Wakanda and battles Doctor Doom in Astonishing Tales #6–7. The U.S. government’s Alien Activities Commission is created by the newly inaugurated President Morris N. Richardson, who is actually the leader of the subversive organization known as the Secret Empire. The head of the commission, H. Warren Craddock (actually a Skrull in disguise), grills the Avengers during televised hearings in Avengers #92.
February 1965 – Black Panther helps the Avengers foil Ares’ scheme of interdimensional conquest in Avengers #99–100.
March 1965 – Black Panther teams up with the Thing and the Human Torch to battle Klaw in Fantastic Four #119. In the story, Rhodesia is fictionalized as “Rudyarda,” named after British author Rudyard Kipling, who wrote, among other things, the imperialist poem “The White Man’s Burden.” There’s also some nonsense about the Black Panther changing his name to “the Black Leopard,” but that can be dispensed with. Shortly after this, T’Challa finds himself dealing with the end of the world—along with everyone else on the disintegrating planet—during Thor #185–188, but luckily Odin erases those events from the timestream, so they never happened.
October 1965 – Black Panther returns to the Avengers in time to join them on their mission to the Savage Land in Avengers #105. While hiking out to the Swamp Men’s village, T’Challa tells his teammates the tales Daredevil heard from Ka-Zar about how Magneto created the Savage Land Mutates. I assume Daredevil told the Black Panther about it at the diner in January. T’Challa is behind the scenes during the “negative time” effect in Marvel Team-Up #7. Four days later, Black Panther flies out to San Francisco to lend Daredevil a hand with his secret identity problems in Daredevil #92. The early days of T’Challa’s romance with Monica Lynne occur largely behind the scenes, as little attention was paid to his personal life during this period. Black Panther is then captured along with his fellow Avengers by the Space Phantom and the Grim Reaper in Avengers #106–107.
November 1965 – The Space Phantom / Grim Reaper story concludes in Avengers #108, during which T’Challa meets Captain Marvel for the first time. Black Panther then appears in Marvel Feature #10 for the conclusion of Ant-Man’s brief revival series.
December 1965 – Black Panther joins the Avengers in rescuing Hawkeye from the megalomaniac Champion in Avengers #109. The team’s annual Christmas charity benefit occurs behind the scenes, as usual.
Next Issue: The Black Panther – Year Four
Jump Back: The Black Panther – Year Two
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now continuing… The True History of the Black Panther!
January 1965 – T’Challa returns to Andrew Jackson High School in Harlem when the new semester starts and resumes his identity as teacher “Luke Charles,” wanting to finish up a few things before tendering his resignation and going home to Wakanda. He is concerned that his student Lonnie Carver continues to cut class consistently and remains a discipline problem. Feeling he has somehow failed the boy, T’Challa decides to try to find out where Lonnie goes when he skips school. However, the Black Panther is summoned to an Avengers meeting by Captain America and his new partner, the Falcon. When he arrives at Avengers Mansion, T’Challa is joined by Goliath, the Vision, Thor, Iron Man, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Cap and Falcon request assistance investigating a mystery in the Pacific Ocean, which they learned of while rescuing an old friend of the Falcon’s from a voodoo cult in New Orleans. T’Challa begs off, wanting to go back to Harlem to search for Lonnie. Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver also opt out, having promised Mister Fantastic they would keep an eye on the Baxter Building while the Fantastic Four are vacationing in Las Vegas. Even so, T’Challa feels that five superheroes should be enough for the mission Cap has proposed, and thus he returns to Harlem.
A few nights later, Black Panther discovers Lonnie roaming the neighborhood with the Thunderbolts street gang. Bitterly disappointed, he decides to confront Lonnie about it the next time the boy is in class. Unfortunately, Lonnie does not show up for school at all over the next several days. Black Panther checks on Lonnie’s home and finds that his older brother, Billy Carver, doesn’t seem to be living there anymore. He is disturbed, though, to overhear Lonnie on the phone discussing an upcoming warehouse robbery. T’Challa decides to delay his return to Wakanda in hopes that he can save Lonnie from a life of crime.
Held up by a routine Avengers meeting, Black Panther is late arriving at the scene of the warehouse robbery and finds that Daredevil has already busted it up. However, Lonnie has been badly injured after driving a truck into a brick wall, so the two heroes rush him to the nearest hospital. While Lonnie is in surgery, Black Panther and Daredevil go up to the roof to talk. T’Challa explains his history with the Carver brothers and his dual identity as “Luke Charles,” as well as revealing that he knows that Daredevil is Matt Murdock. When it seems that Lonnie has lost the will to live due to Billy having joined the Thunderbolts gang, Daredevil leads the Black Panther to another warehouse where they find Billy and the gang preparing to rob the local armory. The two heroes defeat the gang and rush Billy to Lonnie’s hospital room, where the older brother finally reveals that he was working undercover for the district attorney’s office to gather evidence against the Thunderbolts. With his faith in humanity restored, Lonnie’s condition begins to improve. Black Panther and Daredevil then get a bite to eat at a nearby all-night diner, where they get to know each other better.
T’Challa leaves New York a day early when he learns that a long-dormant volcano in Wakanda has suddenly become active again. He tries to calm his panicky subjects and vows to investigate the cause of the disaster. Thus, he descends into the volcano, where he discovers a highly advanced tunnel-boring machine belonging to Doctor Doom. Black Panther confronts Doom, who has come to steal vibranium from the sacred mound. Unfortunately, Doom easily overcomes his fellow monarch and has him chained up inside the machine. Realizing that Doom could trigger a catastrophic natural disaster by tunneling into the mound, T’Challa knows that he may have to match the tyrant’s ruthlessness in order to defeat him. Breaking free of his bonds, Black Panther takes a weapon from one of Doom’s henchmen and threatens to fire into an exposed vein of unstable raw vibranium, which could set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire nation. Determining that T’Challa would indeed sacrifice Wakanda to prevent him from enslaving the world, Doctor Doom accepts defeat and withdraws. As the tunnel-boring machine disappears into the earth, T’Challa breathes a sigh of relief, wondering if he really could have pulled the trigger.
T’Challa then presides over a lavish state funeral for his uncle N’Baza, the late regent. By strictly adhering to tradition, T’Challa hopes to reassure those among his subjects who have felt disconcerted by his modernization efforts. Then, knowing that attempts by supervillains such as Klaw and Doctor Doom to steal vibranium are likely to persist, he turns his attention to developing a weapon he calls a ‘vibrotron,’ which can weaponize vibranium by generating a metal-disintegrating beam. This is based on the properties of the vibranium alloy found in the Savage Land dubbed the ‘anti-metal’ by the British scientist Lord Plunder. T’Challa becomes very disturbed when he watches TV coverage of the Avengers testifying before a congressional subcommittee on their involvement with aliens from outer space. The conservative politician in charge of the proceedings, H. Warren Craddock, seems to go out of his way to cast suspicion on the Avengers, who are represented by Goliath, the Vision, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Rick Jones. The Fantastic Four also testify and are less than supportive of their fellow heroes, which T’Challa finds disappointing.
February 1965 – A few weeks later, T’Challa is contacted by the Vision after the Avengers find Hercules suffering from amnesia. Though he gives the matter his full attention, T’Challa is unable to come up with anything likely to help. Soon after, he is summoned by Rick Jones to rendezvous with all other members of the Avengers at Garrett Castle in England, home of the Black Knight. When he arrives, Black Panther joins Captain America, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Hawkeye (who has abandoned the Goliath identity), the Vision, Thor, Iron Man, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and even the Hulk. The Black Knight leads them into the depths of the castle, where he summons up the spirit of his ancestor, Sir Percy of Scandia, the original Black Knight of legend. Sir Percy’s ghost reveals how Ares, the Greek god of war, came into possession of the magical Ebony Blade and teamed up with the Enchantress to conquer three worlds: Earth, Asgard, and Olympus. Their first move was to transform the gods of Olympus into crystalline statues and banish Hercules to Earth, bereft of his memory. Unexpectedly, the Swordsman swings down from the rafters and claims his Avengers membership, demanding to help stop Ares. Captain America is not inclined to trust the Swordsman, but Thor accepts him into their ranks. The thunder god then chooses the Vision, Iron Man, the Black Knight, and the Hulk to accompany him to Olympus while the rest remain behind to guard Earth. Black Panther’s squad soon detects an interdimensional portal opening in the center of London and speeds to the scene, where they find an army of demonic creatures pouring through a hole in space. The demons are quickly driven back into their own realm, at which point Thor’s squad emerges through the portal, having rescued Hercules and defeated the villains. However, Hercules must remain in Olympus to help Thor close the portal. Having won the day, the Avengers go their separate ways, and the Black Panther returns to Wakanda.
March 1965 – Not long after the vibrotron has been completed, a small plane crash-lands in the Wakandan jungle. Bucking tradition, T’Challa has its two passengers—a black man named Nathan Kumalo and a white man named Jeth Robards—brought to the palace to recover. However, the two men steal the vibrotron that night and flee the country. A palace guard reports that he overheard the thieves planning to meet with their buyer in Rhodesia, but he was discovered and knocked out before he could apprehend them. Frustrated, T’Challa suits up as the Black Panther and pursues the thieves into the British colony notorious for its white-supremacist government. Unfortunately, he is arrested in the capital city, Salisbury, and given a harsh sentence when the authorities assume his Black Panther costume marks him as a member of some secret terrorist sect. In prison, T’Challa worries that his subjects will attempt to invade Rhodesia and rescue him, possibly starting a war. He is relieved when the Thing and the Human Torch turn up instead to help him recover the vibrotron. The Black Panther, the Thing, and the Human Torch then track Robards—who has already betrayed his partner—to an abandoned factory, where the buyer turns out to be Klaw. The villain immediately attacks the three heroes, and in the confusion, Robards tries to escape with the vibrotron in Klaw’s helicopter. Without hesitation, Klaw blows up the helicopter, killing Robards and destroying the vibrotron. The Thing crushes Klaw’s sonic blaster, after which he is easily defeated. Some white security guards appear and take Klaw into custody. They thank the Thing and the Human Torch for their help but ignore the Black Panther. Annoyed, the Thing smashes down a wall containing racially segregated doorways. T’Challa appreciates the gesture, and the three heroes leave the country together.
April–September 1965 – For the next six months, T’Challa focuses on governing Wakanda with the help of his royal advisors N’Gassi, Taku, and Zatama. He spends much of his time negotiating among the various factions in Wakandan society and comes to rely on the insights offered by W’Kabi, the hotheaded captain of the palace guard. The royal physician Mendinao is encouraged to bring his expertise in traditional herbalism to the new state-of-the-art medical facility, which is run by T’Challa’s young cousin Joshua Itobo, who has a degree in western medicine. With the traitor M’Baku in prison in America, T’Challa’s half-brother Jakarra has been promoted to a position of authority in the military, but the estranged siblings rarely speak to each other. T’Challa is concerned about rumors of unrest among the villages in the western hill country, though a multitude of other issues compete for his attention. When he needs a break, T’Challa retreats to his “technological jungle,” where he can indulge his fascination with high-tech gadgets.
October 1965 – Chafing under the yoke of kingship, T’Challa announces that he will be returning to the United States and rejoining the Avengers for a time, though he refuses to say how long he intends to stay away. He appoints N’Gassi to serve as regent during his absence, then departs. After settling in at his townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, T’Challa suits up as the Black Panther and walks over to Avengers Mansion. When he arrives, Black Panther is immediately recruited for a mission to Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America, in search of the missing Quicksilver. Scarlet Witch has learned that a trio of Chilean scientists doing research there has been abducted by strange men with superhuman powers, and she wants to check it out. Thus, Black Panther joins the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, the Vision, and Iron Man, as well as Thor and his Asgardian lover Sif, aboard a Quinjet for the flight south. Along the way, T’Challa gets caught up on what the Avengers have been doing since January. When they arrive, the team discovers a tunnel that leads them into the mysterious Savage Land. While making their way through the prehistoric jungle, they are attacked by the Savage Land Mutates—Amphibius, Barbarus, Brainchild, Equilibrius, Gaza, Lorelei, and Lupo. Black Panther defeats Lupo while his teammates take care of the rest of their foes. Freeing the scientists, the Avengers march the Mutates out of the Savage Land and turn them over to the Chilean authorities to face kidnapping charges.
The next day, back at Avengers Mansion, T’Challa meets Thor’s other friends who have joined him in exile from Asgard—Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun the Grim, Balder the Brave, and Hildegarde, as well as two aliens called Tana Nile and Silas Grant. They are all currently staying at the mansion while they figure out what to do with themselves. Thor and Sif go off together, saying they have an important appointment elsewhere. Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch continues to search for clues to her brother’s disappearance. She soon calls the Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Iron Man into the communications room to show them a news broadcast their butler, Edwin Jarvis, had recorded while they were away. Suddenly, however, the console shorts out, and Iron Man discovers that the device has been completely rewired. Fandral, who has been hanging out there the whole time, insists that he saw no one sabotage the console. While Iron Man makes the necessary repairs, the other Avengers leave to check out the new lead, but it proves to be another dead end. Later, Thor reports that he and Spider-Man rewired the console while battling a group of Asgardian Trolls who had stopped time with a magic crystal.
A few days later, T’Challa receives a phone call from Daredevil, asking him to come out to San Francisco to help with a ruse to safeguard his secret identity. Since moving out to California, Daredevil explains, he has been seen in the company of the Black Widow in both his civilian and superhero identities, and people are starting to speculate. T’Challa agrees at once and takes a Quinjet out to the west coast. When he arrives, he disguises himself as Daredevil and fights off a Japanese assassin called the Blue Talon while Matt Murdock speaks with TV news crews on the scene. The Blue Talon is killed when he strikes a gas main with his steel hand blades, causing an explosion. The fake Daredevil then joins Murdock in front of the cameras and listens as he gives his elaborate cover story to the San Francisco police commissioner. After changing out of Daredevil’s costume, T’Challa returns to New York, glad to have been able to help a friend in need.
T’Challa looks up Monica Lynne to let her know he’s back in the states. He finds her still pursuing her career as a social worker while moonlighting as a nightclub singer in Harlem. True to her word, she is also very active in the civil rights movement. T’Challa and Monica start dating on a regular basis, but being a very private person, he does not discuss his personal life with the Avengers.
On Halloween, Black Panther joins the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Iron Man in Manhattan’s East Village to investigate yet another mysterious disappearance. However, they are tricked into fighting each other by the Space Phantom, whom T’Challa remembers reading about in the Avengers’ files. While the Avengers are distracted by the Space Phantom’s boasting about his convoluted revenge scheme, the Grim Reaper sneaks up and hits them with a paralysis beam. The four heroes are taken back to the villains’ lair and imprisoned in an anti-gravity field. Black Panther is shocked when the Grim Reaper suggests that the Vision is working with them against the Avengers. He struggles to free himself from the anti-gravity trap, but to no avail.
November 1965 – Some hours later, Black Panther is relieved when Captain America and the Vision come to the rescue. The Avengers then storm through the underground complex and fight with a horde of HYDRA agents under the Space Phantom’s command. Unfortunately, the Space Phantom’s alien technology is able to subdue the Avengers, and they soon find themselves trapped once again in the anti-gravity field. The villains leave to hunt down the Scarlet Witch, who has escaped. Vision explains that the Grim Reaper had offered to use the Space Phantom’s machines to transfer the Vision’s mind into Captain America’s body, in exchange for help destroying the Avengers. The synthezoid decided to play along until he could devise a plan to defeat the villains. Soon, the Space Phantom and the Grim Reaper return, having captured the Scarlet Witch, Rick Jones, and Edwin Jarvis. The Space Phantom decides to assume Rick’s form while he kills the heroes but is unexpectedly thrown back into Limbo due to Rick’s shared existence with Captain Marvel. Materializing in Rick’s place, the Kree-born superhero frees the Avengers, and they make short work of the HYDRA goons. The Grim Reaper surrenders, and he and his henchmen are all turned over to the authorities. When the team returns to Avengers Mansion, T’Challa is surprised to learn that the Vision and the Scarlet Witch have fallen in love.
A week or so later, T’Challa is shocked by reports that Hank and Janet Pym have apparently died in a house fire, but Ant-Man soon turns up alive, fighting with a supervillain called Doctor Nemesis in the lower levels of Avengers Mansion. When his foe is defeated, Ant-Man leads the Black Panther, Captain America, the Vision, and Iron Man to rescue the Wasp from a secret A.I.M. installation on Long Island. The Avengers then invite the Pyms to return to active duty, but they decline, saying they prefer their private lives.
December 1965 – Two days after Hawkeye abruptly disappears from Avengers Mansion, an oddly worded letter arrives in the mail informing the team that the archer has accepted a business opportunity with a notorious corporate tycoon known as Champion. Knowing Hawkeye to be impulsive, T’Challa doesn’t think much of it.
A couple weeks later, Black Panther attends the fourth annual Avengers Christmas charity benefit with Captain America, the Vision, Iron Man, and the Scarlet Witch. T’Challa decides not to invite Monica to the party at the mansion but takes her out for a night on the town instead. After a day or so, Scarlet Witch convinces her teammates that Hawkeye’s letter is a forgery and he may be in trouble. Black Panther, Vision, Thor, and Iron Man join her in traveling to California, where they find Hawkeye held prisoner by Champion in the Mojave Desert. The Avengers overcome Champion and his gang of masked henchmen and foil their plot to detonate a string of bombs along the San Andreas Fault. Hawkeye refuses to rejoin the team, though, so the Avengers leave him in California and fly back to New York.
Notes:
January 1965 – The Black Panther and Daredevil team up against the Thunderbolts street gang in Daredevil #69. The Avengers meeting takes place in Avengers #88. T’Challa then returns to Wakanda and battles Doctor Doom in Astonishing Tales #6–7. The U.S. government’s Alien Activities Commission is created by the newly inaugurated President Morris N. Richardson, who is actually the leader of the subversive organization known as the Secret Empire. The head of the commission, H. Warren Craddock (actually a Skrull in disguise), grills the Avengers during televised hearings in Avengers #92.
February 1965 – Black Panther helps the Avengers foil Ares’ scheme of interdimensional conquest in Avengers #99–100.
March 1965 – Black Panther teams up with the Thing and the Human Torch to battle Klaw in Fantastic Four #119. In the story, Rhodesia is fictionalized as “Rudyarda,” named after British author Rudyard Kipling, who wrote, among other things, the imperialist poem “The White Man’s Burden.” There’s also some nonsense about the Black Panther changing his name to “the Black Leopard,” but that can be dispensed with. Shortly after this, T’Challa finds himself dealing with the end of the world—along with everyone else on the disintegrating planet—during Thor #185–188, but luckily Odin erases those events from the timestream, so they never happened.
October 1965 – Black Panther returns to the Avengers in time to join them on their mission to the Savage Land in Avengers #105. While hiking out to the Swamp Men’s village, T’Challa tells his teammates the tales Daredevil heard from Ka-Zar about how Magneto created the Savage Land Mutates. I assume Daredevil told the Black Panther about it at the diner in January. T’Challa is behind the scenes during the “negative time” effect in Marvel Team-Up #7. Four days later, Black Panther flies out to San Francisco to lend Daredevil a hand with his secret identity problems in Daredevil #92. The early days of T’Challa’s romance with Monica Lynne occur largely behind the scenes, as little attention was paid to his personal life during this period. Black Panther is then captured along with his fellow Avengers by the Space Phantom and the Grim Reaper in Avengers #106–107.
November 1965 – The Space Phantom / Grim Reaper story concludes in Avengers #108, during which T’Challa meets Captain Marvel for the first time. Black Panther then appears in Marvel Feature #10 for the conclusion of Ant-Man’s brief revival series.
December 1965 – Black Panther joins the Avengers in rescuing Hawkeye from the megalomaniac Champion in Avengers #109. The team’s annual Christmas charity benefit occurs behind the scenes, as usual.
Next Issue: The Black Panther – Year Four
Jump Back: The Black Panther – Year Two
Tuesday
OMU: Black Panther -- Year Two
The Black Panther moves out into the wider Marvel Universe during the next twelve months, relocating to New York City as a member of the Avengers. He also meets his first love-interest, the American singer, social worker, and civil rights activist Monica Lynne. Additionally, since writer/editor Roy Thomas seemed to believe that all superheroes must have a secret identity, T’Challa started teaching high school under the alias “Luke Charles,” though the storyline was never developed and ultimately fizzled out. Though underutilized, the Black Panther is frequently seen giving the Avengers the benefit of his genius for mechanical engineering, which easily rivals Tony Stark’s, particularly with the introduction of the team’s signature aircraft, the Quinjet.
Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.
Now continuing… The True History of the Black Panther!
January–February 1964 – T’Challa, recently crowned monarch of the small African nation of Wakanda, continues his controversial modernizations efforts. He becomes increasingly frustrated with the limitations imposed on him by his role as king, wanting to have a greater direct impact on people’s lives both at home and abroad.
March 1964 – T’Challa takes some of his warriors to inspect an island in the Caribbean that he has purchased. Detecting intruders, T’Challa suits up as the Black Panther and goes to investigate. He finds three members of the royal family of the Inhumans: Black Bolt, Medusa, and Karnak. They are searching for the source of an unknown danger, and learning they are friends of the Fantastic Four, T’Challa decides to offer them assistance. Using their uncanny abilities, the Inhumans discover a high-tech installation hidden under the ground, only to be attacked by three mercenaries with strange weapons. However, Live Wire, Shellshock, and Ivan Karlovich are quickly defeated by the Black Panther and the Inhumans. Moving deeper into the complex, T’Challa is glad when two more Inhumans, Triton and Lockjaw, teleport in with the Human Torch and the Thing. Triton confirms Black Bolt’s suspicion that the villain they are seeking, known as Psycho-Man, threatens the world with a sinister emotion-manipulating ray. When a nightmarish, many-tentacled monster attacks them, Black Panther slips into an air duct and makes his way to the central control room. No sooner has he spotted Psycho-Man, though, than a large, panther-like monster appears in the duct and attacks him. Their brutal battle ends when the creature is disintegrated by a strange shockwave. Black Panther races back to his friends and finds them, now joined by another Inhuman called Gorgon, writhing under their foe’s emotion-rays. T’Challa leaps out of the duct and tackles Psycho-Man, but the villain collapses like an empty suit. The others explain that Psycho-Man himself is microscopic, having come from a “sub-atomic” realm known as a microverse to conquer the Earth with his bizarre technology, and with his armor disabled, he no longer poses a threat. The Fantastic Four take possession of Psycho-Man’s armor and the emotion-ray generator he was carrying so Mister Fantastic can study them at the Baxter Building. T’Challa claims the villain’s base, as it is on his property, and sets about dismantling and examining the fully-operational, large-scale “mind-ray” device their foe was about to activate.
April 1964 – Back in Wakanda, T’Challa is informed that one of his border outposts has been destroyed by foreign mercenaries. Fearing that Klaw may be making another attempt to steal vibranium, Black Panther goes to investigate. He finds the outpost’s personnel have all been killed and tracks the mercenaries into the jungle, where he attacks them. Unfortunately, the mercenaries overwhelm T’Challa with their high-tech weapons and give him a brutal beating. Nevertheless, he trails his foes back to their base camp, where he is astonished to discover that their leader appears to be Baron Zemo, the infamous Nazi war criminal reported killed while battling Captain America last year. Black Panther slips back to the palace to have his wounds treated, but soon a blistering energy beam from space carves a swath of destruction through the jungle. T’Challa’s military advisors report that the beam originates from an orbiting satellite that is protected by an impenetrable force field. Though he knows their only chance is to disable the satellite’s control center on the ground, T’Challa realizes he cannot take on Baron Zemo and his private army alone. Thus, he decides to call on the villain’s nemesis, Captain America, for help.
T’Challa sends an aero-car to New York City and is relieved when Captain America agrees to lend a hand. When the aero-car enters Wakandan airspace about an hour later, though, it is nearly destroyed by a blast from the orbiting satellite. T’Challa brings the ship in for a safe landing by remote control, then briefs the star-spangled hero on the situation. However, T’Challa withholds the identity of their foe, fearing Captain America would find it impossible to believe. Before they set out, Cap phones his teammates at Avengers Mansion and leaves a message on their answering service. The two heroes then track down the mercenaries and fight them in the jungle, only to be taken prisoner. In his underground bunker, Baron Zemo gives his enemies a beating while gloating about his plans to use his orbiting death-ray to destroy the United States. When Zemo’s agent, the notorious spy Irma Kruhl, arrives with a list of American military targets, T’Challa begins to worry that he and Cap have failed. Luckily, she proves to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in disguise and destroys Zemo’s satellite control panel with a flame-thrower concealed in her briefcase. As the trio fights its way through Zemo’s mercenaries, T’Challa realizes that S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 13 is also Captain America’s girlfriend. Their escape is thwarted by a powerful robot, which delays them long enough for Zemo and his mercenaries to swarm in and hold the trio at gunpoint. However, Cap grabs Zemo and yanks off his facemask, revealing him to be an impostor. Cap recognizes the man as Zemo’s former pilot, Franz Gruber. Outraged by the deception, one of the mercenaries shoots the impostor dead. Black Panther demands that the mercenaries surrender, as the warriors of Wakanda now have the bunker surrounded. Realizing they aren’t going to get paid, the mercenaries comply. As Zemo’s forces are taken into custody, Agent 13 deactivates the force field around the satellite, allowing S.H.I.E.L.D. to destroy it with a missile strike. Cap then takes T’Challa aside and explains that he’s taking a leave of absence from the Avengers and suggests that the Black Panther serve as his replacement. T’Challa realizes that this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for to make a difference in the world outside Wakanda. He accepts the offer, so Cap radios his teammates and arranges it. T’Challa then asks his friend M’Baku to serve as regent while he is in America with the Avengers. M’Baku agrees and appoints his ally N’Gamo to serve as his chancellor. Believing Wakanda is in good hands, T’Challa flies Captain America and Agent 13 back to the United States.
About an hour after landing in New York City, Black Panther arrives at Avengers Mansion, only to find the building completely dark. He enters through a hatch in the ceiling that Captain America told him about and is shocked to discover Goliath, the Wasp, and Hawkeye apparently dead on the floor. S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell finds the Black Panther there and places him under arrest. When the police arrive, Hawkeye’s girlfriend, Natasha Romanoff, enters as well and is distraught to find her friends dead. She tells Sitwell that she’s never heard the Avengers mention anyone called the Black Panther, which makes the authorities doubt T’Challa’s story. When the conference room access code given to him by Captain America fails to work, T’Challa realizes he’s being framed for the murders, so he does not resist when the police escort him to the local precinct. When they arrive, though, T’Challa realizes that the true killer must have been hiding in the conference room. Thus, while the police are trying to sort out whether he actually has diplomatic immunity, T’Challa escapes from custody and returns to the scene of the crime. His suspicions are confirmed when he sneaks inside and finds the Grim Reaper, a supervillain with a scythe-like weapon, ranting to himself about having avenged the death of his brother, Wonder Man. Black Panther attacks him and in the ensuing battle learns that the Avengers are not truly dead—the Grim Reaper’s scythe merely induced a death-like state so the three heroes would either be buried alive or killed by the autopsy. Disgusted by such villainy, T’Challa fights even more savagely until the Grim Reaper accidentally stabs himself with his scythe. Black Panther seizes the weapon and, leaving his foe writhing in pain, races to the hospital where the Avengers were taken. There, he uses the scythe to revive them, ignoring the injuries he sustained during the fight. The three grateful heroes clear things up with the police, then take T’Challa back to the mansion. Unfortunately, the Grim Reaper has made good his escape. Goliath, Wasp, and Hawkeye vote unanimously to induct the Black Panther into their ranks.
In the days that follow, T’Challa meets the Avengers’ butler, Edwin Jarvis. Though Jarvis offers to prepare a room for T’Challa in the mansion, the king declines, preferring to purchase a townhouse on the Upper West Side. T’Challa then summons a small staff of domestic servants from Wakanda to manage the property for him. He is also interested to meet Goliath’s research partner, an African-American scientist named Bill Foster. However, T’Challa senses a thinly veiled animosity from the Wasp’s chauffeur, Charles Matthews, and wonders what lies behind it. While recovering from the injuries he sustained fighting the Grim Reaper, T’Challa familiarizes himself with the Avengers’ files and reports.
May 1964 – Black Panther and Goliath capture an intruder who turns out to be the Angel, a member of the X-Men. Angel informs them that he can lead them to the island fortress of the infamous mutant terrorist Magneto, where Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, former members of the Avengers, are being held captive along with the other X-Men. Joined by the Wasp and Hawkeye, they take an aero-car out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and storm Magneto’s complex. However, the Avengers find they must fight the other X-Men—Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, and the Beast—as Magneto has somehow brainwashed them. The Avengers overcome the X-Men and smash their way into Magneto’s command center. Unexpectedly, Magneto’s obsequious henchman, the Toad, activates a self-destruct mechanism, declaring that the entire island will be destroyed in less than a minute. The Avengers and the X-Men, now free of their foe’s influence, evacuate the fortress as Magneto and the Toad flee for their lives. Reaching the Avengers’ aero-car on the beach, the two teams see Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch escaping with the Toad in another airship. Magneto tries to join them, but the Toad kicks him away. Magneto falls into the ocean from a great height as a series of tremendous explosions obliterate the island. As the aero-car takes to the skies, the Avengers can only assume that Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch want nothing more to do with them. Dejectedly, the Avengers drop the X-Men off in Manhattan on their way home. T’Challa, however, is proud that his first official mission with the Avengers was a success.
Black Panther and Goliath work together to improve the security systems at Avengers Mansion. However, just hours after informing Jarvis about the new protocols, the mansion is invaded by a gang of supervillains known as the Masters of Evil, comprised of Klaw, the Melter, the Radioactive Man, and Whirlwind. Taken unawares, the Avengers are quickly captured by their enemies. The team is shocked when the new leader of the Masters of Evil, the Crimson Cowl, is revealed to be Edwin Jarvis himself. Black Panther is then knocked unconscious, and when he wakes up, he finds himself trapped with his teammates inside a missile with an armed nuclear warhead. The Crimson Cowl appears on a closed-circuit TV monitor and taunts the Avengers by revealing Jarvis to be merely his hypnotized pawn. The real Crimson Cowl is in fact a robot calling itself Ultron-5. The missile is then launched, with the Avengers still aboard, but they are saved in mid-flight by the new Black Knight, who had tried to infiltrate the Masters of Evil by posing as his villainous predecessor. After a quick battle, the heroes capture Klaw, the Melter, and the Radioactive Man, but Whirlwind manages to escape. Once the missile’s hydrogen bomb has been disarmed, the Black Knight describes how Jarvis helped him to save the Avengers’ lives and explains that the butler betrayed the team because he needed money to pay for his mother’s chemotherapy treatments. Back at the mansion, Jarvis insists that he believed the Avengers would easily defeat the Masters of Evil and was desperate to help his ailing mother. However, he is unable to explain why he didn’t seek help from Tony Stark, or why he can’t remember where the hidden base of Ultron-5 is located. Nevertheless, the Avengers decide to give Jarvis a second chance, since he did risk his life to save theirs, but they remain somewhat wary of their butler in the weeks to follow.
June 1964 – T’Challa spends a quiet month exploring New York City and using the Avengers’ training facilities. Though he remains excited to be part of the world’s foremost superhero team, he realizes there is still something in the back of his mind that leaves him feeling vaguely dissatisfied.
July 1964 – At the beginning of the month, the Avengers convince T’Challa to take a turn as team chairman. He finds that such administrative duties come naturally to him. Then, a few days after hosting a Fourth-of-July picnic attended by the Fantastic Four, the Avengers receive a mysterious summons from Captain America which leads them to Doctor Doom’s abandoned castle in upstate New York. Having learned about the notorious supervillain’s time machine from Mister Fantastic, Cap is intent on using it to find out if there’s any way his old junior partner, Bucky, could have escaped his fiery death in 1945. Leaving the Wasp to operate the time machine’s control panel, Black Panther, Captain America, Goliath, and Hawkeye journey back to the fateful day when Cap entered a state of suspended animation. Materializing as invisible, intangible phantoms, they watch Cap and Bucky’s encounter with Baron Zemo at a U.S. Army base on the British coast. However, when Zemo knocks his foes out and binds them to the drone plane he is about to launch, the Avengers unexpectedly materialize fully, allowing Cap to free his past self. After a brief struggle with Zemo’s android henchmen, the Avengers return to their previous wraith-like state. The heroes watch grimly as Bucky is engulfed in a fireball while trying to deactivate the drone plane and Cap’s past self plunges into the sea. The time machine then takes the Avengers back to Doctor Doom’s castle. The Wasp admits she momentarily dozed off at the controls, and Goliath speculates that that must have been what caused them to fully phase into the past. The team locks up the castle and jets back to Manhattan.
Out for a walk one evening, T’Challa ruminates on his discontentment, thinking he should be trying to help people in a more direct manner. When he stumbles upon a robbery in progress, he becomes the Black Panther and captures the crooks in spectacular fashion. A group of African-American children have witnessed the incident, he realizes, and when one boy says he could use a Black Panther up on his block, T’Challa decides he needs to focus his efforts on the city’s poor black neighborhoods. He is then summoned back to Avengers Mansion, where he joins Goliath, the Wasp, and Hawkeye in a laboratory where they are examining an inert android with red skin and a strange green-and-gold costume. T’Challa is intrigued when the others discuss a failed project by Goliath and Bill Foster to build a “synthezoid,” a unique synthesis of android and robot. Suddenly, the android revives and attacks them, and during the fight he adopts the name “the Vision” for himself, based on a comment the Wasp had made about him. Goliath realizes that the Vision possesses the power to control his own density and tries to reason with him. The android agrees to stop fighting as he attempts to remember where he came from and why he felt compelled to attack the Avengers. The Avengers are shocked when the Vision recalls that his creator was a robot called Ultron-5. He then agrees to lead the Avengers to Ultron-5’s headquarters, hidden beneath an abandoned tenement on New York’s Lower East Side. When they arrive, the Avengers come under fire from automated defensive systems, and Goliath is separated from his teammates. Before the other Avengers can decide what to do, the walls start closing in on them. Insisting that he was unaware such traps awaited them, Vision phases through the wall and disappears. Several minutes later, Vision frees them and leads them to the smoking wreck of Ultron-5’s body, where they are rejoined by Goliath. Grateful to the Vision for defeating Ultron-5, the Avengers invite him to accompany them back to the mansion. Goliath takes the wreckage of Ultron-5’s body for study but is unable to find the robot’s head. When they arrive at their headquarters, Hawkeye introduces the Vision to Jarvis, since the android will be staying at Avengers Mansion for the time being.
Soon after, T’Challa decides to become a high school teacher for at-risk inner-city kids. He contacts the New York City school system, using the “Luke Charles” identity that was created for him when he was a college student, and makes all the necessary arrangements.
August 1964 – Black Panther joins Captain America, Goliath, the Wasp, Hawkeye, Thor, and Iron Man at Avengers Mansion to discuss the Vision’s petition for membership. Searching for clues as to the Vision’s origins, the Avengers head out to Goliath’s abandoned suburban laboratory in Cresskill, New Jersey. There, they discover that Goliath created Ultron back in January, though the evil robot erased his memory of it, and it then went on to evolve itself into Ultron-5. Seeking to destroy the Avengers, Ultron-5 created the Vision using recordings the team had made of Wonder Man’s brain patterns last year. The Avengers then return to their mansion and, after some deliberation, vote to accept the Vision into their ranks. T’Challa is surprised when the Vision appears to be overcome with emotion after hearing their decision.
September 1964 – T’Challa arrives early for a team meeting, since Goliath asked to discuss something with him beforehand. However, Goliath doesn’t show up, so T’Challa holds a training session with Hawkeye and the Vision instead. When the Wasp gets there, she becomes concerned about her partner’s absence. While they are all discussing it, a costumed man calling himself “Yellowjacket” appears and demands to be made a member of the Avengers. When the outraged heroes scoff at his overinflated ego, Yellowjacket claims to have killed Goliath. The Wasp nearly faints at this news. With the help of a swarm of wasps, Yellowjacket fights off the three male Avengers and kidnaps their female teammate. Later, the Wasp reactivates her emergency transponder signal, allowing the Black Panther, Hawkeye, and the Vision to track her to Cresskill City Hall in New Jersey. They are ready to fight with Yellowjacket when he and the Wasp emerge from the building, but she informs her confused teammates that she intends to marry Yellowjacket as soon as possible.
A couple of days later, Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Vision are joined by Captain America and Iron Man for the impromptu wedding ceremony. When the bride and groom arrive at the mansion, the Wasp angrily insists that the Avengers respect her decision. T’Challa then mingles with the other guests, including Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Thing, the Human Torch and his girlfriend Crystal, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, and the Beast, as well as the Black Knight. He also meets Daredevil, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and his girlfriend Clea, and Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Before the ceremony can begin, though, Cap, Iron Man, and Fury are called away on other business. The ceremony goes well, but when the Wasp and Yellowjacket are cutting the cake afterwards, a giant python bursts out of the cake and attacks them. The Avengers ask their guests to step out while they deal with the situation. Moments later, the team is attacked by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime: Princess Python, the crafty Clown, Ernesto and Luigi Gambonno, and the Human Cannonball. While the Gambonno brothers keep the Black Panther busy, the giant python coils around the Wasp, who has been stunned by the Ringmaster. Yellowjacket leaps to her defense but is unable to reach her fast enough. Unexpectedly, Yellowjacket grows to giant-size, revealing himself to be Goliath in a different costume, and rescues his bride. The Circus of Crime is quickly defeated, and the police are called to take them into custody. The wedding guests return for the reception and are pleased to learn that “Yellowjacket” is really the Wasp’s old beau and not some stranger. When the party ends, the newlyweds depart for their honeymoon.
The following Monday, T’Challa starts teaching at Andrew Jackson High School in Harlem, using the alias “Luke Charles.” He finds the work to be highly rewarding and feels he’s having a positive impact on his students’ lives. Not long after, T’Challa is shocked when Iron Man informs the Avengers that Captain America has apparently been gunned down by HYDRA assassins on the waterfront. They try to learn more about the circumstances of Cap’s death from Rick Jones, who is dressed as Cap’s WWII-era partner Bucky, but the lad is too upset to discuss it. A funeral service is quickly arranged, attended also by Nick Fury and other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., including Cap’s bereaved girlfriend Agent 13, who now introduces herself as Sharon Carter. During the eulogy, everyone present is suddenly knocked out by a powerful anesthetic gas. When the Black Panther comes to, he finds himself in a coffin about to be buried alive by HYDRA agents in a gloomy cemetery. However, Captain America reappears and, with Rick, pursues the fleeing HYDRA agents as the Avengers recover their senses. Relieved that Cap is not dead after all, they return to Avengers Mansion.
The Avengers are contacted by the astral form of Doctor Strange, who is seeking help to save the world. Recognizing him from the wedding, they agree at once, although only the Black Panther, Hawkeye, and the Vision are available. They follow the ectoplasmic Doctor Strange to a cemetery elsewhere in the city, flying in one of the new Quinjets that T’Challa has provided. There, they discover the comatose form of the Black Knight. Rejoining his physical body, Doctor Strange explains that the Black Knight was laid low by a magical crystal while they were investigating an evil cult called the Sons of Satannish. Determined to save the Black Knight, T’Challa carries him to the Quinjet and rushes him to the team’s medical facilities. There, Doctor Strange reluctantly performs a simple operation and the team’s ultra-rejuvenator device does the rest, enabling the Black Knight to make a quick recovery. Vision reports to the others that bizarre natural phenomena have been reported worldwide, such as volcanoes erupting through the ice in Antarctica and snow falling in the jungles of central Africa. Time has run out, Doctor Strange reveals, and the world-threatening spell cast by the Sons of Satannish has done its work, bringing simulacra of the Asgardian monsters Ymir and Surtur to Earth. And so, Black Panther and Vision fly the Quinjet to Wakanda to battle “Ymir” while Hawkeye and the Black Knight take on “Surtur” in Antarctica, all in order to give Doctor Strange time to gain mental control over the magical crystal so that he can use it to send the two creatures back from whence they came. “Ymir” wreaks havoc on Wakanda and destroys the Quinjet, but at the critical moment, the monster is teleported to Antarctica along with the two heroes. “Ymir” and “Surtur” inadvertently strike each other, causing a tremendous implosion. When the smoke clears, the astral form of Doctor Strange appears and congratulates the Avengers and the Black Knight on their victory.
Stopping in Wakanda on the way back to New York, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Vision, and the Black Knight discover that T’Challa’s regent, M’Baku, is scheming to seize the throne. After the other three have been imprisoned, T’Challa is attacked by M’Baku, who is dressed in the forbidden garb of the White Gorilla and calling himself the Man-Ape. As they fight, T’Challa is astonished by M’Baku’s newfound superhuman strength and suspects his treacherous accomplice, N’Gamo, had something to do with it. Their battle leads them through the technological jungle to the nuclear power plant beneath it. There, Black Panther saves the Man-Ape from falling into a reactor, only to be jolted into unconsciousness when his ungrateful foe grabs a handful of live wires. When he comes to, T’Challa finds himself shackled to a stone slab at the base of the sacred panther totem. The Man-Ape tries to topple the totem over onto T’Challa, but instead it just crumbles and crushes the villain under tons of stone. Hawkeye, Vision, and the Black Knight come running up, having finally freed themselves, and release the Black Panther from his bonds. Disillusioned by his friend’s betrayal, T’Challa reluctantly presses old N’Baza back into service as regent before returning to America. He is frustrated when N’Gamo somehow escapes with M’Baku’s body, worried that the Man-Ape will become a martyr to those dissatisfied with T’Challa’s rule. Taking a new Quinjet, the Avengers drop the Black Knight off in England on their way home.
When they arrive at Avengers Mansion, the three heroes are greeted by Yellowjacket and the Wasp, just back from their honeymoon. They explain that Yellowjacket has permanently abandoned his Goliath identity due to the ill-effects of constantly enlarging himself. Before he can destroy his growth serums, though, the Avengers receive an emergency message they believe to be from Nick Fury, which sends them on a wild goose chase to the Caribbean Islands in search of Natasha Romanoff. T’Challa uses his authority as team chairman to make Hawkeye stay behind, believing he’d be too emotionally involved in such a mission. When the four heroes return, however, they find that Hawkeye has disappeared. Soon after, they hear a message broadcast over hijacked radio and TV signals by a supervillain Yellowjacket identifies as his old enemy Egghead. The villain claims to be causing a string of blackouts across the country and threatens to shut down the entire nation’s power grid if his demands are not met. While the Black Panther goes out in search of Hawkeye, Yellowjacket tries to determine where Egghead’s broadcast originated.
About a day later, the Avengers discover that Egghead is broadcasting from an orbiting space station. Unfortunately, the station is cloaked and they are unable to determine its precise coordinates. The villain ups the ante by revealing his powerful “death-ray,” which he demonstrates by obliterating an evacuated Midwestern town. Hawkeye finally returns, accompanied by Natasha, and reveals that he has given up archery to assume the Goliath identity. Yellowjacket agrees to give the new Goliath full use of his size-changing potions. Their meeting is interrupted when Jarvis escorts in the notorious racketeer Barney Barton, who has information on Egghead’s scheme. T’Challa is suspicious of the obvious personal connection between the gangster and Hawkeye/Goliath, but he agrees to allow Barton to accompany the team on their raid of Egghead’s space station. Using the orbital coordinates Barton provides, the Avengers reach the station aboard a Wakandan-built space rocket. There, they battle Egghead’s army of robots until they fall victim to a paralysis ray. Fortunately, Barney Barton sacrifices himself to save the Avengers. Black Panther is stunned to learn that Barton was Hawkeye’s brother.
Since Egghead managed to escape, the Avengers return to their headquarters to discuss their plan of action. Goliath tells them a bit about when he was just a circus performer named Clint Barton and how Barney helped him survive after they’d been orphaned. Suddenly, the Swordsman invades their meeting room, though he is a bit confused about Hawkeye’s new identity. Goliath tries to prevent his teammates from interfering in what he considers to be a private fight, which allows the Swordsman to fire energy beams from his sword that blast the Black Panther, Yellowjacket, the Wasp, and the Vision into unconsciousness. When the Avengers revive, they find both Goliath and the Swordsman are gone, but before long reports come in that Goliath singlehandedly captured the Swordsman and Egghead and turned them over to the police. Soon after, the Avengers grow concerned when Captain America avoids them following a nearly fatal battle against HYDRA. Yellowjacket is certain Cap must have his reasons for his behavior, and Goliath reminds them that, despite recent setbacks, many active HYDRA cells remain. T’Challa is sure that if anyone can bring down HYDRA, it’s Captain America.
T’Challa is surprised when a Wakandan national named N’Jadaka visits him at Avengers Mansion and reveals that he was among those kidnapped by Ulysses Klaw’s men during their failed invasion eleven years ago. He eventually escaped from them, he explains, but lacked the means to return home. T’Challa is very sympathetic to N’Jadaka’s plight and promises to arrange for him to return to Wakanda. A few days later, T’Challa learns from his chief communications officer, Taku, that an army of mercenaries has attacked the country, apparently intent on freeing Zemo’s gang from their island prison. Deciding he’d better take charge of the situation, T’Challa steps down as Avengers chairman a bit early and hands the gavel off to the Vision. He then takes a Quinjet, stopping at the Harlem tenement where N’Jadaka has been living to pick him up. T’Challa is amused by the vast amount of luggage that N’Jadaka is bringing with him. When they land in Wakanda, T’Challa wishes N’Jadaka well as he heads back to his village in the western hill country. Turning his attention to the foreign incursion, T’Challa leads his warriors into battle to repel them. In the midst of an intense firefight, Taku informs T’Challa that the Avengers are requesting a sizable amount of vibranium to use against Ultron-6. After the necessary arrangements have been made, T’Challa returns to the battle, and the invaders are soon routed.
October 1964 – Black Panther finds himself transported to the throne room of Kang the Conqueror at his fortress in the 41st century. Kang explains, one king to another, that he was challenged to a contest by a powerful alien called the Grandmaster. If Kang wins, his lover Ravonna, who hovers between life and death inside a nearby stasis tube, will be restored to full health. If Kang loses, though, the earth will be destroyed. As such, T’Challa agrees with Kang’s plan to bring the Avengers forward in time to serve as his champions. He is annoyed, though, when Kang lures the Avengers into his time-travel vortex by sending an android to kidnap Tony Stark from the hospital where he was about to undergo life-saving surgery. When explanations have been made, Captain America agrees on behalf of Yellowjacket, the Wasp, Goliath, the Vision, and Thor that they will cooperate for the sake of the planet, if not for Kang, on the condition that Kang return Stark to the hospital immediately. As Kang complies, the Grandmaster materializes in the room and teleports Captain America, Goliath, and Thor away for round one of their contest.
Black Panther, Yellowjacket, Wasp, and Vision watch helplessly as the Grandmaster sets four supervillains of his own creation against Captain America, Goliath, Thor, and Iron Man, who materializes out of nowhere to join his teammates. On Liberty Island, Cap defeats Nighthawk. At the Taj Mahal, Iron Man defeats Doctor Spectrum. At the Giza Necropolis in Egypt, Thor defeats Hyperion. However, in London, England, Goliath only beats the Whizzer with the unexpected help of the Black Knight. The Grandmaster calls a foul, since the Black Knight is not a member of the Avengers, and recalls the four heroes to their base. Then, for round two of the contest, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Vision are transported to Nazi-occupied Paris, France, in February 1942, where they encounter the Invaders. Assuming the Avengers to be Nazis, the contemporary Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and Human Torch attack them. After a brief battle, Vision overcomes his three opponents by partially phasing through their bodies, thus disrupting their nervous systems. With victory achieved, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Vision are transported back to Kang’s 41st-century fortress. There, they rejoin Captain America, the Wasp, Goliath, Thor, and Iron Man, as well as the Black Knight, who has followed the Avengers to the future by his own means. Immediately, the heroes storm into Kang’s throne room and battle the time-traveling despot, to the Grandmaster’s great amusement. Once Kang is defeated, the Grandmaster teleports the Avengers home. Black Panther joins his teammates in extending a unanimous offer of membership to the Black Knight. He then drops the Black Knight off in England on his way back to Wakanda to finish up some affairs of state.
T’Challa flies back to New York the following day to rejoin the Avengers. When he arrives at the mansion, he immediately rushes off to help a black woman being assaulted by the Sons of the Serpent, a hate group that’s been making headlines again recently. One of the attackers is accidentally shot dead by his compatriot, and the remaining two are electrocuted by remote control when they fail to overcome the Black Panther. When the police arrive on the scene, the woman identifies herself as Monica Lynne, then storms off after berating the cops for not showing up until after the danger was over. Black Panther makes a statement to the police before heading back to the mansion, leaving the cops to deal with the dead bodies.
The next evening, a strange little man named Silas X. Cragg drops by Avengers Mansion looking for Captain America, whom he wants to invite to a charity benefit at the city orphanage. Yellowjacket phones Cap at the hotel where he’s staying and passes on the information. Later, the Avengers tune in to a late-night TV talk show hosted by notorious right-wing bigot Dan Dunn, who is arguing about civil rights with a controversial black agitator named Montague Hale. T’Challa is intrigued to see that Monica Lynne is also a guest on the program, and he learns that she is a popular local singer. Yellowjacket worries that the Sons of the Serpent may succeed in inciting a race war if something isn’t done. Black Panther insists on having 24 hours to try to resolve the situation on his own. He heads out and goes to Monica Lynne’s apartment building, where he waits for her to return from the TV studio. When she arrives, he implores her not to appear on a follow-up broadcast tomorrow, as he intends to take down the Sons of the Serpent. Black Panther then stalks the city until he finds some members of the hate group on the waterfront. He manages to infiltrate their group and thus gets a ride to their secret base submerged in the harbor. When they arrive, however, his deception is discovered and he is taken prisoner.
Throughout the next day, T’Challa is kept in chains and forced to watch TV coverage of a Black Panther impostor going on a lawless rampage. He realizes the Sons of the Serpent are trying to use the image of a militant black superhero to frighten white people into supporting their cause. Eventually, Dan Dunn’s show comes on again, and T’Challa sees that Monica Lynne has disregarded his advice and agreed to appear. A heated exchange between Dunn and Montague Hale about the Black Panther’s vigilantism nearly becomes a fistfight. The Sons of the Serpent then transport the bound T’Challa to an abandoned TV studio, where they plan to unmask him during a pirate broadcast. However, T’Challa begins to figure out what’s really going on when he realizes there are two different men dressed in the uniform of the Supreme Serpent. Thus, when the Avengers come to the rescue, T’Challa exposes the Black Panther impostor as a white man and reveals that the two Supreme Serpents are none other than Dunn and Hale, who staged their animosity to cover their subversive activities. Monica is disgusted that Hale has betrayed the civil rights movement and decides to put the fight for equality above her singing career. Impressed, T’Challa vows to do all he can for the cause as well.
The following day, T’Challa is doing business at a Manhattan bank when it is robbed by a gang called the Split-Second Squad. He manages to slip away and change into the Black Panther, but the crooks incapacitate him with a sedative gas and escape. A couple days later, Black Panther joins Captain America, Goliath, and the Vision at a Brooklyn pier to see off Yellowjacket and the Wasp, who, along with their friend Bill Foster, are leaving to head up a government research project in Alaska. Once the ship has departed, the Avengers are suddenly accosted by Quicksilver, who tells them that the Scarlet Witch has been kidnapped by an extradimensional barbarian named Arkon, who has also kidnapped numerous nuclear physicists. Unable to breach the dimensional barrier on their own, the Avengers call in Thor and Iron Man for help. Using the power of Thor’s enchanted hammer, the Avengers travel to Arkon’s otherworldly realm of Polemachus and storm his fortress. When Arkon transports himself and the Scarlet Witch to Earth, Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, and Quicksilver pursue them while the older Avengers remain behind to free the kidnapped scientists and solve the energy crisis that prompted Arkon’s incursion in the first place. With no further need for hostilities, Arkon departs peacefully and the Avengers regroup back at their headquarters. Cap introduces the Black Panther and the Vision to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, who say they are ready to rejoin the team.
In the morning, the Avengers receive an urgent call for help from the Air Force’s Desert Base in New Mexico. Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch take a Quinjet and fly out west. When they arrive, they meet with General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross, who informs them that the Hulk is moving westward through the Mole Man’s system of tunnels and must be stopped before he reaches the San Andreas Fault. Immediately, they head northwest in an Air Force VTOL cargo jet, which carries a massive device called a gammatron bombarder, hoping to intercept the Hulk before he can trigger an earthquake. They begin setting up the machinery in a remote clearing in a forest in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Soon they detect the Hulk directly below them, and the Vision passes down through the ground by using his power to alter his body’s density. Moments later, Vision reappears with the Hulk in hot pursuit. The Avengers attack the green behemoth, trying to draw him between the two units of the gammatron bombarder. As soon as Goliath is able to lure the Hulk into position, Black Panther switches on the gamma radiation. Unfortunately, instead of changing back into Bruce Banner as planned, Hulk breaks free, destroys the device, and disappears into the distance before the astonished Avengers can react. Though they failed to capture the Hulk, the Avengers are satisfied that they prevented a major disaster. They return to Desert Base, pick up their Quinjet, and are soon back in New York.
Two days later, T’Challa is at Avengers Mansion when they receive a visit from Tony Stark, who is fighting off a hostile takeover by an unscrupulous businessman named Cornelius Van Lunt. Stark explains that the Avengers must raise $120,000 in back rent on the mansion immediately to help keep Stark Industries afloat during the crisis. T’Challa apologizes for being unable to open Wakanda’s coffers for such a purpose and regrets that he will not be able to participate in the team’s fundraising efforts due to his job as a teacher. The next evening, though, T’Challa does agree to help the Scarlet Witch remove a metal belt that Arkon had locked around her waist. Though the extradimensional alloy proves to be a challenge to his technical skills, T’Challa finally manages to cut it off without injuring her. The Scarlet Witch then rushes off to promote the Avengers’ cause on a nationally televised talk show. Two days after that, Quicksilver informs T’Challa that Van Lunt has offered to drop his attempt to bankrupt Stark if the Avengers would perform certain menial labors for him. However, he suspects that their next job, repairing a condemned tunnel under the East River, may be a death-trap. T’Challa agrees to have the Avengers’ submarine standing by near the tunnel. Quicksilver’s suspicions are borne out when, seconds after the team sneaks out of the tunnel, a series of explosive charges causes it to collapse. The Avengers are now convinced that Van Lunt is the mastermind behind the Split-Second Squad, and sure enough, they find the crooks attempting to steal a shipment of gold bars. Though they make short work of the Split-Second Squad, the Avengers are startled to discover their hooded leader is not Van Lunt after all, but a revenge-minded employee of his seeking to frame the tycoon. Disgusted by the whole affair, the Avengers return home.
After school, T’Challa stops in the Harlem office where Monica Lynne does her day job as a social worker. She’s tired and upset, and they argue. T’Challa then continues on to Avengers Mansion, where he is surprised to learn that Captain America was just attacked outside by the Man-Ape. He realizes N’Gamo must have healed M’Baku after he was seemingly crushed by the panther totem last month. Sure enough, M’Baku suddenly appears on their video monitor, revealing that he’s kidnapped Monica and challenging T’Challa to fight him. Over his teammates’ objections, Black Panther sets out alone and tracks his foe to a large vessel hovering low in the night sky above Manhattan. Since the ship is not of Wakandan design, T’Challa wonders where M’Baku could have obtained it. Upon boarding the ship, Black Panther is ambushed by the Man-Ape, whose superhuman strength seems even greater than before. Even so, T’Challa overcomes both M’Baku and N’Gamo, only to be caught off guard by an exploding mannequin disguised as Monica. When he regains consciousness, T’Challa finds he has been chained up and brought to an abandoned subway line, where he meets M’Baku’s new partners-in-crime: the Grim Reaper, the Swordsman, the Living Laser, and Power Man. This “Lethal Legion,” as they call themselves, then leaves T’Challa and Monica imprisoned overnight in a dark room.
In the morning, T’Challa overhears the Lethal Legion plotting their multi-pronged attack on the Avengers. After the villains have left, a rather convenient power failure enables T’Challa to escape. He contacts the Avengers to warn them of their foes’ plans but uses the code “Prometheus Priority” to alert them that it’s probably an elaborate trap. His suspicions are confirmed when the Grim Reaper reappears, bragging that he wanted T’Challa to send the Avengers scrambling all over town so their forces would be divided. The villain then recaptures T’Challa by gassing him into unconsciousness. When he comes to, Black Panther finds himself with Captain America, Goliath, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch inside a giant hourglass filled with poison fumes. However, Vision arrives, disguised as Power Man, and tricks the Grim Reaper into smashing the glass and freeing them. The Lethal Legion proves no match for the combined might of the Avengers, and they are quickly apprehended. Unexpectedly, Vision announces that he is resigning from the Avengers, claiming that a synthetic man has no place among flesh-and-blood people. He departs immediately, leaving T’Challa perplexed by his sudden decision. The Avengers free Monica from a cell, and T’Challa escorts her home. He is relieved to learn later that the Vision had gone to Andrew Jackson High School first thing that morning to inform them that “Luke Charles” would be absent.
Over the next week, T’Challa becomes frustrated that the Avengers aren’t doing more to combat ordinary crime in New York City when they’re not dealing with costumed menaces. This leads to a discussion among the full team about the best way the Avengers can serve the greater good of society. T’Challa states his position, but Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and Quicksilver believe the team should focus on global threats like the international crime syndicate Zodiac. Vision has just returned hoping the team will help the Native American hero Red Wolf avenge the murder of his parents, for which he blames Cornelius Van Lunt, and Goliath and the Scarlet Witch side with them. Unable to reach a consensus, the Avengers decide to split their forces, and each faction goes its own way. A little over a day later, though, Zodiac seals the island of Manhattan behind an impenetrable force field and invades the city with an army of mercenaries, intent on holding it for ransom. Prowling the rooftops, Black Panther becomes worried when the syndicate’s leader, Aries, announces that Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and Quicksilver have been taken prisoner. To slow the mercenary army down, T’Challa sabotages a power station, causing a blackout. He then runs into Daredevil, and they team up to try to free the Avengers from the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, only to find the captive heroes have already been moved to Madison Square Garden to face public execution. There, Daredevil puts on some loud clothes and infiltrates the crowd in the arena, where he manages to use his billy club to sabotage the units keeping the four Avengers sedated. Once they’re free, the six heroes make short work of Zodiac’s forces, and as soon as the force field is disabled, the National Guard pours into the city to round up the mercenaries. When Aries makes a hasty retreat by aircraft, Thor pursues him. To stop Aries from turning his mysterious weapon, the Zodiac Key, on innocent bystanders, Thor summons down a lightning strike that blows up the villain’s ship, killing him and his henchmen. The Avengers and Daredevil then spend the rest of the day helping to repair some of the damage caused to Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels by the invasion. Comparing notes at Avengers Mansion later, the heroes are surprised to learn that the separate cases they had pursued were all, in fact, connected.
Hearing rumors of a kidnapping plot involving Professor T.W. Erwin of Miskatonic University, who is also serving as the grand marshal of the 11th annual Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade, Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, and Quicksilver head up to the small town to check it out. When they arrive, one of the parade’s organizers, Tom Fagan, asks them to ride on a special parade float. During the festivities, they spot Klaw, the Melter, the Radioactive Man, and Whirlwind attempting to grab Professor Erwin, and a destructive brawl breaks out. The Masters of Evil gain the upper hand, only for the Wasp, the Scarlet Witch, the Black Widow, and Medusa to arrive and turn the tables. However, as soon as they have defeated the villains, the superheroines attack the male Avengers and knock them out as well. When he comes to, T’Challa finds himself and his male teammates tied up in Professor Erwin’s laboratory, where the elderly scientist is explaining his parallel-time projector to a warrior woman called the Valkyrie. However, the Valkyrie soon reveals herself to be Thor’s old enemy, the Enchantress, in disguise. She hopes to use the parallel-time projector to return to Asgard, from which she has been banished. When she learned the Masters of Evil also planned to steal the device, she explains, she used her sorcery to make the four superheroines her pawns. Luckily, Scarlet Witch breaks free of the Enchantress’s spell and uses her mutant hex power to hurl the villainess into the parallel-time projector. There is a tremendous explosion, and when the smoke clears, the Avengers find nothing but a smoking crater in the floor. The other women are thus freed from the spells that ensorcelled them. Goliath’s snide remarks prompt the Scarlet Witch to complain that her male teammates could use a dose of feminist enlightenment. Unfortunately, the Masters of Evil have escaped, so the heroes return to New York, where the Wasp, the Black Widow, and Medusa go their separate ways. T’Challa is frustrated that Klaw has once again slipped through his fingers.
November 1964 – While stalking the streets late on election night, Black Panther comes across a group of police officers searching for Daredevil. The newly elected district attorney, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, recruits the Black Panther to help find the missing hero, who is suffering from blood-poisoning. T’Challa tracks Daredevil to the apartment of Nelson’s law partner, Matt Murdock, where he finds Murdock’s girlfriend Karen Page being held at gunpoint by a roboticist called Starr Saxon. Daredevil knocks Saxon out, then Nelson arrives with the police and a doctor who checks Daredevil over. Apparently, a gash on his hand has allowed Daredevil to bleed off the contaminated blood, saving his life. To T’Challa’s surprise, Daredevil declines to incriminate Saxon and hesitates when Saxon makes a break for it, allowing him to escape. Ignoring Nelson’s demands for an explanation, Daredevil goes after Saxon. Black Panther offers to help, but Daredevil asks him not to interfere. Concerned about Daredevil’s behavior, T’Challa decides to follow him discreetly. Observing a rooftop meeting of the two men, T’Challa learns that Saxon has discovered that Daredevil is Matt Murdock and is threatening to expose his secret identity. With no evidence to tie Saxon to the murder of mob boss “Biggie” Benson, Daredevil reluctantly lets him go. T’Challa notes that Daredevil seems very conflicted about the situation and decides not to confront him about it. Instead, he makes a surreptitious exit and goes home to watch the election returns. T’Challa is disappointed when Republican Senator Morris N. Richardson defeats President Lyndon B. Johnson after running a campaign laced with racial animus as well as inflammatory anti-mutant rhetoric. He worries that the tenor of public discourse in the United States seems to be turning uglier every day.
A few days later, Matt Murdock is reported killed in an airplane crash, but when Daredevil continues to plague the criminal underworld, T’Challa realizes it must be a ruse to outmaneuver Saxon. Indeed, about a week later, Murdock turns up alive, whereupon Nelson claims that Murdock’s death was faked as part of a scheme to defeat the supervillain called Mister Fear. Nothing ever comes of Saxon’s threats. T’Challa wonders if Nelson is aware of Murdock’s dual identity.
Black Panther spots an intruder breaking into Avengers Mansion and attacks him from behind, only to discover that it’s Hercules, a former member of the team. Hercules is ready to fight, but Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch turn up and defuse the situation. Hercules then reports that an all-pervasive terror has been induced in him as a punishment by his angry father, Zeus. He is being pursued by a sinister entity known as the Huntsman, who is the instrument of his father’s wrath. The Avengers offer to help, but Hercules insists it’s too dangerous. Suddenly, the Huntsman appears and uses his magic staff to render the Avengers helpless. In a mad panic, Hercules smashes his way out of the mansion and disappears into the night as the Huntsman sets off after him.
When Andrew Jackson High School closes for a four-day weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving, T’Challa decides to return to Wakanda to see how things are going there. N’Baza seems weak but insists he has everything under control. Even so, T’Challa faces mounting pressure to come home to stay. Chafing against the demands placed on him, T’Challa returns to New York to be ready to teach school on Monday morning.
December 1964 – One evening, Black Panther is prowling the neighborhood near Andrew Jackson High School when he hears an argument on the playground. He finds one of his students, Lonnie Carver, and his older brother, Billy Carver, being pressured to join the Thunderbolts street gang. Unwilling to take no for an answer, the gang’s leader assaults Billy, who refuses to fight back, saying he’s had his fill of violence after serving in Vietnam. Impressed, Black Panther intervenes and drives off the gang. When the Black Panther complements Billy, he notices Lonnie’s eyes light up—he knows how excited the boy has been for his brother to come home from the war. Thus, it comes as a surprise about a week later when Lonnie’s attitude toward school takes a sudden turn for the worse. He loses interest in the course material and increasingly becomes a discipline problem. Concerned, T’Challa decides to keep an eye on Lonnie for the time being.
When the Scarlet Witch has a dream about the Black Knight being killed by Arkon, Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, and Quicksilver decide to try to contact the Britain-based Avenger. They become concerned when they are unable to reach him and decide to investigate. Realizing they’ll need the power of Thor’s enchanted hammer to get to the extradimensional realm of Polemachus, T’Challa volunteers to go out and find the thunder god. He soon succeeds, but as they approach Avengers Mansion, the entire building suddenly vanishes. An image of the Enchantress appears in the sky and taunts Thor, so he uses his hammer to create a spacetime vortex that carries him and the Black Panther to Arkon’s capital city. As Thor launches a blistering attack on Arkon’s troops, Black Panther tracks down the rest of the Avengers and frees them from a dungeon. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Avengers are on the verge of defeat when the Enchantress loses her hold on the Black Knight while distracted by the Scarlet Witch. The Black Knight immediately switches sides, and the Enchantress, realizing the Avengers have turned the tide, teleports away to safety. When he sees that the sorceress has abandoned him, Arkon declares an end to the fighting. Thor then generates a spacetime vortex large enough to carry Avengers Mansion back to Earth, calling on Odin for assistance. However, while the Black Knight is returned to England and Thor and the Black Panther materialize with the mansion in New York, there is no sign of their other four teammates.
Before they can mount a search, Black Panther and Thor remember they are due to participate in a Toys-for-Tots program sponsored by the United States Marine Corps. For the next few hours, they join Captain America and Spider-Man in distributing toys to underprivileged children. Later, Thor uses the energies of his hammer to power an interdimensional scanner that Iron Man has brought over from Stark Industries to search for their missing teammates. After many hours, Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch are located and brought home. They relate how they had somehow been diverted to a parallel world, where they saved the earth alongside heroic versions of the Squadron Sinister called the Squadron Supreme. As the team heads upstairs for some refreshments, T’Challa receives an urgent call from Taku in Wakanda. Taku reports that N’Baza has died, leaving T’Challa stunned by the news. Realizing he may have to give up both his place in the Avengers and his teaching job, T’Challa joins his teammates in the mansion’s living room. He regales them with the tale of how he became the Black Panther and exposed B’Tumba’s treachery before announcing his bad news. T’Challa then goes out to be alone among the rooftops of the city to ponder his future. Once again, he realizes, the throne feels more like a prison than a privilege.
Black Panther attends a meeting of the Avengers with Captain America, Goliath, Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Afterwards, Goliath, Thor, and Iron Man head to the Caribbean to protect an experimental weather-control station for the United Nations while T’Challa and the others make a television appearance for charity. When the trio returns, they report that they battled the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, and the Sub-Mariner until some Atlantean scientists convinced them the project needed to be shut down. The Avengers then hold their third annual Christmas charity benefit, at which Cap introduces his new partner, the Falcon, to his teammates. T’Challa admits to a bit of jealousy toward the Falcon, as his students in Harlem seem to be bigger fans of their homegrown hero than they are of the Black Panther. The two men hit it off and enjoy discussing their different approaches to the issues facing the Harlem community. Then, over the next week, T’Challa begins making arrangements to return to Wakanda, planning to leave New York by the middle of January.
Notes:
March 1964 – The Black Panther teams up with the Inhumans and half the Fantastic Four to battle the microscopic menace of Psycho-Man in Fantastic Four Annual #5. The shockwave that ended T’Challa’s fight with the illusory panther-monster was generated by Gorgon stamping his hooves.
April 1964 – Black Panther and Captain America join forces against the phony Baron Zemo in Tales of Suspense #97–99 and Captain America #100. The title change occurred due to favorable business conditions that allowed Marvel to move away from double-feature books. The story also weaves in and out of Avengers #51, which occurs simultaneously. T’Challa is then inducted into the Avengers and appears in Avengers #52 and following. T’Challa credits himself as one of the world’s richest men, so it seems unlikely to me that he would room at Avengers Mansion and eat Jarvis’s cooking when he could have his own place, though the evidence is inconclusive. The Wasp’s chauffeur, “Charles Matthews,” is secretly the supervillain Whirlwind.
May 1964 – The Avengers’ assault on Magneto’s island fortress detours briefly into Uncanny X-Men #45.
July 1964 – The Fourth-of-July picnic at Avengers Mansion occurs behind the scenes and is suggested by the date. Due to the machinations of the Scarlet Centurion, the Avengers do not travel back into their own past but into the parallel universe now known as Earth-689, which, incidentally, is the same world depicted in Avengers Annual #2 and What If? #4. However, Captain America does not remember the events of that night clearly enough (partly from the trauma itself and partly because of his post-cryogenic amnesia) to realize it, despite there being significant differences in how the events played out. The most important difference is that the Captain America of Earth-689 is killed by the same explosion that kills Bucky. The Avengers then travel to the 1964 of Earth-689 in Avengers Annual #2, where they battle the Scarlet Centurion and their own counterparts. As the Avengers finally return to their own reality, though, the Watcher erases their memories of this adventure, since the Scarlet Centurion, Pharaoh Rama-Tut, Kang the Conqueror, and Immortus are all the same person. Later, the Black Panther looks on as Jarvis meets the Vision in one of the many flashbacks in Avengers #280.
September 1964 – Captain America’s premature funeral is held in Captain America #113. The battle in Drearcliff Cemetery continues in the flashback in Avengers #106. In addition to M’Baku and N’Gamo, Avengers #62 also introduces T’Challa’s ally W’Kabi. The white gorillas of the Wakandan highlands must have been mutated by vibranium exposure, just like the heart-shaped herb that gives the Black Panther his powers, so that by consuming their flesh and blood M’Baku gains superhuman strength. This is doubtless why the cult of the white gorilla has long been suppressed. Black Panther has a cameo in Sub-Mariner #14 in a montage of heroes listening to Egghead’s broadcast, then appears briefly at the beginning of Captain America #114, when the Avengers talk about Cap behind his back. T’Challa’s meeting with N’Jadaka, who will return in a few years as Erik Killmonger, is depicted in flashbacks in Jungle Action #7 and #16. T’Challa is unaware that Killmonger’s snake-loving henchman Horatio Walters, a.k.a. Venomm, has stowed away aboard the Quinjet and is thereby smuggled into Wakanda. The nature and intent of the foreign incursion seen in Avengers #68 is not clearly explained in the story, but this scenario makes the most sense to me. This is also the issue that introduces Taku.
October 1964 – The Invaders’ battle with the Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and the Vision is revisited, with a few extra details added, in Invaders Annual #1. Silas X. Cragg drops by Avengers Mansion in Captain America #121. The Avengers attempt to capture the Hulk in Hulk #128. T’Challa helps the Scarlet Witch with her metal belt behind the scenes during Avengers #77. For more information, see OMU: Scarlet Witch – Part Three. When the Black Panther and Daredevil team up against the forces of Zodiac, T’Challa has not yet learned the Man Without Fear’s secret identity, so they probably meet on the rooftops of the city after the Black Panther has caused the blackout to slow the invasion down. Also, though they mention battling the Thunderbolts gang, that doesn’t actually happen until next January.
November 1964 – Black Panther guest-stars in Daredevil #52. Yellowjacket’s appearance in this issue is an error, as he’s off in Alaska. T’Challa was probably actually speaking with the Vision. Daredevil’s scheme to prevent Starr Saxon from exposing his secret identity plays out over the next couple of issues. The presidential election occurs behind the scenes. For more on Morris N. Richardson, see OMU: POTUS – Part Three. Hercules returns to the mansion briefly in a bizarre little story published in Ka-Zar Quarterly #1. I assume T’Challa went home to Wakanda over the Thanksgiving break since he was not present in that flashback in Avengers #280.
December 1964 – The Carver brothers come to T’Challa’s attention in the flashback in Daredevil #69. He is unaware that meeting the Black Panther inspires Billy Carver to secretly contact District Attorney Nelson and volunteer to infiltrate the Thunderbolts gang, which triggers the change in Lonnie’s attitude. T’Challa’s reminiscences about his origins following news of N’Baza’s death bring us up to Avengers #87. The Black Panther then has a brief cameo in Sub-Mariner #35. The Avengers’ Christmas party—and the Black Panther’s first meeting with the Falcon—occurs behind the scenes. T’Challa’s students expressed their preference for the Falcon back in Avengers #77.
Jump Back: The Black Panther – Year One
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