Black Panther: Unconquered #1 // Review
Writer Bryan Edward Hill explores the line between faith and science in the new one-shot Black Panther: Unconquered. It’s a simple, primal story that explores deep themes in a breezy action sequence that feels respectably balanced throughout. Artist Alberto Duarte brings the action and drama to the page with sleek grace. Colorist Matt Milla provides definition to the visuals with richly nuanced color. Hill’s story packs a quick and easy punch with a respectable amount of drama that feels more or less perfect for a one-shot. Duarte and Milla follow the impact of the script quite well.
There’s a problem in the K’Fari village in West Africa. There’s a sacred temple there that’s just 15 miles outside of Wakanda. A man in powered armor carrying a massive rifle has broken into that temple, looking for something. Black Panther arrives to stop the assault. Right away, support identifies the armored man and his accomplices as members of a German cult known as the Volk. They collect powerful artifacts and leave misery in their wake. And they’re about to meet their match in T’Challa. There’s no telling who will come out of the conflict, but there’s no telling what he will learn in the process.
Hill’s story has a primal balance to it. Peace and aggression play against magic and tech. Action is well-articulated against an elegantly simple backdrop. Theoretically, Hill could have almost gone with slightly less dialogue and had slightly more impact, but as it is, the one-shot that he’s delivered is very lean on text. He seems to know exactly how much dialogue he can get away with without saturating the page and over-rendering the action. Still...it might have been served by a BIT less exposition around the edges of the script.
Duarte hammers home the action with impressive kinetics. Gunfire has its own dynamic that feels very fluid with the rest of the aggression on the page. There isn’t a whole lot of background in the frame beyond establishing shots. This allows Milla plenty of room to paint the mood in washes of color that amplify the action. Magic and tech get a little luminosity under Milla’s colors, but for the most part, the color is there to lend some depth to the visuals. There’s a sleek, sinewy feel to much of the action that suits Black Panther quite well.
Unconquered worked well enough that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to imagine a series of one-shots being popular. Marvel has been quite successful over the years in exploring its own Manhattan. There are so many other places in the world that could be every bit as interesting...supporting multiple series and their own end of the Marvel Universe. Wakanda and the surrounding area would be a perfect stage for further exploration of the world. Hill and Duarte render an enjoyable action drama far from New York in a location that has had some really entertaining stories over the years, going back to McGregor and Buckler’s Jungle Action comics of the 1970s and beyond.
