'Black Panther': Memphis writer pens new 'Panther's Rage' adventure for Marvel

"The pair fought their way to the edge of the jutting rock where the thunderous waterfalls rushed past and filled the air with an all-encompassing song. Killmonger's vibranium scimitar slashed T'Challa's thigh, but the attack left Killmonger's defenses open, and the Black Panther smashed his elbow against Killmonger's rock-like jaw."

Violent brawls, swashbuckling combat, death-defying acrobatics. Such physical action is the bruised-and-bludgeoned bread and butter of comic books and action movies — visual media that thrill fans with graphic depictions of colorfully costumed heroes and villains in stylized, dramatic confrontations that are rendered with pen and ink or photography and effects rather than with words.

Translating the flamboyant immediacy of comic-book storytelling into the format of literature — pages without pictures! — was one of the challenges that faced Memphis author Sheree Renée Thomas on "Black Panther: Panther's Rage," a 325-page hardcover novel that arrives Oct. 11 from Titan Books and Penguin Random House.

Thomas and her publishers hope the timing is ideal. Touted by Titan as "A Novel of the Marvel Universe," "Panther's Rage" reaches bookstores exactly a month before the opening date of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," the highly anticipated and likely blockbuster sequel to 2018's "Black Panther," which grossed $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office and ranks at No. 6 on the all-time money-making list for movies in theaters in North America.

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"There's a lot of action in the book, with the Black Panther fighting for the survival of his kingdom and his people," said Thomas, 50. "But there's also an internal and psychological journey. He's still grieving the murder of his father. There's a lot of death in it."

But, don't despair. "There's a lot of humor in it, too," Thomas said. "And a lot of world-building, which as a science-fiction person, I really love."

The "Panther's Rage" book tour begins Tuesday, with a 6 p.m. meet-the-author signing event at Novel at 387 Perkins Ext. For Thomas, the gathering will be another exclamation point in a year that began with the January release of the New York Times best-seller "The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer," a collection in which Thomas and other authors collaborated with singer-actress Janelle Monáe on science-fiction tales inspired by Monáe's 2018 album, "Dirty Computer."

Thomas also was a co-curator earlier this year of a festival devoted to "Afrofuturism" — a movement in which Black art and philosophy are expressed through a science-fiction or fantasy aesthetic — at Carnegie Hall in New York.

If the teaming of Thomas and the visionary Monáe seemed like a natural to those familiar with the Memphis author's previous contributions to the science-fiction genre (she's the editor of two World Fantasy Award-winning "Dark Matter" anthologies that collect "a Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora"), the union of Thomas and T'Challa is also appropriate.

Introduced by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby in a 1966 issue of "Fantastic Four," the Black Panther blazed trails as the first Black superhero to make an impression in a major mainstream comic. Thomas, too, achieved a milestone when in 2020 she became the first person of color to be hired as editor of the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a publication that since 1949 has published work by such authors as Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King, to name a few.

Also, Wakanda and Memphis already have literary history. Titan's previous Black Panther novel, "Black Panther: Who Is the Black Panther?," from 2017, was written by Jesse J. Holland, who grew up in Orange Mound but now lives in Washington. Holland also edited and contributed to "Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda," a 2020 anthology of new short stories that included work by three other Memphians: Thomas, Danian Darrell Jerry and Troy L. Wiggins.

The "Marvel Universe" of the prose novels and short stories relates to the comic books, as distinct from the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" that encompasses most of the Marvel movies and TV programs. Specifically, Thomas' novel is an adaptation of a 13-issue epic known as "Panther's Rage" that originally ran from 1973-75 in the pages of "Jungle Action," a bimonthly comic book that showcased the adventures of the Black Panther, at a time when T'Challa — the ruler of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, who battles criminals and defends his homeland in the costume of a panther — was a second-stringer on the Marvel bench.

Written by Don McGregor and drawn by Rich Buckler and Billy Graham (Marvel's first Black artist), the comic-book "Panther's Rage" was noted for the poetic verbiage of its captions, the pioneering Afrocentrism and Afrofuturism of its storyline, and the daring and experimental freedom of its sprawling layouts and cascading panels. Originally embraced only by a small cult of admirers ("Jungle Action" hardly had the readership of "The Amazing Spider-Man"), it is now regarded as a comics industry landmark, and a forerunner to such celebrated sagas as Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" (1986), which cemented the idea of Batman as a grim, scary avenger.

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A fan of the original comics, Thomas said she owns at least three different graphic-novel re-publications of the "Panther's Rage" stories. So, in writing a novel based on that series, "You want to be faithful to the work you fell in love with," she said. "It made it an easier process, since I already had a personal connection." In fact, Thomas said she was such a fan of the comics that she dressed as "a citizen of Wakanda" to attend screenings of the first "Black Panther" movie in Memphis in 2018.

Although Thomas is an experienced short story writer and anthologist, "Panther's Rage" is her first novel. Nevertheless, she said, she leapt — like a panther — at the chance to write the book after the offer was made to her by Titan and Marvel.

Working with a London-based Titan editor George Sandison, Thomas was given online access to the entire Marvel Comics library to explore "the huge body of literature around this amazing character," T'Challa (whose athletic prowess, royal heritage and mystical connections are complemented by his PhD in physics from Oxford University — the better to help him develop uses for the world's most powerful metal, vibranium, found only in Wakanda).

While the need to adhere to the comic-book canon restricted her plotting, Thomas was able — with Marvel's permission — to expand the original "Panther's Rage" story by including aspects of Wakandan culture that didn't appear in the comics until later. Notably, the novel includes the Dora Milaje, the fierce army of warrior women introduced to "Black Panther" readers in 1998 and made famous by the movie.

"You have to respect the legacy, and what it represents," Thomas said. But canon notwithstanding, "Whatever I write, I'm going to bring myself to it."