Black Panther: The Young Prince

Listen: if you'd handed me this book like 2 years ago I'd have been stoked to have a quality prose novel about a comics character! But it's 2018 and now I'm hella spoiled by like Jason Reynolds' Spider-Man book and Leigh Bardugo's Wonder Woman book, which were amazing! And this one was...fine.

I'm super glad it exists and I think especially tweens who are excited about the Black Panther movie will be into it! For me it was a little clunky, especially with the friendship/bullying dynamics. (This is definitely more of a middle grade novel than YA; which doesn't necessarily mean it's bad but I think in this case it is more simplistic than some of the recent YA superhero novels.)

I also kind of suspect that when Marvel commissioned this book they were like “oh but you can't do it in Wakanda though because we're saving that shit for the movie, so just IDK put it in Chicago I guess” and it's like....



It is great that they got a black author to write a book about a black superhero but I'm stuck wondering if Ronald Smith's Southern gothic horror background is the best fit for Black Panther?? IDK I mean it's interesting but also...like why not a sci-fi thriller? HMM

But also I do like unexpected directions for comics characters sometimes, I guess this one just didn't especially gel for me personally.