Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther reboot just got a whole lot bigger. Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay's Black Panther spin-off comic, World of Wakanda, will be a feminist exploration of the women of T'Challa's kingdom. When World of Wakanda No. 1 hits store shelves in November, it will include "a 10-page second story by [poet Yona] Harvey about Zenzi, a female revolutionary who incited a riot in the opening issue of the Black Panther series."
Coates chose both Gay and Harvey himself, and he will also co-write the comic. He says Gay's name "popped up right away," recalling a zombie short story the writer read at a conference. That story, "There is No 'E' in Zombi, Which Means There Can Be No You Or We," was published in Guernica in October 2010. Coates is friends with Harvey, and says she was selected to co-write World of Wakanda because "poetry is so correlated with writing comic books."
World of Wakanda will primarily focus on "Ayo and Aneka, two lovers who are former members of the Dora Milaje, the Black Panther’s female security force." Gay tells The New York Times that she couldn't turn down "[t]he opportunity to write black women and queer black women into the Marvel universe."
Look for Roxane Gay's Black Panther spin-off comic, World of Wakanda, at a comic book store near you in November.
