Black Panther: Panther's Prey #2
While spending time at Black Warrior Creek, the Black Panther is ambushed by Solomon Prey, a man seeking to eliminate T’Challa for unknown reasons.[1] T’Challa is caught off guard and thanks to Solomon’s surgically implanted wings and talons, he manages to seriously wound the Panther. After goring the king, Solomon pauses to reveal that he is the one who has been smuggling drugs into Wakanda and is the one who got Kantu hooked on crack.[2]
As Prey outlines his plans to taint Wakanda with drugs, he has his Lightning Lancers — warriors stride pterodactyls — attack T’Challa next. However, the Black Panther easily trounces them, particularly their leader, Zambata whom the Panther already messed up the day before. Seeing his minions failing in combat, Solomon rejoins the fight and beating T’Challa into submission. However, Solomon Prey doesn’t want to kill the king, at least not yet, as he still has some more surprises in store for him before his end.
After Prey and his minions flee the scene, T’Challa crawls back to the palace. The entire way he thinks back to the properties of the special heart shaped herbs that gave him his powers as the Black Panther and the ceremony he underwent to obtain these powers when he was a 19 years old.
Once he returns to the palace, T’Challa is immediately treated by Doctor Tambak, who lectures the king over the seriousness of the wounds he has suffered. Both he and W’Kabi are upset that T’Challa put his life at risk like this, particularly since the king has yet to sire a child and a premature death could leave Wakanda without a royal line. In light of the recent attack and the revelation that drugs from the outside world are making their way into Wakanda, W’Kabi uses this as another opportunity to express his displeasure with the outside world. He is particularly wary of Clifford Scott, an American who has come to their land on an international exchange program. When they arrive in the throne room they find Scott waiting for them along with the reformed criminal Venomm.[3] Despite his injuries, T’Challa goes through with his meeting with Clifford. Afterwards, Venomm gives T’Challa a book of his poems he just published. Reading one, T’Challa finds himself thinking about his former lover Monica Lynn once more.[4]
They then head down to the main computer processing facility. There, W’Kabi explains how small amounts of data have gone missing from their computers. W’Kabi believes that this might be the work of a spy but they can’t say for sure, or what data they were trying to steal. W’Kabi figures it could be anything from blue prints for their floater discs, to their ecological systems, to Wakanda’s defense procedures. However, T’Challa isn’t overly concerned about what data was stolen due to the fact that all of their innovations require Vibranium to work and the substance is nearly impossible to find outside of Wakanda.
As the two head back upstairs, T’Challa remarks how much Venomm has been reformed since they defeated Erik Killmonger. However, despite this, neither he nor W’Kabi are entirely comfortable with the large snake he always carries around. They soon arrive in the upper quarters where Ramonda is waiting outside the room where Kantu has been kept since he was caught with drugs smuggled in from the outside world.[5] She wants to know where Kantu got them from, and T’Challa promises her he’ll get to the bottom of it. However, inside, Kantu refuses to divulge where he got the drugs from and demands to be left alone. When T’Challa tries to remind the boy about when he was Wakanda’s hero, Kantu calls his king out for being out of touch with lowly farmers like he is.[6] T’Challa gets angry and has to restrain himself before he hits the boy. Since this is getting him nowhere, T’Challa decides to leave the boy alone, at least for the time being.
T’Challa then meets with Ramonda again and tells her his desire to return to the United States and try and convince Monica Lynn to marry him. He tells his step-mother about how he met and fell in love with Monica and how he even brought her back to Wakanda with him. However, after Monica was framed for murder by Tanzika, he thought his people would never accept Monica and sent her back. However, he has decided to continue pursing his love which he now believes can be stronger than Wakanda’s general distrust for outsiders. Ramonda — an outsider herself — encourage T’Challa to go after the one he loves. She also tells him not to give up on Kantu either, as the boy needs help.
As they are discussing all this, Kantu is recovering some drugs he stashed away in a pill bottle. Using a soda can to smoke it, Kantu suddenly overdoses on the drugs and collapses dead on the floor. T’Challa and Ramonda discover the tragic truth when they go in to check on the boy in the morning. T’Challa takes it badly and blames himself, but Ramonda assures him that he did all he could for the boy. Knowing that Solomon Prey is somehow responsible for the drugs getting into Wakanda, T’Challa vows to make him pay. Ramonda, however, tells T’Challa to worry about Prey later as he needs to go to Monica Lynn and convince her to come back.
Elsewhere, Solomon and Tanzika are crawling into bed together to celebrate the defeat of the Black Panther. As the pair pleasure one another they begin reveling in the scheme they are hatching next.
Recurring Characters
Black Panther, Solomon Prey, Ramonda, W’Kabi, Taku, Monica Lynn, Tanzika, Venomm, Kantu
Continuity Notes
Solomon Prey is being used to get revenge against the Black Panther by Tanzika. Don’t remember Tanzika? She first appeared in Captain America #170. A servant of T’Challa she had an unrequited love for him. When Monica Lynn came to Wakanda, Tanzika attempted to frame her for murder and was expelled from the palace when the truth came out. See Jungle Action (vol. 2) #9-11.
T’Challa discovered that Kantu was doing drugs last issue.
No, not Eddie Brock. This guy is Horatio Waters and was a former minion of Erik Killmonger until T’Challa defeated and reformed him. See Jungle Action (vol. 2) #6-8, 13-14, and 16-18.
The former lover is Monica Lynn the American singer that T’Challa first met in Avengers #73. The flashback memory of T’Challa and Monica together takes place between flashback seen in Black Panther (vol. 3) #6 and another in the next issue. These trio of flashbacks all happened chronologically between Avengers #126 and Jungle Action (vol. 2) #6.
Ramonda is actually T’Chaka’s second wife, something that won’t be clarified until Black Panther (vol. 3) #1. Prior to T’Chaka’s death (first depicted in Fantastic Four #53), she had been kidnapped by Anton Pretorius who kept her prisoner in her native South Africa for years. See Marvel Comics Presents #14-37.
Kantu helped T’Challa during his final battle with Killmonger in Jungle Action (vol. 2) #17.
Topical References
The computers in this story are all depicted as having CRT monitors as are the TVs in this story. This should be considered topical as this is an obsolete technology.
When Black Panther tells Kantu he’ll be back, the boy quips “Yeah… You and Arnold Schwarzenegger”, this is a reference to a memorable line the actor made in the 1984 sci-fi film The Terminator. This should be considered a topical reference.
When Ramonda’s time in South Africa is mentioned in this story, it is implied that the country was still an Apartheid nation. This was true when this comic was published in 1991. However, South Africans voted to abolish the practice in 1993. As such, all references to Apartheid should be considered topical. Sadly, racial tensions continue in that country to this day and modern readers may assume that rather than being a victim of Apartheid, Ramonda was a victim of a more general institutional racism that would turn a blind eye to her kidnapping.
How Old is the Black Panther?
In this story, it is explained that T’Challa was 19 years old when he underwent the ritual that made him the current Black Panther. The fiction is unclear of how much time passed between that ceremony and his first appearance in Fantastic Four #52. Rise of the Black Panther #2 reveals that T’Challa won the right to become the Black Panther around the time that the Fantastic Four fought Galactus for the first time (circa Fantastic Four #48-50). That would make it the same year on the Sliding Timescale.
Based on this, we can determine that T’Challa was born 18 years prior to the start of the Modern Age. Black Panther: Panther’s Prey takes place during “Year Eight” of the Modern Age, making him 25 at the time of this story.
