Erik Killmonger served as a fantastic antagonist in Marvel’s Black Panther and actor Michael B. Jordan provided such a great base for the character that the Black Panther’s rival is getting a comic series of his very own.
Simply titled ‘Killmonger‘, the series will run for five issues, employing the writer of Detective Comics, Bryan Edward Hill, along with Green Arrow artist, Juan Ferreyra.
Fans are speculating that ‘Killmonger’ will feature some of the plotlines from the Black Panther film as they believe the cover artwork is a reference to Black Panther’s waterfall fight scene. However, this is actually a case of where the movie has taken something from the comics.
Hill explains the transformative nature of Killmonger’s portrayal in Black Panther to Vulture.
Hill states:“What Jordan and Coogler did was motivate him in a way that’s relatable. He’s really like an aggressive evolution of militancy, and there is certainly a political motivation to his actions: the justification of extremity in the face of adversity, which is a question that you wrestle with… The aspects of Erik being a soldier in his own cause that I took away from the film were certainly important to the narrative.”
The Black Panther movie depicted Killmonger in a way that demonstrated the most tragic aspects of his life, making him a relatable and sympathetic character. The film was successful in creating a narrative in which you can understand how Killmonger became the person he did, why he felt his actions were necessary.
Hill says “It’s about a fall of a person that should have been something much better than what he wound up being, and the story is about how he winds up in that place.”
Killmonger #1 will hit store shelves in December 2018.
