And today we are continuing my random meander through the world of Black Panther, as available through my public library. And Y'all will be excited to hear I actually fully enjoyed this one. I mean, this book does literally open with Storm's ass front and center, but what can I say I have almost zero expectations and at least she looks fairly comfortable....

To dig a little bit deeper, and provide more than a few face palming screenshots here, while the representation of bodies (their positions and states of dress) was fairly standard, with women being more sexualized than men, there were a few mitigating factors that helped me not rage quit this book due to my feminist agenda.

The main thing that affected my reaction to this book was that Hudlin is a dude writing a marginally feminist aware book, at most. So, unlike Gail Simone's Bat Girl, instead of feeling like the bombardment of female ass' was an attack on a generally modest empowered female character, it really did just feel par for the course. It also helped that to start with, between T'Challa and Prince Namor, we get a few more shirtless dudes then I'm used to. Unfortunately the last few issues, where a lot more random ladies in spandex (or less) show up, and after more than one art team change up, we do get a lot more badly executed attempts to provide the reader with super soft core porn.

Storm's ass aside, the art is by far my least favorite part of this comic. I wouldn't say it's uniquely bad, but it does demonstrate many of the reasons that I didn't pick up super-hero comics, and particularly Marvel, for so long. The artist team also changes a lot, mostly for the worst, which is annoying but not terribly surprising. I generally avoid cross-over events because they seem so chaotic.

Going into this story I was almost as ill-prepared as I was for the first volume of Coates'. Only having read that, and World of Wakanda, I had never even read anything related to Civil War before, but somehow Hudlin made it work. Ok, I had a pretty vague idea what civil war was about in general thanks to the MCU, but still.... It was an interesting contrast to coates', where I get deeper and deeper and only become more confused.

Overall what I liked most about this volume was the way in which it is structured as a collection of short stories, taking us out to the fringes of this marvel earth, with an overarching build up to the final story. I'm also apparently mid-2000's Hudlin level woke, so I actually got the cultural references and jokes. We also get to meet Doctor Doom, Black Bolt, and Namor all trying to pull T'challa into an anti-American conspiracy, what isn't there to like! OK, it would have been nice if Storm could have had an equal role, but again, my expectations are so low right now. It wasn't hatefully bad and their banter was super cute.