 "'The Black Panther' is no call for revolution; this hero seeks to inspire")
I’m old enough to remember when the Black Panther was young. I first encountered the character in the late 1960s, and by the early 1970s, when he began appearing in the unfortunately named “Jungle Action” comics and learned scholars were arguing stridently over whether Marvel’s black superhero represented racial progress, the young radical I fancied myself was enthralled.
The name itself was revolutionary, but not by association with the Black Panther Party, whose prominence the character largely antedated. No, the revolutionary act was the use of “black” at a moment when the polite word was still “Negro.” The character was introduced
