The next phase of Marvel's Avengers begins Aug. 17 with the AAA game's latest DLC, War for Wakanda. Introducing the Black Panther, Shuri, and the kingdom of Wakanda, the expansion continues the ongoing narrative of The Avengers trying to thwart AIM forces that have arisen during the team's five-year absence. War for Wakanda isn't pulling any punches, though.
The Wakandan-centric DLC has brought in Rise of the Black Panther writer Evan Narcisse as a Narrative Consultant for the story. God of War and Stargate SG-1 star Christopher Judge will take on the voice role of T'Challa/Black Panther. In an exclusive interview with CBR, Narcisse and Judge discussed War for Wakanda's story beats, the importance of Marvel's T'Challa, and why the Black Panther's legacy is essential to today's culture.
CBR: What is it that makes T'Challa such an important character to Marvel's Avengers?
Christopher Judge: Well, when you're talking about the pantheon of superheroes, I can only speak from personal experience. What he meant to me is... He's the first character I ever saw that had the qualities I aspired to. He looked like me. He loved his people, his family. He was intelligent. For me, that was a big one. He wouldn't just go beat up everything. He was a brilliant man who knew diplomacy, who knew the advantages of verbiage, and that's very much how I was brought up.
There are a lot of characters, to me, that were fun to read or watch, but this one spoke to me. All these years later, from the genesis of my relationship with T'Challa to actually being able to voice him, has been beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
Evan Narcisse: The very nature of T'Challa's characters gives you access to a whole other scope of adventure, right? Geopolitics enters the frame when you have T'Challa to be part of a story just by virtue of the narrative setup of this game. Vibranium is affecting the entire world, so everything that T'Challa does will have an effect, not just on his personal life but also on the lives of Wakandans in the country, and that in turn affects how their relationship with the outside world evolves.
If T'Challa screws up, the rest of the world would be like, well, maybe we shouldn't trust them, or maybe they can't handle their affairs. They'd want to step in and make sure they're using the Vibranium correctly. That's how encroachment, interventionism and colonialism happen -- people think they're better suited to steer your destiny as a country, as a group, as a culture and as a society. T'Challa is not about that, and that's what he brings to an Avengers game or an Avengers storytelling scenario. It's a philosophical difference, a history in a culture that prioritizes maintaining its sovereignty, one that lets you know from the outset that they're not really inclined to take orders.
CBR: Black Panther has exploded in popularity thanks to his success in the MCU, but he's been a pop culture mainstay fairly consistently since his debut in the '60s. What is it that you think lends to that long-lasting appeal that T'Challa has with fans?
Narcisse: You know, I go way back with T'Challa. I think that pop culture appeal really started in 1998 with the Christopher Priest run, and Ta-Nehisi Coates's 2016 run was another big inflection point. My affection for the character starts with the fact that he stands at the crossroads between tradition and modernity. On the one hand, he's a living embodiment of the history of Wakanda, but on the other hand, he's got to break with that history in order to maintain the country's sovereignty. The predilection for Wakanda is, like, let's stay to ourselves, let's find our own business, and they can find theirs and never the twain shall meet. T'Challa is the one to say no, I have to do what's best for the country, even if it runs afoul of the prevailing sentiment.
I think part of the thing that's fascinating with T'Challa is he realizes he has a larger responsibility beyond even being the king of Wakanda. He realizes that if he can help the Avengers, save the world, save the universe, he should fulfill that, too. It's a larger sense of his duties. You can scale his adventures down to very personal, one-on-one, grounded stories all the way up to things like he's off in space with The Ultimates, saving Eternity from being in chains. He gives you so much storytelling scope and potential, and I think that's one of the reasons people love this character.
Judge: For me, it's the representation of possibilities, the advancement of a society that hasn't been saddled by the yoke of colonialism nor appropriation, but instead, you're just left to let your genius run free. I think that everyone, not only black people, wants to aspire to something if only they weren't encumbered by this or that. What it is, for me, is a glimmer of hope of where we can go -- limitless expectations. I think that's a commonality among all people that they see in T'Challa and Wakanda.
CBR: Christopher, you're one of gaming's most iconic voices now, and T'Challa has a very distinctive voice in his own right. What was that process of finding his voice like for you?
Judge: One of the things that I insisted on was it be my take on it. I've never believed in trying to imitate someone else in a performance that I'm responsible for; it has to live or die on its own merits. That involved training with Beth McGuire, who was the dialect coach on Black Panther. It meant getting down to the grassroots of the dialect, which is structured around Xhosa. It's an investigation of sound and breath and an emotional architecture that allows you access to different parts of your body, which gives you different sounds.
I've lived off of my voice for a very long time. So to get me out of my livelihood as I proceeded was, I'm sure, a journey for Beth. Not only did she coach me and assure me, but she also allowed me to get out of my own way and discover things about this instrument. It was all about learning the dialect and freeing myself up to actually trust it. It was truly an awakening, and I'll forever be grateful to her.
CBR: Evan, I understand you view War for Wakanda as a continuation of the story threads from your prequel comic, Rise of the Black Panther. Did that story have a direct influence on War for Wakanda?
Narcisse: It's not like a one-to-one transliteration. What they have in common is that they're both first contact stories. You have Wakanda in crisis, and outsiders are part of that crisis. They light the fuse that is threatening to explode, but another set of outsiders respond to the crisis in ways that they are aiming to be helpful, so there's some similarity there.
There are lots of other comic storylines, too, stretching back to T'Challa's first introduction, where it's like here's a bunch of people from outside of Wakanda, and they're coming in preconceived notions and prejudices, and we're about to blow all that shit up. One of my favorite panels from T'Challa's first appearance (1966's Fantastic Four #52 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) is he sends his super-advanced ship to bring the Fantastic Four to Wakanda and The Thing's like, where'd he get this? Then, in a later panel, the Human Torch says, where do you get your hands on this? It's like, uh, excuse me, but he made this, thank you very much. He didn't buy it. He didn't find it. But the idea is that they can't conceive of a country in Africa having such advanced technology, and they get that preconceived notion exploded.
The first contact story for Wakanda is always a great place to contrast T'Challa and Wakanda with the rest of the world, and we took a lot of inspiration from the comics. I think this story also goes a long way towards finding a version of T'Challa and Shuri's relationship that is unique to this telling. Even some of T'Challa's personal backstory has changed, which informs his philosophical viewpoint regarding what it means to be a ruler and how to rule. And it changes how Shuri will react to those situations as well. Hopefully, these changes seem fresh, even to people who know the characters well.
CBR: You're no stranger to writing video games, having worked on Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the upcoming Redfall. How does the interactivity of a video game affect how you flesh out the game's story?
Narcisse: Well, one of the things that's different about this game is that you can walk through this world and experience how Wakandan history and culture are embedded in the physical architecture of the game. There are certain spaces you walk through that are like, hey, only Wakandans are supposed to do this. You, as Avengers, aren't Wakandan, so good luck! The way the prioritization of security and sovereignty gets embedded inside every aspect of Wakandan culture is a great opportunity that you get afforded by making a video game like this.
One thing you have to think about, though, is that the player can experience things non-linearly. You may design a story or quests or certain nodes of information or worldbuilding lore -- say, A, B and C -- but the player may start at C, they go to A and then move one up a B, or maybe they skip B altogether. So you have to find a way to make these packets of information standalone yet still feel connected. It's a tricky dance, but the narrative team and everybody I worked with at Crystal Dynamics made that part of the journey really fun.
CBR: Are there any characters other than T'Challa who you think will be a standout character or that fan should keep an eye out for?
Narcisse: Zawavari, the ancient Wakandan mystic, is someone I love as a character in the comics and this game. He's like, I've seen a bunch of Black Panthers in my lifetime. I knew your daddy and your daddy's daddy; I knew the guy who came before him. You'd better listen up, young man. He's not genuflecting and hanging on to every word as a loyal subject; he's kind of a skeptic who has his own experiences throughout Wakanda's history that gives him a different point of view. I think he's hilarious.
And I won't spoil it here, but there's also a running gag centered on Shuri that's really, really fun. And again, a different shading to her character than shows up in other adaptations.
CBR: To make sure everyone is in the right mindset, do you have any particular runs or stories that you recommend fans read before they play War for Wakanda?
Narcisse: I mean, definitely the Christopher Priest run. It's almost a wholesale reimagining of the character that takes him back to his roots. Black Panther has been through periods of time in his publishing history where he hasn't had really strong stewardship. When Don McGregor was writing him in the '70s, you got to see that character and his personality develop. The Priest run happens after a long period of him being out of the spotlight, and he takes it back to basics. He looks at who T'Challa was when he debuted. He was a strategist, and he was a king. The sovereignty of this country is his primary goal. He took it all back to that.
Ta-Nehisi Coates' run is a favorite, but he's a friend, so I'm a little bit biased. I think he did really interesting things, though, exploring Wakanda's own sense of itself and how T'Challa reacts to that.
I also love Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers run that was a build-up to the 2016 Secret War crossover. Hickman wrote a T'Challa who was at once resolute but also conflicted. He's like, hey, my duty demands I protect the country in this way, but what happens when ethically I'm confronted with scenarios that I find unconscionable? Those are all good, good interpretations of the character in the comics.
Judge: I mean, that's the definitive answer, right?
Narcisse: I mean, if I can pick my own book, I say read Rise of the Black Panther. But I assume you all already know that.
Judge: I thought that was a given. But what a great thing that is to actually have! To have the cat who wrote Rise of the Black Panther be the narrative consultant for War for Wakanda. That's about as cool as it gets.
Marvel's Avengers is available now for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Google Stadia. War for Wakanda, which includes Black Panther and the Wakana biome, releases Aug 17 at no additional charge.