Wakanda had been through much in recent months, from the loss of its leader in the monumental battle against Onslaught--and his subsequent return--to its near destruction at the hands of both the alien Kree and later the Headmen and the monster called Godzilla. Being the home of the rare and valuable resource known as vibranium, Wakandans had grown accustomed to violence against its soil. But tonight, many of the citizens slumbered, relishing its peace, while in one home, a small child proposed an innocent question, and received from an elder a lesson in return.

"You are young, my nephew Okumba, not yet four years of age--but very bright. You ask me who our leader is, and it is due time that you know.

"T'Challa, the Black Panther is our leader, our king, and not merely by birthright. Yes, he is the son of T'Chaka, and yes he inherited the throne when his father was killed in battle, much as your own father was. I was a warrior in the nation's defense those many years ago when the outside world first discovered the shining jewel of Africa that we call home--that we call Wakanda. I fought alongside T'Chaka, and knew him well, indeed. And I can safely say that for all T'Chaka was, his son is infinitely more. If no royal blood flowed through T'Challa's veins, I declare that it would even still be his right to lead us.

"He is blessed with the spirit of the panther, as was his father before him, and so he dons the ceremonial black garb in honor of the exalted creature, and in honor of Wakanda.

"Loathe to admit it, he is greater than you. He is greater than your father. He is greater than I. Do not feel threatened by this truth, however. Feel comfort, for T'Challa is the most noble of noblemen, among the brightest of stars in the intellectual's night, and wise beyond his years, as if he possesses an ancient's experience in a three-decades-old form. He is a friend to all, from the greatest of champions to the most humble of serfs. Fully aware of his duties as a leader, and as a man, his mind is on the state of his people before his own well-being. He cares for you as much as I do. He would die for you, Okumba, as readily as he would die for any innocent.

"And for all these reasons, in time, you would die for him, and you would do it gladly, indeed, because he is the Black Panther--because he is T'Challa--because HE is our leader."

MV1 presents

"The Panther's Tale"

by Sam Everett

For as many excursions to America that received publicity for the heroic actions of the Wakandan hero, the Black Panther, there were countless more trips that received little or no attention for the rather mundane political deeds of the Wakandan monarch, T'Challa. This day would mark the latter, T'Challa noted with a tinge of regret as he exited the Wakandan embassy in New York, his briefcase in hand, and accompanied by his entourage of American-dressed escorts, as well as Wakandan ambassador to the United States and trusted friend, N'baru.

Having just opened another trade route from the U.S. to Wakanda--that the U.S. might more efficiently receive Wakanda's valuable natural resource, the mysterious substance called vibranium--T'Challa was now ready for a workout of some sort, and sorely missed M'swa's company--however, his assistant was adamant that, while she would have enjoyed the trip to America, she had more personal matters to attend to at home. One of the handful of brutish men in his entourage would have been honored to face T'Challa in friendly combat, but even their entire assemblage would not have matched the challenge regularly posed by M'swa, he sighed.

And so, far more bored than tired, T'Challa grumpily awaited an uneventful jaunt from the embassy to his new, custom-designed quinjet, the NightStar (which was secured at nearby Kennedy Airport), which would take him home, and lamented that, at least for today, he was a strong-willed warrior trapped in a monarch's body.

"Just one moment, your highness, and the limousine will be ready," part of the escort reported as two more broke pace with the group of diplomats to inspect the glimmering, black-painted auto sitting next to the curb of the bustling street on which the embassy sat. While one man knelt down to examine the underbody of the car for explosives, another approached the driver's side window to ensure that the chauffeur was fine. Just as the window began to roll down...

KA-THOOM!!!

...T'Challa instinctively shielded his entourage from the blast with his back and spread arms. Already the cries of the frightened and injured could be heard all along the street, and the clatter of debris bouncing to and from the asphalt ringed loudly, and the confused chatter of TChalla's escorts, in their native tongue, occupied the space between them.

And T'Challa took it all in--the scattered bodies, the pleas for help--analyzed it, and turned his head to view the remains of the limousine. What he saw was the tall, lean, structured form of a long-maned man emerge from the smoke and flame of the incinerated car--and what he heard was laughing...and his own voice...

"Nitro..." T'Challa uttered, not at all surprised that the man had survived the car's explosion--after all, he WAS the explosion.

"What is it they say these days?" Nitro asked no one in particular as he proudly gazed upon the pain and disorder that he had caused; just now, the dozens of bystanders-turned-victims were noticing him. "'I'm The Bomb!'"

T'Challa clenched his fists, but thought twice--attacking Nitro would be an exercise in futility, for the slightest action against the villain would result in yet another explosion on the scale of the one that had just occurred. Thus, he loosened his fist and stood tall, leaving his escorts to their own devices for now, but intending to save them and everyone else in the long run.

"What are you going to do, T'Challa?" N'baru whispered from his crouched position, the words hardly able to escape his throat. Despite having been in several hostile situations, the middle-aged N'baru would never grow accustomed to the fear that accompanied such circumstances.

"I am T'Challa, the Black Panther. What is it you want, Nitro? Why have you done this?" he asked in his ever-soothing, baritone voice.

"I know who you are," Nitro replied, dusting off his purple and scarlet body suit. "You're why I'm here, your highness."

"How so?"

"You get right to the point, don't you?" Nitro nodded. "I like that. You're going to make good company."

"Tell me your intentions, Nitro," T'Challa demanded, careful of his tone. Nitro quite literally had a short fuse, and would not hesitate to wreak more havoc due to anything more than a whim.

"Testy, testy. To answer your question, I intend to take you. Kingnap you, if you will. Unless, of course, you want to come willingly, which, knowing you, isn't likely."

T'Challa took cautious steps toward Nitro. "Take me? For what?"

Nitro checked the non-existent watch on his wrist. "I guess I have time to go into the whole traditional backstory thing for you. Plain and simple, I'm tired of stumbling over situations, and looking like a fool. Case in point, that rookie Captain Marvel that's running around--I hardly lasted against him, and I ended up in worse shape than a chew toy*. And you know why? It's because I was caught off-guard. It's because I didn't have a plan. I never do, it seems lie. But now...now I have a plan," he grinned, displaying his crooked, malformed teeth.

(*see CAPTAIN MARVEL #79-81--Sam)

"And that is?" T'Challa inquired, thankful that Nitro was behaving...for now.

"I don't know if you realize it or not, but you're a pretty important guy," Nitro started. "And not because you're the king of a whole freaking country, either. You've got a good gig going--you've got ties to most every superhero around--every superhero that matters, anyway. And if I have you, I have all of them--the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, all of them--eating out of my hands. And they WILL bite. They'll do anything I say, so long as they don't lose their trusted ally, the great T'Challa!" Nitro proclaimed, full of sarcasm. "And then, just when I get what I want--control, and lots of it--they go BOOM!--and you with them."

T'Challa hardly considered the details of Nitro's plan--he had heard so many maniacal schemes in his time that they had all begun to sound the same. No, TChalla heard all that he needed to hear; for now, Nitro wanted one thing: him. That was the one thing T'Challa could keep away from the colorful rogue.

"You've thought this through...except," T'Challa began, "the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, all of my allies--they know something that you, apparently, have failed to realized."

"Oh?" Nitro asked, amused by T'Challa's characteristic resistance. "Please, do tell."

"I can take care of myself!"

With that, T'Challa sprinted away from Nitro and the fiery mess of debris and injured people around them, and down the street, his dress shoes clacking all the way. With a grunt of frustration, Nitro immediately followed; T'Challa did not worry that Nitro let out his anger in small bursts of explosive energy, for nearly all of the bystanders in the vicinity had scattered upon hearing Nitro's initial eruption.

As T'Challa streaked through an empty park and toward a man-made lagoon, he silently cursed himself--this was not at all the kind of adventure he wanted to end his dull day, not at the expense of at least two of his escorts' lives, and who knew how many innocents walking the streets of the city when Nitro exploded. And the situation did not appear to be in T'Challa's favor at the moment, for as much as Nitro reviled his unpreparedness, T'Challa was as unprepared as ever--he had left his Panther outfit in the NightStar, leaving him to face Nitro in his business suit, slacks, dress shoes, and holding a very heavy, custom-made vibranium briefcase...well, perhaps the briefcase would come in handy after all, later....

The bursts trailing T'Challa grew louder; either Nitro was somehow gaining on him, or he was getting angrier. T'Challa's feet splashed through the shallow shore of the lagoon, and he noticed an informal harbor set up just a few yards away, where four speedboats floated, attached by separate ropes to the shore. As he crawled into one of the speedboats--Nitro's quaking explosions heralding his imminent arrival--T'Challa began adjusting the set of multi-colored wires that lined the underbelly of the boat's dash. Hot-wiring one speedboat would be child's play for a scientist as accomplished as him; hot-wiring even two would hardly be a troubling task....

Leaving one hot-wired boat running and tied to the shore, he took his position in the other and detached it, speeding away from Nitro and into the sparse, artificial lagoon. He feared how his escape could be perceived by any possible onlookers, and hoped that no one thought him cowardly--he had a plan, if only Nitro would fall into his trap--the people had to know that T'Challa was anything but cowardly.

As anticipated, Nitro took advantage of the running speedboat. Were it not for his muddled and vengeful thoughts, he would have easily seen that this was a trick on T'Challa's part. Instead, he pumped the boat's throttle, tearing the rope from the shore, and started for T'Challa's speeding craft, completely unaware that he was playing into the Wakandan's hands.

Gradually, T'Challa reduced speed until he could partially hear Nitro's profane cries of retaliation over the din of the boat's engine.

"You can't...away this easy, you son of...! I had a plan...was ready, you lousy...!"

Nitro's craft was under ten yards from T'Challa's, and gaining ground, just where he wanted the villain. Through the water-soaked windshield, T'Challa spied a blurry buoy floating in the lagoon, and smiled. He could not have arranged a better set of circumstances on his own. Now, he relied on hope.

"May the Living Bomb's boating prowess be as crude as his tongue," T'Challa said to himself with a slight smile as he steered his speedboat toward the buoy, faster, faster, only slow enough to let Nitro keep pace a few yards behind him. He could imagine the confusion that Nitro would be feeling, seeing his prey approach the metal, man-sized buoy in a suicidal fashion. But, as he clutched the handle of his briefcase, T'Challa reminded himself that knew just what he was doing.

With a forceful jerk of the steering wheel, T'Challa's boat cut to the right only a few feet before ramming into the buoy, shooting water from the side of his boat over the buoy. And as his boat doubled back passed Nitro's, he viewed the confused and angered expression on the Living Bomb's face--T'Challa was out of harm's way, but Nitro was a few boatlengths from the buoy--a few boatlengths from defeat.

Still, T'Challa knew it was not over.

As Nitro sped toward the buoy, his eyes lit up, but not out of fear--he had an idea! T'Challa knew just what it was, and tossed his briefcase into the air.

Nitro leaped from the seat of the boat and over the windshield of his craft, toward the buoy, but was greeted by the briefcase midway through his journey, and instinctively caught the case, cradling it against his chest. His intention was to wrap around the buoy and explode, tearing it apart, leaving a clear path for his helpless boat and enough time for him to jump back into the boat and capture the Black Panther; as fate, and T'Challa, would have it, he only exerted a pathetic spark across his body before the vibranium briefcase absorbed his calculated explosion, and he rammed into the metal buoy head-first. Before he could sink down into the lagoon, the front of his errant boat forced him harder into the buoy, all but impaling him before it finally, mercifully, crumbled, exposing the inner-workings to the water and shutting the motor down, allowing the limp, unconscious villain to slither below the surface of the water.

T'Challa hardly thought twice about saving Nitro's life before returning to the scene of the explosion to help Nitro's victims, for the salvation of life--any life--was imperative, and he was convinced that even Nitro was worth saving. And so he twisted his boat around to rendezvous with Nitro's shattered vessel and disengaged the motor of his own craft before diving into the water, where he found Nitro lying at the bottom of the lagoon, weighed down by the briefcase that his arms were still wrapped around. He pulled Nitro out of the water by his arms and rolled him over into the boat, and swiftly restarted the boat and headed back toward the small harbor.

His soggy-clothed return to the embassy seemed to be shorter than his escape from the same place, partly because he was eager to help those injured, and partly because he was invigorated, driven, by his confrontation with Nitro. When he arrived at the scene, his ears ringed with the continuous wailing of the sirens from the various emergency vehicles on-site, and the corners of his eyes blinked with their red and blue flashes; three ambulances sped away, trailed by screaming parents and spouses, as two more arrived to fill their places; in synch, fire crews counted up to three before struggling to move a detached slab of concrete from a nearby building, uncovering a small, crying little boy.

Still, over it all, T'Challa noticed the helpless gurgle of a woman lying just a few yards away from him. Her dress was torn and scorched, and her pale flesh and raven-colored hair were red with blood, and glittered with glass. An overturned sedan loomed next to her limp form, and T'Challa assumed that she had been blown out of the car when Nitro first attacked. Upon peering further into the damaged car, he found a man cramped between the car seat and the interior top of the car, motionless, breathless.

"Glenn! Glenn!" she cried as T'Challa approached her.

"Miss, please, stay calm," he soothed, kneeling down beside her, not that she visually acknowledged him, perhaps out of shock. She merely stared into the blue sky above her. He took her trembling hand, and squeezed gently until it quaked no more.

"Who? Who's that?" she asked. "Who's there?"

Ah, she was blind, T'Challa discovered. Blinded by the shattered glass from her car, perhaps, or even directly from Nitro's explosion. For whatever reason, she was sightless, and in need, in need of--

"Glenn? Is that you?" he asked. "I...I can't see."

"No, I'm sorry, I--"

"Oh, Glenn. I was so scared. So scared. I didn't know where you were, or what happened. I'm...I'm still so scared. I...I can't...see." She began to cry as her other hand took hold of T'Challa's, and ran up and down his arm. "Oh, thank God, you're alive, Glenn. Thank God. I thought you...were dead. I thought..."

Uncomfortable, T'Challa began to pull away from the woman's misguided affection, but her grasp was so tight--so desperate.

"...I don't know what I would do without you, Glenn. I thought I would die without you, honey. I...I'm scared, but I think I'll be okay now. Now that you're here. Oh, I love you, Glenn. Please..."

"Help is coming...miss..."

"...kiss me, Glenn. I'm so scared. I'm so..."

He was ready to desist, for she was so wrong. So wrong...but so needy. Maybe it was ALL wrong, impersonating her husband in her greatest time of need. Maybe he did not have a right to do it. Her husband was dead, little more than a charred body in a car, now. Yet, he was what kept her alive. He was ALL that kept her alive. And if the idea that he remained could keep her alive, then it was right.

"...I'm so scared, Glenn. So..."

T'Challa bent toward her lips and stopped her cries of fear with what was, for him, a meaningless exchange that only served to keep her from dying; he could only imagine what she felt, as his lips gave her life.

He kept his mouth tied to hers until he heard a voice from above him.

"Sir, we're ready to take her now, if you could--"

T'Challa looked up, and was met with an astonished look on the face of a young medic. "Aren't you--?" Before the young man could finish, he answered his own question, and asked himself another: why was the king of Wakanda kissing this woman? And when he saw the woman--her face irreparably scarred, painful gashes marking every part of her body--smile an impossible smile, he got his answer, and gave T'Challa a proud grin.

"Glenn, will you come to the hospital with me?" the woman asked. "Will you--?"

"I...I'm going to help others now," T'Challa replied. "But I think you will be fine...dear."

With a nod that permitted the medics to begin treatment, T'Challa turned and searched the area for more victims. He did not care to wonder what would happen when the woman learned that her precious Glenn was really dead. No, despite his dignity, braving discomfort, no matter what it took, T'Challa had kept her alive.

That was all that concerned him.

Jeffrey Hoffman heard four steady knocks on his apartment door over the buzz of the Laker game that played on his small television screen. Upon sighing, rubbing the bleached fuzz on his shaved head out of frustration, and forcing his slightly pudgy body off of the sofa, he noted that he was not expecting company, and the disheveled state of his apartment proved it--not that he would have necessarily cleaned the place had he known guests were coming.

He swung the front door open and measured the aging, white-bearded man standing in the doorway, dressed in a ballcap and Mets sweatshirt, with tan khakis and loafers.

"Mister Hoffman?"

"Yeah?"

"Hi. I'm Edward Wasneek. I work for SCN--the Super Channel Network. I'm a senior producer there, and I have a proposal for you, if you don't mind hearing me out."

Jeff tried to hide his frown as he let the old man into the apartment. Sure, this was a possible job, but he was going to miss the Laker game now!

Wasneek cleared a spot for himself on the couch, politely tossing candy wrappers and scattered newspaper pages on the floor, while Jeff plopped down on the orange beanbag in the center of the living room and reluctantly turned the television volume down.

"You do good work, Mister Hoffman. I've seen some of your documentaries. You're one of the better independents in the business. That piece you did on Senator Kirby's office...you got an Emmy nomination for that, right? 'The Bugle...Daily' was great, if only for those shots of the veins on Jameson's head ready to burst," Wasneek laughed. "I've been around the Bugle in my day, and it's no picnic with Jameson around, you know? But that's why I'm impressed with you. You're not afraid to go anywhere."

Jeff shrugged, partly out of modesty, but mostly as a way to move the conversation along.

"It's true, and you know it," Wasneek responded. "That's why I've got a job for you. A very well-paying job. You've heard of Wakanda, right? The Black Panther?"

Jeff was ready to refuse, despite the prospect of some much-needed cash. The Black Panther? Jeff had to admit that he knew very little about the hero, but that was part of the reason for his protest. He had never placed a lot of interest in the superhero community. Sure, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Thor, they caught his eye--they were the greats. But the Black Panther? What had he done? Where was the juice in the story? What made it fun?

"Maybe you should talk to someone else," Jeff began. "I just can't see where the action is. There's no--"

"Wait, hear me out," Wasneek pleaded gently, preparing the persuasive address he had planned. "We covered the Panther in 'Spotlight' a few weeks ago, but we weren't happy with it. We want to give him the attention he deserves...and he does deserve plenty.

"This Panther, he's not just the chief of some small African country. He's more than that. He's a bad man. As bad as they come, really. I'd give him odds in a fight with...well...just about anyone.

"He's got smarts, but he's not using them to cure cancer or anything like that, you know? It's all about justice with him. Brutal justice. They have a saying about him in Wakanda. 'Inuk sie mullaki Panther.'" He fell silent, letting the words sink into Jeff's mind. "'Inuk sie mullaki Panther,'" he repeated some awkward moments later.

Once again, he said nothing, letting the words hang in the air...

...and Jeff continued to sit, patiently...waiting.

Finally, "Yeah, what's it mean?" he asked rather harshly.

"'The Panther can kill with his thumb.'" Wasneek replied slyly. "Pretty neat, huh?"

Jeff stroked his bare chin in thought. He was disinclined to take the job, but he had to admit, it was looking a bit better. "Is it true? Can he really--?"

"I wouldn't test him," Wasneek grinned. "They say he's quite the warrior, as he's been training almost all his life...in who knows how many forms of combat. He's an Avenger, for crying out loud. I mean, they don't just let anyone join in, you know? You've got to be tough to get in there. And the Fantastic Four approve of him, too. Good grief, he took on practically an entire Kree army just a few months back...by himself! He's the best there is, from what I hear. He's...well, to use the language of the day...he's The Man."

"Yeah," Jeff nodded, becoming ever more convinced of the old man's claims.

"You want action? THERE'S your action, Mister Hoffman. It's ALL action!"

"It sounds like it."

"So...will you do it?"

Jeff thought for a moment. Then, he gently mouthed, "The Black Panther..." letting the name roll out of his mouth; he had better get used to it, for he would be saying that name often, he thought.

Next issue: Back to Wakanda, as the Panther begins his crusade across Africa, and hits a roadblock!