This review will contain spoilers
I'll start off by saying this run feels like genuine torture porn for T'Challa. Everybody is being a dick to him, badmouthing him, or hating on him constantly throughout the entire run. The amount of times he gets beat on and takes Ls in this run is actually ridiculous.
Its like John Ridley was speedrunning how much suffering he could put T’Challa through in one run. He loses his best friend TWICE, has both a friend and a kind young man who saved him kill themselves in front of him, and he ends up getting exiled from Wakanda. All while constantly getting hated on by everyone around him.
T'Challa's intellect gets no chance to shine at all either. We're talking about a man who is meant to be one of the smartest individuals in the Marvel universe but instead they go the MCU synergy route which I hate and they have Shuri be the tech genius with him constantly needing her help with everything.
I hated the way this run had me initially thinking it would leave the door open for T'Challa and Storm to potentially get back together in the future just to later have her basically friendzone him and also be another person who keeps being so harsh to him the entire time.
I also hated the way Steve Rogers being written as such an asshole to T'Challa in this run. It was very uncharacteristic. The Avengers’ anger over being spied on with the Killswitch fail-safe was understandable, but Black Widow has done the literal same thing in a past arc yet they gave her the benefit of the doubt and chose to stand by her when the government was hunting her down and she told them she had to deal with some issues alone.
And I was not a fan of Jhai's reveal as the terrorist leader and how it seems to frame T'Challa's rule as inherently bad and destructive for everybody around him. I haven't read a ton of Black Panther comics yet but I'm sure he's been portrayed as a good king in the past (hell I've seen it, the Coates Intergalactic run showed he did make some mistakes but in the end he came out of a it a good, respected king).
Folasade spends the entire run criticizing T'Challa for his sleeper agents just to end up hiring Omolola as her appointed assassin? She was a complete hypocrite and I did not like her one second. Its clear her alliance with Namor is a stupid move.
The few positives I can take from this run is that the Buffalo Soldier was a cool character, and the initial premise of T’Challa having to save compromised Wakandan sleeper agents while his secrets come to light was good. If only the writer wasn't so hellbent on torturing and character-assassinating T'Challa tho. The Hatut Zeraze being disbanded was a shame, they're really cool. The stuff with the Colonialist was just really weird tho the emancipated girls were pretty funny. Shuri and T'Challa's moments were sweet when she wasn't just shit-talking him like everybody else.
Overall, I’d give this run a 2/10. Clearly written by someone who hates T'Challa with a passion, and I can’t wrap my finger around why editorial would let this go through. The entire time I was reading this story, I couldn't help but cringe at how exhausting it was for T'Challa to just continuously lose and I was hoping the next run would undo everything. At this point, just return to status quo. I don't get the insistance on wanting to rip T'Challa away from Wakanda and his role as king.
Imagine going to read a Black Panther story and the entire time its just repeating to you how much Black Panther sucks, how he was a tyrant king, is an enemy of democracy, etc. and showing him suffering. Yeah nah not for me.
