The city Gangesri,

Demakorra, In 1986, Marvel Comics celebrated this 25th anniversary.

To commemorate the date, every comic from November that year featured a portrait of its protagonist,

framed by Spider-Man, Wolverine, Phoenix, and the

Sorted Champions of the house that Kirby, Lee, and Dico built.

I collected a lot of things when I was a kid, football cards, coins, stamps, bag grades.

But nothing meant more to me than my comics, and in that collection, nothing meant more

to me than those comics, and in that collection, nothing meant more to me than those

25th anniversary covers. I've spent too much time trying to understand why. Certainly part of it

was trying to imagine myself out of the inner city of my youth, but there was also the thing

I was imagining myself into. Invocations of a connected universe are now cliche.

But I'm asking you to imagine the world before TikTok and Twitter,

before Angel Fire and Earthlink, before Tumblr's and wikis, before everything and everyone were linked in.

Back then, Marvel Comics didn't just feel like a connected universe, but also a secret universe,

a pocket dimension where all your amazing, incredible, and uncanny heroes were gout, fought, lived, and died.

Tachala, the Black Panther, is the oldest character of African descent mainstream comics.

But he is not among that 25th anniversary gallery. He isn't even in the frame.

Indeed, in the 80s, when I was obsessed with Marvel comics, Tachala was a spotty presence, making only occasional appearances in the Fantastic Four or in anthology titles like Marvel fanfare.

That the character has come to be so central in the Marvel universe reflects the labor of a diverse group of creators,

ranging from Reginald Huntland to Christopher Priest to Roxanne Gay to Billy Graham.

Those comic creators laid a foundation, and on that foundation, Ryan Cougla built Black Panther the movie, which in turn pushed Tichala, out of the

pocket universe and into the mainstream consciousness. Ryan's Tichala was a conflicted hero,

...