All the posts I never made about Black Panther and Storm rolled into one:

It's occurred to me that I've never managed to post about Black Panther and Storm's marriage. This is odd. As it's an important topic, one I do have, and have had, many opinions about. It seems as though I should have made a number of blog posts about this topic, but never ended up doing so.

To compensate for this, please allow me to walk you through my entire thought processes about this couple from beginning to end:

-->Black Panther and Storm are getting married? That seems a little arbitrary doesn't it? I mean, didn't they date once like decades ago or something?

-->As cool as Panther is, I'm not sure he's worthy of my favorite female Marvel character. She's like the most formidable female X-Man. I'm such a Storm fangirl. If they're marrying her off to someone, couldn't they make it someone more important fandom wise? Like Wolverine? I hate Wolverine, but he's very popular and it could make for a neat story. They have lots of chemistry too and it'd pull her more into the spotlight AS SHE DESERVES. :-)

-->She's not going to be in X-Men anymore? She's going to be supporting in his book? Damnit. They could at least give her shared billing. Probably increase sales/importance even more that way.

-->Okay, all griping aside, this could be cool. This could be awesome. This man is a king. He's a good guy, but he's got a king's ego. He's used to being the supreme number one person. He could have his pick of many beautiful women all over the world, more than willing to let him have his way and take charge. But he picks Storm. Co-leader of the X-Men, a prideful, arrogant, forceful and powerful woman. He wants an equal mate, which is great. And hot.

But he's a king, so he'll be unconsciously still expecting subservience at least at first. And he's married a woman once worshipped as a goddess. They are going to clash. And it's going to be messy. And he'll be forced to realize what he's accustomed to does not apply to his wife, so they're going to have to write new rules from now on.

This could be really neat!

-->Hey, and Storm's own storyline could be really interesting too. Sure she's African, but not all of Africa is the same. Wakanda will be very different from Egypt or Kenya. And Storm's spent a long time in America, leading a very American team. She'll have been Americanized. And now she's Queen of this foreign country.

Being a Queen won't be anything like being a child street thief, a nature goddess (goddesses don't have to worry about diplomacy) or a leader of a mutant strike force. This is going to be a brand new experience for her.

She'll need to study, work with elders who'll have unreasonable expectations of her, she'll have to tour the country, the weapons facilities, meet the people in person, learn diplomacy.

And heck, her background could end up an interesting source of friction too. Not that I think T'Challa is classist. But he's a prince, son of a king. Now, I could be wrong, there's a lot of his comics that I've never read, but I'm going to make the assumption that T'Challa probably has never been a cold, hungry, frightened child homeless on the streets of a dangerous city. And Storm has never been a prince, raised from birth with all of this pressure and responsibility and ingrained duty, with all the family issues and intrigue that even reading about second hand makes my head spin. That makes for so many possibilities!

Okay, this could be fantastic.

-->I still think the comic should be renamed "Black Panther and Storm".

-->Hmm. I'm glad Storm is getting her own miniseries but could they please make it not suck.

-->Oh god. Someone's going to use this as why "Comics shouldn't market toward women." Which is dumb. Because this is NOT what we want.

-->Damn, a Storm comic could have been SO COOL.

-->Wedding. Hmm. Okay. I wish it could have been more about them and less about the cease fire. But okay. I also wish we could have more than just some pretty speeches about Storm's feelings on all this. I mean. T'Challa doesn't need to make speeches. We know how he feels. One could wish for the same with her.

Art's pretty. Ragnell sees symbolism. Fortunately I'm not visually/pictorially inclined. I need to be whacked with the symbolism bat three times before seeing anything.

*ONE*

*TWO*

*looks around* Hmm. Okay. DENIAL! :-) At least it's pretty!

-->Later: This...is disappointing. Terribly disappointing.

-->BP 19. *throws against wall*

So there you go. All the blog posts I didn't make about the topic. I'm disappointed, upset and a little angry. I wanted to believe my initial trepidation was me being oversensitive. There was so much potential for this partnership, even if it wasn't taken in the same direction as I fantasized. But this...

My initial misgivings were justified. And I hate that. Because it could have been SO COOL. I guess it still could be, but there's so many missed-opportunities that I can't be optimistic. Maybe with a new writer...

Hey, anyone seen Christopher Priest?