In the sketch he’s beaming. Grinning side to side, fists on his waist, chest puffed in a manner reminiscent of a classic Superman pose. The costume is an odd combination of colors: gray legs and arms augmenting a yellow torso lined with thin, horizontal black stripes, cinched by a tall mid-section resembling a weight lifter’s belt.
The cape is red black, with a pointed collar, not dissimilar from Dracula’s. A strap across the chest sports a small capital “C,” a seeming reference to “Coal Tiger,” a name jettisoned during the creative process.
Later series creators would resurrect the Coal Tiger name in the late-90s, for the character’s son, who quite literally transformed into a feline — a kind of feral werecat. The original sketch, too, would be revisited when its artist Jack Kirby left for DC Comics early the following decade after contract negotiations fell through with longtime employer, Marvel. Once again, however, the design ended up on the cutting room floor for his New Gods series.
Coal Tiger, mercifully, became Black Panther prior to his first appearance in Fantastic Four #52 in the summer of 1966. Anyone with a passing awareness of Kirby’s history at Marvel could likely predict that credits for the character’s origin are a matter of some dispute. In an interview conducted late in life, Kirby told The Comics Journal, "I came up with the Black Panther because I realized I had no blacks in my strip. I’d never drawn a black. I needed a black. I suddenly discovered that I had a lot of black readers. My first friend was a black!”
The conversation finds the artist on a campaign to position himself as the primary creative force behind most of the Marvel creations that bear both his and Stan Lee’s name. Lee has also sought credit for Black Panther’s creation, citing a similar desire for representation. "I wasn't thinking of civil rights,” he said in an interview published seven years after Kirby’s. “I had a lot of friends who were black and we had artists who were black. So it occurred to me... why aren't there any black heroes?”
Lee’s insistence that the character’s creation was rooted in personal feelings — rather than civil rights concerns — may well be tied to the rise of the Black Panther Party, which was founded some three months after Fantastic Four 52’s cover date. The Party’s predecessor, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, was founded the previous year and carried the familiar black panther mascot. Lee chalks the whole situation up to a “strange coincidence.”
Lee’s role in the character’s creation was most likely an editorial one. Among other things, he may well have been the reason the Coal Tiger name was dropped and the costume changed by Kirby to something far more in line with with character we recognize today. But editorial changes to the character were still being made even as the issue was being produced.
In an early version of the cover for #52, the the bottom half of Black Panther’s face is exposed by a mask bearing more than a passing resemblance to Batman’s. In the final version of the cover heralding the arrival of “The Sensational Black Panther,” the figure’s face is entirely shroud in darkness, but for two sharply glowing eyes. No black skin is shown on the cover of the July 1966 issue.
Black Panther’s first appearance is an important moment, but one still hampered by the era in which it was created. His face was reportedly covered over concern about how the comic buying public and retailers might react to seeing a black superhero. Pre-release previews skipped showing the cover altogether.
Inside the comic, however, the hero’s skin color is revealed in the final three panels, when he removes his mask at the request of the titular superhero team. “My mask is not for concealment,” T’Challa tells the Fantastic Four. “But rather a symbol of my panther power!”
For Chadwick Boseman, who died on Jack Kirby’s 103rd birthday.
Sources:
Fantastic Four #52 https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Fantastic-Four-1961/Issue-52?id=27146#21
The Evolution of Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2018/2/14/17012374/marvel-black-panther-comics-history
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
Jack Kirby Interview http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/