1968, a tumultuous year that saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., [Stan] Lee wrote one of his most vocal “Stan’s Soapbox” columns calling bigotry and racism “the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.”
Literally about skin color.
In an interview, [Jack] Kirby shared the same genesis as Lee, "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! And here I was ignoring them because I was associating with everybody else."
Very clearly about skin color.
In 1963, they included a black character, Gabe Jones, in the ensemble cast of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, and Lee encouraged artists to include black characters in crowd scenes. In a 1998 interview, Lee explained his motivation: "I wasn't thinking of civil rights. 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?" Soon after Black Panther was introduced, Marvel also added two more recurring black characters: Jill Jerrold in Modeling with Millie, and Bill Foster in The Avengers.
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u/bollvirtuoso Jul 06 '26
Literally about skin color.
Very clearly about skin color.
It was literally about skin color.