Book Review: Black Panther: Spellbound is a Chilling Mystery For The Young MCU Crowd
Comic books often reinvent characters in new circumstances to tell new stories. Now Marvel is extending that same practice to the world of novels for readers of all ages, challenging preconceived ideas, and taking beloved characters down whole new paths.
Black Panther: Spellbound picks up shortly after the events of the first book, with T’Challa on his way to Birmingham, Alabama to visit his American friends Zeke and Sheila for the summer. But what starts out as a relaxing vacation filled with fun, friends and food (seriously, don’t read this book hungry) soon takes a much more sinister twist.
A mysterious man known only as “Bob the Acrobat” has been spotted around Birmingham, just as trouble begins to arise. People are disappearing, and T’Challa is having strange, vivid dreams. Much like during their earlier adventure in Chicago, T’Challa, Zeke and Sheila can’t help but get involved, despite King T’Chaka imploring his son to stay out of trouble while on his trip.
As with the first book in the series, author Ronald L. Smith takes his time building out the mystery that T’Challa and his friends are racing against the clock to solve. As it’s slowly revealed, it proved to be equal parts thrilling and chilling, and is sure to grip the young MCU fans looking for a new adventure with the soon-to-be Black Panther.
Though the sleuthing is aided by T’Challa’s dream-worthy Wakandan tech, that doesn’t mean the story is so fantastical as to be disconnected from reality. Once again, Smith ties the mysteries the kids are solving to the tragedies and hardships faced by the Black community in the United States. I am not by any means an authority on this, but the thoughtfulness this provokes in T’Challa has me hopeful for this Black Panther continuity. The question in the Black Panther movie of what Wakanda should or shouldn’t do for the Black diaspora was a good one, and the way this is going, Smith’s T’Challa is well-poised to reach conclusions all his own.
Unlike Gamora and Nebula: Sisters-in-Arms, however, Spellbound doesn’t appear to take place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least to my eye. The kids are middle school aged, and make occasional references to Iron Man and Thor as existing superheroes the world is aware of. Not to say that it’s completely devoid of the parts of the Marvel films that fans have come to enjoy. A very young Princess Shuri makes several appearances, and I can’t help but wish that she joins her big brother on his next adventure stateside.
Black Panther: Spellbound is out February 1, 2022.
Special thanks to Netgalley, Disney Publishing Worldwide, and Marvel Press for the advance copy for review purposes.