In this week’s issue of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther & The Crew, T’Challa, Storm and Misty Knight continue to look into the mysterious death of Harlem-based civil rights activist Ezra Miller. The team’s sleuthing takes them to the newly christened “So-Ha”, a place that used to be known as South Harlem.
Marvel
Coates is taking his time doling out crucial bits of information about The Crew‘s larger murder mystery, but in doing so, he’s giving readers a chance to see the book’s team do the kind of old fashioned detective work that’s becoming rarer and rarer in mainstream comics.
Ezra, Storm and T’Challa discover, has a long history of putting together teams of black superheroes like themselves in response to events that would threaten Harlem’s historically black community.
The front line of the “war” that he believed was under way, the Crew learns, is located down by 116th street where a new set of luxury apartments called the Renaissance are being developed. Posing as a couple, Storm and T’Challa arrange to take a tour of the complex and and quickly realise that as innocuous as the Renaissance appears from the outside, it’s actually a Hydra front.
The revelation is another carefully introduced plot point to one of the most interesting and important stories being told in mainstream comics right now, and it highlights how unfortunate it is that Black Panther & The Crew has been cancelled.
Read the issue if only so that you can see Storm catching T’Challa singing some Frank Ocean:
Comments
4 responses to “In Black Panther & The Crew, Hydra’s Getting Into The Most Nefarious Business Of All: Gentrification”
Ahhh gentrification, the double edge blade of attempting to improve the living standards in an area.
I find it interesting that it is normally caused by the best of intentions.
Yeah, in its original form it meant the improvement of an area alone.
I think the problem was that the end result tended to be the same, regardless of intentions.
The unintended path starts with good intentions but those who begin and never those that finish.
The artsy boho’ move in, create buzz and business, which attracts bigger sharks who deal in realestate, financing etc and keeps on snowballing.
By the end you’ve attracted and chased off multiple brackets of earners.
It’s not the first time either, what with Hope Yards Development/Relocation Association trying to do similar things in New Jersey. (Ms Marvel, first series, 2014)
Once again, Kotaku spoils a major plot point from a comic in the title of an article.
Thanks yet again for ruining the big reveal, Kotaku!