“Wakanda Forever is a beautiful, perfect film”

Transcript

Into America

Wakanda is Forever

Archival Recording: We’re going to see Black Panther? Black Panther.

Archival Recording: Oh, we’re going to see Black Panther, you know.

Archival Recording: Black Panther. Get them Wakanda.

Archival Recording: All of it. I want them to take me on the full ride of emotions. I want to be screaming, cheering, angry, sad. I want all of it.

Archival Recording: Super excited. I cannot wait.

Archival Recording: Look, I’m just ready. I’m ready, ready, ready, I’ve been ready since the last one. Let’s go.

Trymaine Lee: Last week, Black Panther super fans descended on the Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem, to be among the first people to watch Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Archival Recording: I’m expecting it to be action packed and still be black focused.

Archival Recording: More like interactions with the Queen and the Warriors and then going crazy, be an ass and getting ready for Wakanda.

Lee: And it’s opening weekend, Wakanda Forever soared drawing in $180 million. It was the second biggest box office opening of the year, and the largest ever for any film released in November. Marvel introduced the character Black Panther in 1966, when comic’s legend Jack Kirby wanted to add a black character to the universe. King T’Challa and his alter ego, the Black Panther was originally a villain to the Fantastic Four, but quickly ended up on the good side. It took half a century for Black Panther to finally see the big screen when he was introduced in Captain America: Civil War.

Archival Recording: Your suit, vibranium?

Boseman: The Black Panther has been the protector of Wakanda for generations. A mantle passed from warrior to warrior. Now because your friend murdered my father, I also wear the mantle of King. So I asked you as both warrior and king, how long do you think you can keep your friends safe from me?

Lee: Then came Black Panther in 2018. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler. Starring a mostly black casts, featuring a beautifully rich world inspired by African nations across the continent.

Boseman: I will get Nakea out as quickly as possible.

Archival Recording: Just don’t freeze when you see him.

Boseman: What are you talking about? I never freeze.

Lee: It was a massive success. It’s in the top 15 highest grossing movies of all time, the only one with a black director, and even became the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Archival Recording: This is Best Picture nominee, Black Panther.

Lee: But to many black Americans, Black Panther is more than a blockbuster franchise.

Archival Recording: It represented movement, right, like pushing the culture forward in a really big way.

Archival Recording: There’s not a lot of black superheroes or characters in Marvel that really make impacts on people. This movie and the one before, shows that as a people we can be powerful.

Lee: The fictional African nation of Wakanda struck and especially decored the super advanced utopian home of King T’Challa, the fearless Dora Milaje women warriors, and all powerful metal, vibranium, became cultural symbols of unity, strength, and black excellence.

Archival Recording: Also pretty cool how just the whole story about how this nation in Africa that was not invaded by like white people succeeded so well like I love that. And we needed to hear a story like that. That’s our lineage kings, queens, you know, royalty. And for that first movie, it was just to see us represented in that light on that movie of this magnitude in the world of superheroes, who are mainly depicted by white actors. This is what we needed.

Archival Recording: Wakanda Forever.

Archival Recording: What Black Panther represented. Was that a black led, black directed, black written blackity black. Everywhere you see movie can still make a lot of money if you put the same money into it as you put into some others

Lee: But there is a weight hanging over this sequel.

Archival Recording: A cinematic king has fallen.

Boseman: Wakanda Forever.

Lee: In 2020, just two years after the first film’s release, Chadwick Boseman, passed away.

Archival Recording: At 43 after a valiant four year fight, Chadwick Boseman lost his battle with colon cancer Friday, his wife and family beside him.

Lee: With production about to begin on the sequel, Director Ryan Coogler faced a dilemma. Should he recast Chadwick, figure out a way to explain his absence, or lean into the grief of the moment. In the end, Coogler decided that Wakanda Forever would tackle the tragedy head on and show a nation in mourning.

Archival Recording: I am queen up the most powerful nation in the world, and my entire family is gone. Have I not given everything?

Lee: At opening night of Wakanda Forever in Harlem, two years after Chadwick’s death, fans still felt his absence.

Archival Recording: It’s so sad that he died. But he left an impression on me and probably to a lot of black males in life.

Archival Recording: It’s going to be running through all of our minds through every second of the film, his memory. So that’s what makes it almost bittersweet, yes, it’s bittersweet.

Archival Recording: Well, I got my tissues prepared. I don’t know how any of us going to get through this movie.

Archival Recording: Because the spirit is still alive. So he’s here. He’s going to be present in every theater. We’re going to feel him and I think he’ll feel honored.

Lee: But through the collective grief, for both Chadwick Boseman and King T’Challa, the joy of Wakanda shines through, like in this little kid in a full Black Panther suit, showing off his best Black Panther moves.

Archival Recording: King of Wakanda.

Archival Recording: Wakanda Forever.

Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee and this is Into America. This week, how Wakanda Forever became more than a catchphrase and more than a movie, culture critic Kelley Carter breaks down how it became a phenomenon. And we talked with author Eve Ewing about the importance of black superheroes and her experience right in the comics for one of Marvel’s future stars, Ironheart.

Kelley Carter is a pop culture reporter for ESPN’s Andscape. She’s been covering Black Panther since the beginning, which gave her the chance to close to Chadwick Boseman.

Kelley Carter: So you first came into kind of our collective consciousness in 2013, bringing to life a real life superhero, Jackie Robinson. And now five years later, you bring in another superhero to us. How did we get from there to here?

Boseman: Oh, Jesus. You know, for me, it’s just about, you know, trying to find new challenges. And I think, obviously, 42 was a huge challenge. Each role after that and leading up to Panther has been that. And so hopefully, when things like this come, you know, the worst thing is for opportunity to come, and you’re not ready for it. And so I think it’s been for me just trying to be ready for whatever comes.

Carter: Yes.

Boseman: So that’s how I’m here.

Lee: But I’ve known Kelley way before she got the talk that movie stars.

This is a real treat. Obviously, I’ve known you for a long time, but to see all you’ve been doing in all these spaces, you know, we’re two grizzled young newspaper reporters. And here we are with mics and cameras.

Carter: How did that happen? This was not the career that I planned for it all.

Lee: Isn’t that though, right?

Carter: No.

Lee: But here you are doing amazing things. And so how long have you been covering Black Panther?

Kelley says it all started in 2016 with Captain America: Civil War.

Carter: When you think about it, that was really the Black Panther origin story. It was a really smart way that the producers in particular, Nate Moore, planned it out. Nate Moore is the lone black producer at Marvel. He is an executive producer of a lot of the Marvel films. And he is the reason why we have a Black Panther. I think the smartest thing that they did was they said, we’re going to introduce Panther in Civil War. And we’re essentially going to make Civil War, the origin story. So that when that initial Black Panther came out, we didn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out who T’Challa was we already were invested. And so at this point, we just wanted a good story. And then as we all know by now that film is now one of the most successful films of all time, and most certainly destroyed that long held thoughts in Hollywood, that film was a predominantly black casts do not do well in global markets. That film did well in the global market, and it changed the landscape forever.

Lee: And not just shattering that stereotype, I mean it obliterated that stereotype.

Carter: Yes.

Lee: And even though we were beginning to know and love Chadwick Boseman, here he is as the Black Panther.

Carter: Yes.

Lee: Sometimes when we think in these terms, it can get a little hyperbolic, like, what it means to black people, the community, and our voice and our representation. How did Black Panther, highlight shape, define, introduce, remind folks of the culture, our culture?

Carter: Oh, my gosh, in so many ways. So I think we have to start with Ryan Coogler, who is a genius of a storyteller. The thing that I feel like Ryan did so smartly in that first Black Panther. Wakanda is a fictional African country. And this film, the people who really drove the culture of that would be African Americans. And you know this as well as I do, I mean, we have a history that we don’t talk about in the way that we should talk about, you know, like we were brought here in bondage. And we don’t have connections with the motherland, because at this point, for most of our families, it’s many generations removed. And so Ryan wrote a story that really tapped into that. People really resonated with Killmonger, who was expertly played by Michael B. Jordan.

Michael B. Jordan: Hey, auntie.

Carter: And also, they resonated with the idea that the largest of industrial American predominantly black cities were suffering, and could benefit from having a protector, could benefit from having, you know, this advanced technology that this fictional world of Wakanda has.

Jordan: You know where I’m from, when black folks started revolutions, they never had the firepower, or the resources to fight their oppressors, or was Wakanda.

Boseman: You know that ends today.

Jordan: We’re going to sin by bringing in weapons outside War Dogs, their armor press people all over the world. So they can finally rise up and kill those in power. It’s time they know the truth about us. We’re warriors. The world is going to start over. And this time we’re on top.

Carter: Ryan was so smart to tap into the uglier sides of American history, but also the part of history that black folks that American black folks relate to overwhelmingly, if that wasn’t for the culture, movie, and moment, I don’t know what is.

Lee: I mean, first of all, the way he was able to form this partnership with Michael B. Jordan to see that art, and then Chadwick Boseman, which I was so excited to see what Ryan Coogler was going to do with Chadwick Boseman. But talk to us about the significance of Ryan Coogler, who is a brilliant brother and but he also seems like a brother. He’s like somebody that you know, right, a cousin or brotherly talk, oh my, this is my guy right here.

Carter: Listen. Let me tell you, you got to know that Ryan Coogler is from Oakland after he says two words to you. He sounds like Oakland.

Archival Recording: I grew up as a as a as a black man in America and in the Bay Area, Oakland, California and Richmond, California, Goshen Bay Area folks here. And it was, you know, it was complicated, identity wise. You know, I would take tests and circled a bubble, African American, you know, and I knew what the American part was. But I didn’t really feel totally connected to the African part due to our history here in this country and how we got here.

Carter: He sounds literally like Marshawn Lynch, who by the way, they used to play football against each other growing up in Oakland like —

Lee: That’s crazy.

Carter: Yes, you know, Ryan, what I love about him is he’s probably to me, like the most authentic filmmaker in Hollywood, and he has not changed who he is, you know, I’m saying and it’s so funny that you said that because my parents were watching, we co-host the Wakanda Forever premiere. And that was probably their first time hearing Ryan Coogler talk. My dad was like, oh, so he’s like a brother, brother. Like I was like, yes, he is.

Lee: Yes, real one.

Carter: He’s a real one. And I think that he also he’s a brilliant writer. And that’s what makes him a really great storyteller. What makes him a really great director. He’s just a great writer. And thankfully, someone in his academic background an English teacher told him that that’s what he could be because a lot of times we’re not told that, especially in areas like Oakland, or I’m from Detroit, you know, Chicago, like, a young black man is untold, you know, you could be a writer.

Lee: I never watched Iron Man or Spider Man, and wrestled with these deep seated things inside of us about the people, right, and whose soul was on, who was fighting for us, and what how we should be playing in this space. But that’s exactly what Black Panther did. And so much of that when Ryan Coogler, and everyone who helped shape this universe, but Chadwick Boseman, rest in peace to this brother who really made his own. I know you’ve been talking to folks from the cast and Ryan and everyone about what it means to have lost him and still try to move on. How are they dealing with this? And how did they wrestle with this in this new movie?

Carter: Okay, so here’s the thing, Wakanda Forever is a beautiful, perfect film. And there’s not going to be any adults, certainly, that walks into that film, not having the understanding that this was a project that was written for a star who died right before the cameras went up. And then you see what they did in that film. You walk out just like it is almost like a therapeutic experience. And I’m really not even overstating the case. And I know it sounds like I am, because we’re talking about a comic book adaptation film. But what Ryan Coogler was able to do with this film a couple of years into a pandemic, that doesn’t seem like it’s ending, I think, emotionally, Ryan taps into that, because at this point, there’s not one of us who has not suffered some kind of loss because of COVID-19, or some kind of loss that happened inside of COVID-19 and prevented us from doing the things that we might normally do to pay respects to someone that we love that has gone away.

And so in this film, these people really create this beautiful experience and allow us to congregate in a very public way, in a unified way, and mourn the loss of whomever it is that is important to us. It really deals with grief in this beautiful way that is completely unexpected because again, we’re talking about a comic book adaptation film. But I think it’s going to be the kind of script that will be studied in, you know, film classes for decades, because it elevates what we’ve come to expect from comic book adaptation films.

Lee: You’ve heard about this idea of collective grief in the way we share that experience of mourning and loss and trying to get through it. And certainly through COVID-19 black folks in particular have borne a disproportionate weight to that, right. But even in the context of Black Panther, and Chadwick Boseman, who died two years ago of colon cancer, those of us who didn’t even know him personally feel connected. But I know you had a more personal relationship with him. And I wonder if you could describe that relationship and what the conversations that you shared were like, and also what you hold dearest, beyond his artistry, what he was as a man, as a brother?

Carter: Man, I could never say how incredible of a human being Chadwick Boseman was, what I loved was, as he grew more comfortable in Hollywood, he really understood what was important, like one thing that he said to me, and this was probably right around when Civil War was about to come up. He was like, it’s just so crazy how this industry and several other industries are guilty of this too. But Hollywood in particular, tells us that there can only be one when it comes to black people. For him, I think it was frustrating that people were coordinating him as, you know, the second coming of Denzel, he was going to be the next like black movie star. And while I’m sure that felt good to him that people were seeing him in that light, he was frustrated because he was like, there can be a million Chris’s. And then he went on and named all the Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pine, and he went down.

I mean, he was like, why is it that it can only be like me right now. My most favorite thing about Chadwick is that, as his stardom grew, he still remained very accessible, like I said, he really understood the representation. And so at the Black Panther premiere, or at the after party, I was with two friends of mine who had never met Chadwick, and they want to take a photo with him when I was about to take the photo. And he was like, Kelley, if you don’t get up in this photo, too, and I was like, so I jumped in the photo. And then after we photo, he turned to me and he was just like, we did it. And I was like, we, and he was like, you know what I’m saying, we did it. That collective we, to me was so important and so special, because I think a lot of actors who are really smart and really know, especially black people know what it takes for them to get to where they get to, they understand like, it’s probably like a journalist like me in a newsroom saying, guys, we need to pay attention to this. This is important.

And I think that he really understood that but he also wasn’t just talking about, like, the two of us. He was talking about black people everywhere like we did it, you know, like we, this moment happened. This is here. And I really just love that we could have those kinds of conversations that he just got it and that he understood how important he was to the culture, and to black folks in particular. And that meant a lot to him.

Lee: So now we are, you know, going into theaters with this context and this background, this history and this love and this loss and everything. What was it like for you to watch audiences respond to the film? And also, what were cast crew actors, where they watching it as well?

Carter: Yeah, I mean, it was, it was nothing but love. There were a lot of tears, you know, because there’s so many emotional moments in the film, like I said, it really addresses grief head on, and how we process the aftermath of what happens when we lose someone that we love. But there also was a lot to be inspired by, and a lot to cheer for. But this is the first film in the history of films, to have a budget this size, for a black and brown film, mind blowing, when you think about that we’ve never seen a film like this before, with this kind of a budget. And quite frankly, this kind of an expectation, and then also is the victory. And I don’t think that that was lost by anybody who was physically there at that world premiere, as well.

Lee: And so it’s huge budget film, black and brown, the second part of this massively successful, massively important film, but it’s also fronted by black women. What is the role of women in the portrayal of this film and gender and, you know, how that all shake go?

Carter: Oh, my gosh, it’s so beautiful. First off, it focuses on these young black tech, female geniuses, you know. There’s this new character that’s introduced, played by Dominique Thorne. And she’s like, I think a 19-year-old genius at MIT. When have we ever seen that representation? Not only a 19 year old, black, female genius at MIT, but she’s wearing cornrows. You know what I’m saying?

Lee: Right, never, ever, never, ever, right.

Carter: We don’t get to see us like that, you know what I mean? We don’t get to see us like that ever. I don’t want to give too much away. But she’s considered to be. She’s the change agent, you know, essentially, she’s the one that everyone wants to get their hands on. And you obviously, you know, have Sheree, who is brilliant, and also a very young black woman who also is a tech genius. And then you have the Queen Ramonda expertly played by Angela Bassett. And then you have Danai Gurira being a general of the warriors that are the Dora. And then you have, it’s like I can keep going on Lupita who’s a War Dog. I mean, so to see black woman be both scientifically intelligent, to be able to lead a nation, to be able to lead an army to go underground and fight for us. These are not dynamics that we get to experience in cinema.

Well, you get to experience that, in this beautiful world. It just feels good. But also and physically how we looked. I mean, we just look beautiful. And I say this as a dark skinned black woman to see these beautiful allegiant of beautiful dark skinned black women in all different kinds of pockets, in all different ages, in all different, you know, representations of womanhood is breathtaking. And it’s beautiful. And it feels like the thing that I’ve been waiting to see the entirety of my life, you know, since I’ve fallen in love with films, and most certainly since I have been reporting on them.

Lee: You know, there was real debate, real conversation around whether this film should be made at all, whether T’Challa should be recast as someone else. You’ve seen it. Did they strike the right tone here?

Carter: They went 1,000 percent struck the right balance. Yes, it’s, it delivers on so many levels, and in some cases it delivers in ways that you truly didn’t expect it to deliver.

Lee: The last question I asked you, and this is maybe the big one. Do you think Chadwick would be proud of this film?

Carter: You’re trying to make me cry? I think Chadwick would love this film. This film, to me is a love letter to Chadwick and to the work that he did inside of a relatively short career. And I say that because Black Panther was Ryan Coogler’s love letter to his beloved hometown of Oakland, California. And with Wakanda Forever, this film, it felt like it was his journal. You know what I mean? It’s very private journal. Probably the things that he wrote, after learning about Chadwick not being here anymore, and he put it into a film form into a script. It’s beautiful. It’s brilliant. It evokes so many different types of emotions. But it also not only elevates the comic book film, it elevates film period.

Lee: Coming up after the break more on the future of Black Panther and the Marvel Universe, stick with us.

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Lee: Earlier Kelley told us that Wakanda Forever introduces a new superhero to the Marvel movies, Ironheart.

Riri Williams: Get out of my door. Get out.

Danai Gurira: Hey.

Williams: I’m warning you, do not take another step toward me.

Gurira: See, how they teach the children to treat their guests?

Letitia Wright: You brought a spear in here.

Williams: You brought a spear in here.

Gurira: I like her.

Eve Ewing: Yes, my girl, you know.

Lee: Eve Ewing is the writer behind Marvel’s comic book series, called Ironheart meant to fly. Ironheart is Riri Williams, a black teenage super genius and inventor. Riri grew up on the south side of Chicago, where she lost family and friends to gun violence. She ends up at MIT, where she builds her own version of the Ironman suit as a way to protect her loved ones and her community.

Ewing: She does something that Tony Stark was able to do with the benefit of incredibly wealthy parents, incredibly high-end education, years of training, she does solo in her room on a whim. That was kind of the backstory of the character. And I was incredibly, incredibly, incredibly privileged to write the solo Ironheart series. And really what I wanted to do, what I got to do for that series was to fill out Riri’s world, to infuse it with certainly some of my own experiences as a black woman who grew up in Chicago, and has done my time in certain institutions of higher education, higher learning, but also to give her a family, to give her a purpose, to give her that why that fundamental question of why she does the things that she does.

And a truism of great superhero storytelling, in addition to the fact that the villain should be as interesting as the heroes is also that the person under the costume should be the reason that we keep coming back. We love Spider Man, but we come back for Peter Parker, right? So really, what I wanted to do was to give Riri that kind of three dimensional fleshed out vision of who she was and who I thought she could be. And it’s certainly one of the immense privileges of my life to see that vision brought to the big screen.

Lee: When you were coming up being drawn into the world of comic books. Were there black characters that pulled you in, when we first introduced like black comic book characters?

Ewing: Oh, I mean, you know, Storm is the, the prototype, you know, the end all and be all for me. But one thing that’s interesting about that is that, like, if you look back at the history, black characters have been in these pages for a long time, but the way that they’re treated and the way that they’re written mirrors, the biases and the exclusionary tendencies of the industry itself. You know, if folks look back at the history of Black Panther and some of his early publication history, there’s a lot of very cringy stuff in there, you know. M’Baku, who’s so brilliantly portrayed by Winston Duke in the film and has become, you know, a fan favorite and still has that toughness in his edge and the films, I mean, he was the man ape.

I mean, that’s pretty bad. You know, that kind of says it all. But how are they treated and how do we expand the breadth of who has access to storytelling to really make sure that they’re treated well, and I also as a kid, did the thing that I think a lot of people of color do, which is like you adopt people, you know, whether or not, you know. So I’ve heard native folks be like, oh, yes, Wolverine is native, right? Like we claim him, like whether you all can call it or not, but we claim him.

And to me, Catwoman, Selina Kyle, like I think a lot of black woman kind of claim Selina whether or not she’s actually been black. And now we have Zoe Kravitz playing her in a film. It’s like yes, of course, obviously, you know, she’s always been black to us.

Lee: Well, yes or the kid Halle Berry is like, oh, she was always black.

Ewing: Exactly, exactly, exactly. So I think that that’s a lot of fun, but we shouldn’t have to keep doing that kind of fan casting. And the best is yet to come as far as I’m concerned.

Lee: It sounds obvious, but it seems like it really matters deeply in the portrayal of these characters when they’re in the hands of the people, you know, if you’re in the hands of black and brown people, right?

Ewing: Yes. I mean that’s it point blank, period. This comes up in just simple things. One of the ongoing battles for me, and I shouldn’t say battles because I get a lot of editorial support, but like, ongoing things that is probably really annoying for artists who have to work with me is I’m obsessed about hair. I’m obsessed with the way that black character’s hair looks on the page. There’s a scene in Ironheart in the comic books where Riri’s mom has her hair wrapped, she’s wearing a turban, she’s wearing the kind of turban that you would wear in the house, right? Her hair is up.

And, you know, I wrote that into the script and the artists Luciano Vecchio, who’s an amazing person, you know, he drew his best vision of what he thought that that should look like. And I was like, this is not quite right, you know. And then he went on Instagram, and he was Googling and he was trying to find references. And I realized that it was very hard for him to find accurate photo references for what I was describing because that’s a private moment for black women.

It’s sort of like when Viola Davis took her wig off in How to Get Away with Murder, right, and people lost their minds. It wasn’t something that he as someone who’s not a black woman could easily find. So I ended up going into like YouTube hair tutorials and taking screenshots and sending him those. He was willing and not only willing, but excited and committed as a non-black person to drawing that and redrawing and redrawing it over and over until he actually got it right.

Those are the kinds of small things. And I know that I can never be aware, even in writing characters, no matter how much I do my due diligence or talk to people or do research, characters that are not of my own identity, I will never be aware of all the things that I’m missing or messing up, right? Our job as creators is to have some humility, to be willing to listen, but most importantly, to make a space for other people to come in and tell those stories.

Lee: You know, as consumers of this stuff, right, we get these characters at their best fully formed, and we get to understand who they are behind the mask, in front of the mask, how they move out, what motivates them, their ambitions, and all that stuff. But what was it like for you to play such a role in crafting and filling out a character? That’s a special experience?

Ewing: It was so special. I mean, you know, I grew up reading comic books. And so there were a lot of really challenging things about this experience. But what motivated me was the kind of surreal possibility to try to shape the kinds of heroes that I wish I could have seen growing up on the shelves.

But the other thing is to be completely honest with you, you know, at the time that I started writing for Marvel, I was the fifth black woman in the over 80-year history of the company. That’s right, comics, yes, it’s wild, right. I’m like, I shouldn’t be in the top 10 of anything, you know. And it was at a time when there was and certainly continues to be a lot of backlash against the diversification of the kinds of people and stories that we see in these pages. And we see this not only with comics, but you know, with video games with Star Wars with all kinds of things that, you know, Lord of the Rings, right Game of Thrones, et cetera, et cetera, that fans who have been willing to stretch the boundaries of their imagination, to include everything from dragons to elves to, you know, to time travel and space, you know, intergalactic battles all of that.

Seeing black people, seeing queer people, seeing disabled people, seeing Latino people, right, all of that is, that’s a bridge too far. And so at the time that that I was doing this, I was very much stepping into the middle of a fight that was much bigger than me, and that I would have preferred to not be in the middle of. I really wanted to tell fun stories about people who fly around and have powers and do cool stuff and get in fights. But because of that kind of broader cultural context in which I was stepping into it, I was really just trying to leave everything on the floor.

Lee: You know, it’s one thing for people not to be able to stretch their imaginations enough to see us in a fantasy world being brilliant flying around and making special suits and having powers. But in the very real world of an Eve Ewing writing for a major corporation and writing creative product, what kind of backlash did you personally face?

Ewing: Oh, you know, I got called everything but a child of God. At the time when I was first in conversations with Marvel to maybe take on the character. Ta-Nehisi Coates, who had really kicked down a lot of doors with his work on the Black Panther comic book, he reached out to me and, you know, now I’m grateful to call him a very close friend. But at the time, I was definitely star struck, you know, and surprised to hear from him. He said to me, like, hey, do you really want to do this? Do you want to do this? I said, yes, I really want to do it. And he said, all right, if you do it, it’s going to be the most racism and the most sexism you’ve ever experienced in your life. And it’s also going to be the most fun you’ve ever had in your life.

And I had to give that a lot of thought. I mean, you know, you and I both know that this kind of online discourse, this kind of language, it’s not just trolls in a basement, having fun and getting their kicks. These things can translate into real violence. they can translate into real danger. And there was actually a period of time when I was like, should I write this under a pseudonym? Am I taking needless risks? And the idea of not putting my own name at the top of my work made me so ashamed, made me so frustrated to not be able to claim the work that I put in.

It was really tough. But, you know, I went to New York Comic Con last month, and having a mom come up to me with her teenage daughter and say, you know, thank you so much for writing a character that I’m proud to have my daughter read that I’m proud to have my daughter look up to, you know, that means everything to me. And I’ve gotten to a place where there’s very little that random people can say to me on the internet that is ever going to feel bigger than that type of stuff.

Lee: Now, Eve can also look forward to seeing the rest of Riri story come to life, with a new Ironheart series dropping on Disney Plus next year.

Why does any of this matter? In terms of superheroes and comics and that kind of representation, why does it — why does it matter to you?

Ewing: You know, it’s so funny, superhero comics, in some ways, have moved from the margins of like nerd stuff happening on the fringe into the mainstream in the center of our culture in recent years. To me, it really comics and comics culture will always retain its roots. The thing that I think people should understand about comic books. Comic books are like jazz, comic books are like hip hop, in the sense that these are cultural art forms that were invented in the United States that were invented out of a language of struggle that were invented by, you know, folks who were themselves Eastern European migrants and the children of Eastern European migrants often fleeing tyranny in their home country, right?

And that they created this thing that is still a little bit pulpy, a little bit tacky, a little bit low culture a little bit cheap, in a way that I kind of love and that I hope that it never loses, you know. Like at the end of the day, these stories are, stories I tell on like printed on very poor quality paper, stapled together that you can buy for a few bucks at, you know, some tiny weird shop in your neighborhood that are full of ads for like marshmallow cereal and video games.

And those are those are the roots of comics and I’m into that, I’m very proud of that. And glad that people are still rocking with the industry for a while longer.

Lee: Have you seen Wakanda Forever? Let us know what you think by getting in touch on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, using the handle at Into America pod. And if you love our show, help spread the word. You can do that by rating and reviewing Into America on Apple podcasts or wherever you’re listening right now.

Into America is produced by Sojourner Ahebee, Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, and Max Jacobs. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. I’m Trymaine Lee. Catch you next Thursday.

Archival Recording: Wakanda Forever.

Archival Recording: Wakanda Forever.

Archival Recording: (LAUGHS) Thank you, my sister. It was such a pleasure meeting you. You say it once again?

Archival Recording: Into America.

Archival Recording: Into America, yes. We will go in tune in right now.

Archival Recording: Yes, we shall go to a village and show the people of —

Archival Recording: Of Wakanda.

Archival Recording: Of Wakanda.

Archival Recording: Yes. Of Wakanda.

Archival Recording: Wakanda Forever.