The Fall Of N'Jadaka!

In Part 5 of "Panther's Rage," the 1973-75 story which saw the Black Panther return to Wakanda only to find an insurrection launched against him by the violent rebel known as Killmonger, the Panther made the startling discovery that confirmed his enemy has been raiding Wakanda's own arms depot for the weapons used to attack and slaughter villagers throughout T'Challa's kingdom. And so, thanks to information gained from Killmonger's captive operative, Venomm, the Panther moves to make a raid of his own--against Killmonger's home village of N'Jadaka, named after Killmonger himself.

Killmonger's presence in this story has been inexplicably absent for three issues, which at the time worked out to an astonishing eight months due to the bi-monthly publication schedule of Jungle Action as well as a paper shortage which delayed Part 4 for an additional two months. And now, ten months and counting, Part 6 will unfortunately be the fourth successive issue which doesn't feature this story's primary antagonist. As a result, "Panther's Rage" likely reached a point where it depended on its regular readership for sales--though some no doubt had moved on, given the gap in installments and considering that not even the story seemed interested in its own adversary.

Regardless, writer Don McGregor continues to move things along reasonably well, all things considered, despite the fact that T'Challa himself hasn't yet taken this bull by the horns and deployed his forces to any great degree in response to the attacks. And if your title character phones it in, it's difficult to work up any sort of interest in the confict that McGregor is painstakingly laying out. So the fact that T'Challa is at long last putting on his ruler hat and meeting this threat aggressively is probably not only welcome news to his inner circle of warriors who have openly doubted his ability to handle this crisis, but also to his dedicated readers who have stuck it out this long but haven't seen much "jungle action" on T'Challa's part in eight months' time (though, to add insult to injury, they have seen the mag's price tag go up).

And while Killmonger is M.I.A. doing who knows what (if he were an actor, he'd probably be off doing guest spots on other shows, for the good of his career), T'Challa and his forces will find they have their hands full with the resistance they encounter on his behalf--including N'Jadaka's apparent commandant, Lord Karnaj, who backs up his bluster with powerful hand weapons that will at the very least blunt the Panther's offensive.

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