Christopher Priest on returning to Black Panther and teasing ‘The World To Come’

“That was written a long, long time ago,” Priest said with a laugh. “It’s taken Joe Quesada a long time to draw this book, and not because he’s slow.”

Priest explained that Quesada’s job as Marvel’s executive vice president and creative director took a toll on the comic’s release schedule, putting the project on hold until the time was right. That time, however, is now.

“He wore eight caps, he had his hands full in every way imaginable,” Priest said. “When he retired from Marvel, well, finally he could, you know, put more time into this. I would like to say, ‘Yes, yes, I’m happy to return to Marvel.’ But I returned to Marvel like years ago. I just couldn’t talk about it!”

The Long Road to The World To Come

As for the project’s specific origins, it all ties back to a certain movie.

“So, this was in 2017. The Black Panther movie was about to come out,” Priest said. “I called Will Moss at Marvel; he’s the Black Panther editor. So I reached out to Will and said, ‘Look, Will, there’s the movie coming out, I would like to do a Black Panther something. Just a little taste of Panther, you know.”

Priest’s modesty may stem from the fact that, during his robust run, he’d said all he wanted to say about the monarch.

“I did 60 issues of Black Panther,” Priest said. “I did everything with that character that I could think of at the time, including blasting him into outer space. Ta-Nehisi Coates acquitted himself much better in that regard.”

And that hesitation comes even after he did the Black Panther Annual #1 back in 2018. It seems no matter how many stories he tells, Black Panther isn’t far fom Priest’s mind.

“I always resisted going back to the character,” Priest said. “But I just wanted to do a little something. So Will and I worked out this little 5 or 10-page story in Black Panther annual, and I was very satisfied with that. I don’t exactly remember how Quesada heard about this. But I get a call from Joe, and Joe’s chatting me up about Marvel Knights and the upcoming anniversary. We start chatting about a Panther story, and it kind of goes from there.”

The Highs and Lows of Writing Black Panther

On his original Black Panther run, Priest confesses that he remembers some parts more fondly than others.

“You know, I can’t read that stuff without cringing,” Priest said. “Like, ‘Wow, really?’ I felt like maybe the first couple of issues were pretty decent. Back then, Joe and I were having a difference of opinion about like, I was really focused on increasing readership by bringing more aspects of the Marvel universe into what we’re doing. Joe wanted Marvel Knights to be more insular. Like the Netflix Marvel series, where they didn’t deny the MCU, but they weren’t that worried about them.”

As Priest admitted, “30 years later, I go, ‘Yeah, Joe was right.”

Even so, Priest didn’t shy away from including more out-there characters in Black Panther.

“I had the Hulk go to a big disco,” Priest said. “The fun part was this ‘Enemy of the State’ stuff, where it’s revealed that Black Panther only joined the Avengers to spy on them. And that pissed off a lot of readers!”

Priest goes on to reveal his surprise that there’s never been a standalone release of Enemy of the State I and II that packages them together, as he thinks of them as one of his run’s highlights.

Speaking of crossovers, Priest teases similar surprise appearances in this upcoming six-issue series.

“It doesn’t say Black Panther, it says Marvel Knights,” Priest said. “Because it’s about Marvel Knights. You may not realize that at first. But wait until all the other characters start showing up.”

Priest continued by talking about the realities of the industry and the difficulties he had to deal with when writing Black Panther as a part of the larger Marvel machine.

“Once we transitioned Panther back to the Marvel Universe, I came under enormous pressure to raise sales,” Priest said. “It’s always a big mistake to subjugate creativity to commerciality. I think that at some point, the retailers are the ones who are gonna set the tone, where they will buy a first issue of almost anything, but those numbers will go down with #2 and collapse with #3. And at some point around #4 or #5, those numbers will settle into where the retailers think, ‘This is where the demand is.’ And there’s no escaping it. There’s no getting around it. And once those numbers settle in, the publisher has to decide, ‘Do you want to keep going or not?’ But if you’re gonna keep going, I think you have to dance with the ones who wrung you.”

As a counter to that dynamic, Priest is acutely aware of who he and his fellow writers’ focus should be when telling stories.

“Our obligation was to the fans who were reading the book, and we should stop turning ourselves inside out trying to attract those who are not,” Priest said.

The Many Fathers of Black Panther

There’s no denying Priest’s impact on Black Panther’s surge into pop culture stardom. However, Priest attributes a large part of it to his successor, Reginald Hudlin.

“I think when Reginald Hudlin came along, he sort of coalesced a lot of those ideas, bringing his own twisted sense of humor to it, and with John Romita Jr. and Reggie, when they got on the book, that’s when the book took off, commercially, I mean,” Priest said. “We never had the numbers. The numbers came with Reginald Hudlin, and Reginald is actually the unsung hero of Black Panther. There would be no Black Panther, in my opinion, if Reginald Hudlin hadn’t written it brilliantly and then gone out and sold it. Because Reggie went all over the world, got on every radio, TV show, podcast, you know, tribal hut, he sat in the tribal council. Everywhere he could go.”

Priest added, “I did my part, but Black Panther has a lot of dads. Not the least of which of course is Ta-Nehisi and Brian Stelfreeze (who is not mentioned nearly enough). A lot of what you see in the motion picture is derivative of Brian Stelfreeze. There’s a lot of Brian on that screen. And nobody ever talks about Brian, and that’s a little irritating, and I’m guilty of that.”

Comics as Collaboration

Priest never forgets to give artists credit where credit’s due. His enthusiasm is most visible when he gushes over the artists he’s working with in The World To Come, starting off with Quesada’s unparalleled linework.

“I thought that the work was so good that I didn’t want anybody to color it,” Priest said. “Until I saw Richard Isanove’s color. When you talk to Joe, he’s very confident, not only in what he can do but in what others can do; what his collaborators can do. And he wouldn’t let Richard or anybody else color this stuff if he wasn’t confident that Richard wasn’t gonna bring something to the table. And my God, he does.”

Aside from praising Isanove, Priest is quick to note that Quesada is more than the artist; he’s also the co-plotter of this book (and not in name only).

“The story is as much Joe’s as it is mine,” Priest said. “Which is why I kept insisting, and then finally demanding, ‘Do not print this book if you don’t put his name first.’ He needs to take the lead position on the story. The story’s by both of us.”

Or, as Priest underlines, “This is a 50-50 collaboration.”

To paint a picture of his writing experience with Quesada, Priest jokingly told an anecdote of their conversation when sharing writing duties.

“You [Quesada] said I’m the writer, so why do we have Howard the Duck on page 6,” Priest said. “Get Howard out of here!” 

Priest drives home their partnership by saying that the process is a lot of back and forth.

“I don’t want people to get the idea that I’m just being nice to Joe,” Priest said. “Joe wrote this thing. We wrote it together. I flew out to his house and sat in his living room, that’s what I’m talking about. I played with his dogs.”

Thor in Space, Lockjaw, and T’Challa’s Fate

About what exactly Priest was writing with Quesada, and the contents of the story that fans can expect, Priest teases a full-course meal.

“The thing about The World To Come is that I hope people stick with us until issue #3,” Priest said. “Because issues #1 and #2, not that they’re not good, but there’s a lot of worldbuilding. And we are kind of establishing how did we get from where we left off to what the hell is going on here.”

Priest added, “The fun doesn’t really begin until issue #3. That’s when it’s like ‘Oh, now we’re having a good time!’ And it just gets crazier and crazier from there.”

Priest points out that keen-eyed readers could identify which part of the book is Priest’s handiwork and which one is Quesada’s.

“Soon as we get into Thor in space, and I won’t tell you what that means, but you’ll go, ‘That’s a Quesada. That feels like a Quesada to me.’ Or soon as you see Lockjaw. ‘Would Priest actually put Lockjaw?’ Joe took what was maybe the germ of my idea and expanded it into absurd proportions,” Priest said. “So there’s an awful lot of Joe Quesada in here. And frankly, I think the thing would not be seen in print if it wasn’t for Joe and for the vision he had here.”

Priest also hinted at other characters from the Marvel Knights lineup, including Lockjaw (a big part of Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee’s Eisner-winning Inhumans). He previously wrote the lovable dog in the frankly-underrated Inhumans: Once and Future Kings.

Back to the meat of the story (Black Panther), Priest says that he’s not trying to hide his death whatsoever.

“Oh, he dies on page 2, so… ‘Woah, what happened here? Did somebody put something in his soup?’ We’ll you’re gonna have to read to find out,” Priest said. “The story is not about him dying, it’s about how we got to this point. And I think that’s the more significant thing. That’s the good stuff that we don’t want to reveal.”

Priest added, “We know sooner or later everybody dies. Now, the question is what happens to all the toys? It’s very scary if Black Panther dies, because he’s got a lot of toys that we know about and a lot of toys we don’t know about. And we established in our series, 30 years ago, that in a desk drawer, he’s got all these plans for how to defeat, you know, Batman. He knows how to take down Galactus. He’s got all these like, contingency plans. Or as Jack Nicholson said, ‘All these marvelous toys.’ So the crisis is, what now? OK, Black Panther’s dead, what now?”

Still, Black Panther plays a vital role, and not just as the inciting incident.

“There’s plenty of T’Challa in the book, believe me,” Priest said. “But you’ll also see, Lockjaw. And it’s brilliant. It works.” That certainly reassures readers that Priest’s trademark way of trekking through time and non-linear storytelling will give T’Challa his due.

Black Panther Misconceptions

Speaking of T’Challa’s demise, Priest recalls the controversy he encountered when first writing the character.

“We got a lot of hate mail because I gave Black Panther an iPhone,” Priest said. “And this was long before there was such a thing. And we kept getting those hate mails about how absurd it was that he had this device that could talk to people, and there’s video. How absurd, you know? And I’m like, ‘Well, first of all, go back to Fantastic Four #52.’ This guy was a high-tech genius.”

Priest explains that somewhere along the way, the aspect of Black Panther’s intelligence got lost in subsequent issues.

“Go back and read Jungle Action, which was brilliant, don’t get me wrong. But he was wearing a leotard, and I kept going, ‘Why isn’t he wearing a bulletproof costume?’ He’s a genius! He can’t figure out what Kevlar is?”

By questioning the character’s logic,  Priest was able to innovate, allowing the invention of Panther’s vibranium costume and Kimoyo beads communicator. Those are just two things that have become a staple of his character, making it into the billion-dollar blockbuster 15 years after Priest’s run.

Of that penchant for reinventing the character, Priest added, “We tried a bunch of things. Some things worked and some things didn’t. And some things that people just loathe because it was considered subversive.”

Priest remarks that great success can come from subversion. To him, it moves characters forward. He bemoans the habit of nostalgia and warns against the dangers of only repeating what’s worked before.

“I really believe that subversiveness and new ideas are what’s needed,” Priest said. “That there’s really too much of this mimicry of the silver age going on these days.”

Writers can be afraid to break the toys given to them. But playing it safe doesn’t lead to interesting stories; it makes for forgettable ones.

“There can be these people that grew up reading comics,” Priest said. “Where they finally got their hands on Spider-Man, and now they want to do what they’ve always done. When what we need is real innovation. And you need people who are not going to treat them like they’re precious…and are gonna take chances. And if you fail? You fail. It’s comics. We bring people back from the dead all the time. But we need to try, and get characters out of cul-de-sacs.”

On the other hand, Priest respects the original material, but he doesn’t stop there. He uses it as a jumping-off point to modernize the character and take them to places they’ve never been.

“When I took over Black Panther, the first thing I did was I went back to Fantastic Four #52. What was Jack and Stan’s original intent with this character? Somewhere along the lines, writers became confused, and they started confusing Black Panther with Tarzan,” Priest said. “And they kept thinking, ‘Well, he’s this primitive guy from the jungle. And he fights with sticks.’ So I go back and read what Stan came up with. And even what Jack did. What Jack did was kind of zany Black Panther. He’s this genius guy who outsmarts everybody. And that’s his superpower, not invulnerability or flight. Black Panther’s superpower is you’re a schmuck and he knows it.”

Priest makes a vivid analogy of what it’s like to be in the Marvel universe and find yourself toe to toe with Black Panther.

“He’s a car salesman,” Priest said. “You can’t beat those people. Capital letters. If you’ve ever bought a car, don’t waste your time. All you can do is go and be as nice as possible, be humble, take your spanking like a man, get the keys, and get the hell out of there. That’s what Black Panther is.”

Priest follows it up with a summary of T’Challa’s priorities — Black Panther is about being a leader to his people, regardless of the cost.

“People keep thinking because he’s wearing his costume that he’s a hero, or that he’s somehow noble or even a moral leader,” Priest said. “He’s none of those things. He’s the sovereign of a nation. That responsibility is the only thing he cares about. And Black Panther’s always doing like, terrible things behind people’s backs. Because that’s the nature. He’s a sneaky guy. And he’s always stayed at least five steps ahead of his enemies.”

More to Come from Priest

With Priest and Quesada at the helm, Black Panther’s future looks to be equal parts exciting and ominous. But what about Priest’s future? Never one for idle hands, Priest plugs all the different projects he’s been doing while Marvel Knights awaits shipping. One of them is Red Sonja from Dynamite. He addressed the complicated nature of writing something with an upcoming live-action adaptation. Given Priest’s sizable contribution to the Black Panther mythos, it’s no surprise that everyone’s favorite redhead would get a similar makeover.

“There’s a movie in the works, and here comes Priest, kicking over everything you know about Red Sonja. If you like Quantum and Woody, if you like Black Panther, if you like stuff that had that kind of twisted Priest humor, then you’ll like Red Sonja,” Priest said. “But Red Sonja purists, people who just want Red Sonja straight no chaser, and they take their sword and sorcery absolutely seriously, I can see those letters now.”

Priest also teases an OGN called Babylon from Humanoids, his ongoing Vampirella series from Dynamite, and one other thing that he’s excited for people to read.

“I have a Skybound book that will probably be dropping first quarter 2026 called Commissioned,” Priest said. “It’s incredibly controversial. Commissioned will definitely get me canceled. It kind of spoofs the industry itself in a lot of ways. So look forward to that.”

Priest closes off the interview by revisiting Black Panther one more time. While the road to the miniseries has been long enough, Priest is happy to be at this point to explore a character so near and dear to his heart. Especially when there’s no silly continuity or other hold-ups in his way.

“Our Black Panther is our world to come,” Priest said. “It’s completely our own vision of the near future. It is not tied into any other bit of Marvel continuity, which gives us enormous freedom to do things like have Lockjaw show up, so we’re very happy about that. I’m glad that’s finally coming out. It’s been a long and interesting journey.”

Marvel Knights: The World To Come #1 drops June 4, 2025