Marvel's solo
Black Panther movie introduced audiences to Erik Killmonger, one of the best on-screen villains the MCU has managed to bring to life. The brilliant performance of Michael B. Jordan helped establish a villain with actual emotion and complexity and now Marvel is looking to tell the character's story via his very own comic book mini-series.
Announced today, writer Bryan Edward Hill and artist Juan Ferreyra will team up for the five-part mini-series, appropriately titled
Killmonger. The series will chronicle the story of N'Jadaka, a Wakandan who was exiled to the United States, and how he went from "bitter genius to a full-blown supervillain," according to
Vulture. Speaking to the publication, Hill explained the approach he took to tell Killmonger's story.
I wanted to explore the choices and the failures that lead a person to dedicate their life to revenge, and how that happens. Because with Erik, I feel like it’s really a tragedy. It’s a story of a guy who was failed a lot by Wakanda in certain ways, by the people he met outside of Wakanda, by his own conscience in other ways, and I wanted to paint a portrait of that. Because to me the iconic fight between Erik Killmonger and T’Challa is tragic. It’s something that shouldn’t happen. It’s a conflict that’s borne from a tragic misunderstanding and a young man who was violently taken from his home.
Although
Black Panther writer and director Ryan Coogler largely reimagined Killmonger's backstory for the film, Hill acknowledged that he still looked at Jordan's performance and Coogler's interpretation of the character for certain elements when writing the series.
The aspects of Erik being a soldier in his own cause that I took away from the film were certainly important to the narrative. For me, Jordan’s performance is remarkable because even in his philosophy you can see that he’s still wounded. He’s a person justifying himself with his anger. And anger is always fear in disguise. Any time you see anger, you’re really looking at fear. Erik, in the movie, to me, was a character who was very afraid. He was afraid of not belonging to anything, of being a man with no nation, who’s afraid of not being able to live up to the Wakandan standard, of being the bastard son of Wakanda. The feelings of inadequacy led him into this unending desire for violent proof that he wasn’t that, that he wasn’t the bastard, that he deserved the right. Those emotions certainly play a part in that way.
While the actual backstory for Killmonger will differ in the mini-series, it sounds like you can still expect that same powerful, raw emotion from the character. The interview with Hill is filled with all sorts of details about the upcoming series, so be sure to check it out. Killmonger #1 goes on sale December 5. Check out the cover for the first issue below.