Black Panther - Kiber The Cruel!

The eleventh issue of the Black Panther finds T'Challa healing from his exposure to the Vibranium mound when he defeated Jakarra in the previous issue.

While he heals he is having weird dreams of ghoulish warriors who attack him through the walls. He seems to generally have increased psychic abilities as a result of his exposure. While he mends Khanata is captured by soldiers who look just like those in the Panther's dream and taken to a secret location where their leader Kiber the Cruel imprisons men and sacrifices them to generate pure energy for his own use.

Khanata's absence is noted and the Black Panther against doctor's orders goes to search for him and finds himself captured by Kiber's thugs and taken to his lair.

He discovers that the ghostly Kiber is actually a projection and fights to reach his true location while Khanata leads a revolt with the other prisoners gathered to feed Kiber's machine.

And that my friends is where the King left the building again. The very next issue, the third and final chapter will be by new talent, Kirby having left off working for Marvel for a second time in a decade when he finds editorial interference too much to worry with. Some will argue that his glory days were already past him and I see the point, but there's still a great deal of work to come from Kirby's drawing board, but none of it would be for Marvel ever again.

As for the story itself, Jim Shooter plots and Ed Hannigan scripts a tale that Jerry Bingham draws which shows that Kiber is actually a man who has mangled his own flesh by dint of teleportation experiments and he uses his captives to supply life and energy to his mutated form. The Black Panther is able finally to end his threat but it proves to be at the cost of many lives. He and Khanata are left standing and the Black Panther will live to fight another day.

No more to come unless you don't count the extensive look at "Panther's Rage" all this next week. See ya!

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