Marvel Knights, Where are they Now

Back in 1998 Marvel released the Marvel Knights imprint. The idea was to make a more adult imprint in the Marvel universe but without going into the adult areas of DCs Vertigo line. While the initial launch was considered a mixed bag Marvel Knights very quickly became a banner of quality, basically you would know a good book if it had Marvel Knights written on it. A certain Joe Quesada was in charge of the Marvel Knights line, and as a result once he became EiC of all of Marvel the line was slowly diluted and phased out. It now stands for one-off prestige events. But I wasn't going to talk too much about the fall of Marvel Knights as an imprint. Instead I was going to talk about the Marvel Knights titles and Where they are now.

The original 4 Launch titles of the Marvel Knights range were Daredevil and Black Panther as ongoings, a Punisher 4 issue Limited series and an Inhumans 12 issue maxi series.

Black Panther

Obviously in the launch the majority of focus was on Kevin Smith's Daredevil story (Back when you could trust Smith not to run away and make Jersey girl on you) but the major critical acclaim at launch came from Christopher Priest's quirky take on Black panther. For starters, the story was seen from the point of view of a government attache called Everett K Ross, second the story was told from his rather fragmented reporting of this story to his superior and girlfriend. The result was a confusing but very entertaining non-linear story. Over the course of the issues we had the initial fragments expanded and it was a rare thing to have a story that was entertaining both as a single issue and a full story.

So, what happened. Well Panther has had a hard time of it as a title. It was the first of the Marvel Knights titles to be taken into the mainstream Marvel Universe, where it seemed to lack the spark of earlier issues. This volume finally ended with a very entertaining story where struggling New York cop Casper Cole found and used a Black panther costume.


Black panther then re-started in a story that was almost a re-boot of the title. This started well with international politics taking a high stage and the US threatening an invasion. However I found the story was de-railed by dragging Black panther into every big summer event in existence plus further confusion when Panther joined the Fantastic 4. In the end I dropped the title and it has since had to be re-booted for the current Dark Reign state of affairs.





Overall Black Panther has never really regained its status from the Christopher Priest issues which is a shame as the character is ripe for development. Here's hoping this newer run brings back some of the old Marvel Knights magic.