Ta-Nehesi Coates isn’t stopping with the Black Panther. With the help of Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey, Coates will open up of the lives of the hero’s fictional African homeland, Wakanda—with female narratives.
The Marvel Comics spinoff seeks to diversify the industry with “World of Wakanda,” reports the New York Times. Gay and Coates developed the characters Ayo and Aneka, who served as Dora Milaje—a team of Wakanda women chosen to protect the Black Panther and secure peace within the land by representing each tribe in the country. Not only are Ayo and Aneka black women, they are also a couple. The idea of the pair enticed Gay to take on a new project. She said, “The opportunity to write Black women and queer Black women into the Marvel universe, there’s no saying no to that.” Gay adds writing her first comic to her current agenda: working on books Hunger and Difficult Women set for release in 2017, and and writing the screenplay for An Untamed State with Fox Searchlight.
Another black woman of Wakanda, Zenzi, traces back to the first issue of Black Panther when she started a riot against the T’Challa. Zenzi also caused the eyes of T’Challa’s subjects to turn green. Poet Harvey takes on her story in 10 pages of the World of Wakanda’s first issue. Coates spoke of his choice in Harvey, “I have found that poetry is so correlated with writing comic books. That’s just so little space, and you have to speak with so much power. I thought she’d be a natural.”
The introduction of these three heroines came last April with the successful release of Black Panther but the full glimpse into their stories, World of Wakanda, hits shelves this November.
