Shuri Volume 1: The Search for Black Panther
Author Nnedi Okorafor, Illustrations Leonardo Romero
Shuri, younger sister of T’Challa, finally gets her own series following the success of the Black Panther movie! Unfortunately, Shuri, younger sister of T’Challa, is not allowed to be seen as anything but younger sister of T’Challa. We shall see if the same happens in the next movie, I’m worried she still won’t be getting her own spotlight.
That panel is the first thing we see in every issue of this run. She is not her own character and she doesn’t get to be throughout this entire book.
When she’s not Shuri, younger sister of T’Challa, she is… Groot?
Point is, she’s never just Shuri. One of the biggest feminist complaints in all of media is when female characters are not independent of the men around them. This is Shuri’s biggest error. The author didn’t seem to trust that an audience would want to see her out of the previous context. Despite her being popular enough for fans to demand a solo run! Cowards.
The entire plot of this short run revolves around T’Challa, Black Panther, getting lost in a wormhole. Shuri must find and rescue her brother because the world needs him and Shuri can’t get the job done herself so her mission is to bring back the man who can.
This is essentially the only plot that this book has. There’s no main villain with an evil plan, just a big monster to fight. Shuri is hyper intelligent and one of the world’s best inventors and engineers with unlimited funds but she’s placed against a big monster that can basically just be punched to death. Fucking waste.
This was written as a limited run which means they had a set amount of issues from the get go. So how is it that it still doesn’t have an ending? It has one plot, one main character, and almost no conflict and yet Shuri still can’t even rescue the damn brother nobody will shut up about? The book ends without finding T’Challa. I presume they’ll find him in an issue of another run of a different character but how absolute bullshit that Shuri can’t at least be a hero in her own book!
Seriously, the authors gave her this super lame storyline for her first solo run and it all comes to mean nothing. She’s not Black Panther, she doesn’t rescue Black Panther, so who is she?
Younger sister of T’challa. And never anything more.
1/5 black panthers 🐈⬛
Instead of Shuri, check out Ms Marvel
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Buy it here: Shuri Vol. 1: The Search For Black Panther (Shuri (2018-2019))
The problem with having a new character perform so poorly in her own first adventure is that expectations for any subsequent adventures are going to be small. It’s not a good way to initiate a run of Shuri titles, to begin with failure. Especially if she’s supposed to adopt the mantle of New Black Panther. Good review even though it’s a disappointing result.
Agreed. And this happens all too frequently
Disappointing. At first, I thought, oh this would be great for my granddaughter! At least, Shuri is portrayed as hyper intelligent and one of the world’s best inventors and engineers, but everyone knows girls always have the brains now let’s show them kick some ass!
Right! It didn’t cover all the angles, I wish it was more about her. Maybe with the next one 😒