Just last week, it was announced that current Black Panther scribe, National Magazine Award and National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates would be rebooting the series, featuring Wakanda in space. This week? Marvel Comics confirmed a long-standing rumor about Coates' next project for Marvel: becoming the new writer for Captain America.
Coates announced that his run on Captain America (which will be drawn by Filipino artist Leinil Yu) would kick off on the Fourth of July, which is more than fitting. Coates wrote about his "conflicted" relationship to Captain's loyalty to "the dream," saying, "I have my share of strong opinions about the world. But one reason why I chose the practice of opinion journalism—which is to say a mix of reporting and opinion—is because understanding how those opinions fit in with the perspectives of others has always been more interesting to me than repeatedly restating my own. Writing is about questions for me—not answers."
Coates went on: "And Captain America, the embodiment of a kind of Lincolnesque optimism, poses a direct question for me: Why would anyone believe in The Dream? What is exciting here is not some didactic act of putting my words in Captain America’s head, but attempting to put Captain America’s words in my head. What is exciting is the possibility of exploration, of avoiding the repetition of a voice I’ve tired of."
Coates, with his history of pieces calling America's bullshit into question, writing a Captain America comic in a time when Trump is running the country? At the very least, it's a truly intriguing idea. Given how he's crafted T'Challa's current comic book character over the last couple years, it's amazing that Marvel's entrusting Coates with one of their tentpole books.
Captain America #1 hits shops on July 4; it's going to be interesting.
