Given the honors bestowed on journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates in the past year—a MacArthur “genius” grant for his writing on race and politics, a National Book Award for his best-selling memoir, Between the World and Me—it’s a pleasant surprise that his next major project is a comic book. But the Atlantic magazine correspondent is an avowed Marvel fanboy, and the fact that he’s writing a new series for Black Panther, comics’ first mainstream black superhero, feels like the perfect pairing of subject and scribe. Black Panther debuts today, with art by Brian Stelfreeze, and in May the character joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: Civil War. (A stand-alone movie, helmed by *Creed’*s Ryan Coogler, is due in 2018.) Coates shares his take on comics’ newest claws célèbre.

What sold you on the Black Panther gig?

I mean, it was Marvel and it was a comic book. I would have written anything for them. When I started reading comics, there was no Black Panther series in motion, and he wasn’t in the Avengers at that time either, so I wasn’t as up on him as other people. Once I went back and did the really heavy research, I began to feel like I had my particular take on the character.

The plot involves a terrorist attack on Black Panther’s kingdom of Wakanda, which spurs a popular revolt. How influenced were you by the ongoing war on terror?

A lot. I was also influenced by the recent wave of revolution through the Middle East and the American Revolution. Once these revolutions are done they might be perceived as heroic, but it doesn’t always look heroic at the time. It might look downright villainous. I mean, the American revolutionaries tarred and feathered people.

What’s your take on the politics of Wakanda?

Wakanda is the most advanced nation on earth—in certain renditions of Black Panther, these guys came up with a cure for cancer—and yet it has the most primitive form of governance on the planet: absolute monarchy. The one case an absolute monarch can make is “I keep the people safe.” What happens in a country where that’s no longer true? How do the people feel about that? That’s the story we’re telling.

Writing for comics has to be very different than writing Between the World and Me or one of your Atlantic pieces, like “The Case for Reparations.” What were the biggest challenges in tackling a new genre?

In prose, you can tell people what you see. In comic books, you have to imagine what the thing looks like and give some sort of direction to the artist—and then on top of that, you have to be extremely open to the artist. A very specific example of this is the powers [Black Panther’s alter ego] T’challa has. We knew he has this Vibranium-weave suit, we knew he could absorb punches, but Brian came up with this idea of really using that notion of absorption: What if he could push [the kinetic energy] back out? That’s a kind of synergy that doesn’t exist when you’re writing a book and doesn’t exist too much when you’re writing an article.

What else came out of your collaboration with Brian?

Brian came up with this idea of tech bracelets that all Wakandans are born with. You can use the tech bracelet to text, but you can also use the tech bracelet to throw up a video projection. And throughout the course of the life of a Wakandan, you get beads that differentiate you. The idea is so creative, so big and beautiful, that I’m struggling with ways to use it. I never would have thought of that, ever.

What kind of thought did you personally give to how Black Panther would look in this series?

Well he’s got one of the most badass uniforms in comics, so that was done as far as I was concerned. We got rid of that dumbass cape, which I don’t like. I’m not a huge fan of the Count Dracula cape.

Why does the comic’s story arc, “A Nation Under Our Feet,” share its title with Steven Hahn’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize–winning book about black political power?

Hahn’s book is all about the grassroots. When you think about history and historiography, there’s a lot of Great Man theory. Hahn is talking about the Civil War and Reconstruction, and most people obsess with Abraham Lincoln—if you’re lucky, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee. He’s interested in the little movements of the people who are underneath, of the slaves whose stories haven’t been told. As much as this is the story of T’Challa, you’re going to see him grappling with the nation underneath. And supervillains with cool powers. Let’s not forget that. It’s not a dissertation.

Did you ever feel you were getting too didactic?

Not really—I have a venue to express my political thought. This isn’t my chance to talk about #BlackLivesMatter in comic book form. This is not a propaganda sheet. This is supposed to be exhilarating, fun to read. The politics are in the background. What’s in front is people punching each other.

Do you think you’ll continue doing the comic after this yearlong series?

I’d like to. It’s like being a kid again; it’s like playing in the sandbox. I love it.

Panther Anatomy

The Story

The opening page of Black Panther #1 begins with Black Panther—T’Challa’s alter ego—in crisis.

The Design

Stelfreeze says the conflict-filled background panels add to the burden resting on Black Panther’s shoulders.

The Aesthetic

Coates will attract a non-comic-reading crowd, who Stelfreeze is welcoming with a “more naturalistic” look.

The Suit

Black Panther already has “one of the most badass uniforms in comics,” Coates says—so they didn’t change much.