Black Panther #12 [1978] – The Kiber Clue

Kirby’s finishes up his stint on the adventures of T’Challa this issue, ending on a cliff-hanger to be resolved by the following creative team. Well, at least it’s better than OMAC’s “and then everything blew up” paste-up ending…

Pretty good story despite the lack of an ending. T’Challa still has his ESP powers as a result of exposure to vibranium in his previous adventure, and gets a message from his captured cousin Khanata about the villainous Kiber, a mad scientist type who is conducting strange experiments in matter-transmission and conversion of matter to energy.

The Panther goes to the rescue, allowing himself to be captured by Kiber’s minions so that he can lead a mass escape by the other captives while he goes to confront the real Kiber behind the image.

Kirby has a lot of fun with the effects of characters walking through walls and doing other highly irregular things thanks to their energy states this issue.

Mike Royer inks the 17-page story. The cover is one of those uncertain ones. The Kirby Checklist has Klaus Janson, which doesn’t seem implausible if the JUNGLE ACTION #18 from a few years earlier is also Janson, but there’s nothing really distinctive to make an identification easy.

Published 1978

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