Comic Book Brawls: Black Panther -vs- Red Skull

Comic Book: Avengers Vol. 3, Issues #69-70 (Red Zone arc)

Combatants:

Black Panther/T’challa- The King and Protector of Wakanda, the super advanced African nation that has never been conquered and is home to the only supply of Vibranium. T’challa at this time had peak human strength, speed, and agility, enhanced senses (think Wolverine) along with being a master of martial arts and one of the smartest people in the world. He is also known as being one of the best tacticians in the world.

-vs-

The Red Skull– Skull is one of the most vile and disgusting things in all of the Marvel Universe. He is Nazi to the core and will do what is necessary to clean and dominate the human race. At this point in the comics, I believe he had peak human strength, speed, and agility as well as being a very good hand-to-hand combatant. He was basically Captain America but evil.

Background: The Red Skull released a biochemical agent that was rapidly killing people around Mt. Rushmore and was spreading across the United States at an alarming pace. He had just incapacitated Falcon and beat up Captain America and was talking about how he was going to frame Wakanda and the Black Panther for the terrorist attack. Right at that point, Black Panther and Iron Man burst into the room.

When Skull makes this comment, it basically enrages T’challa and, much to Iron Man’s surprise, he instantly attacks Skull while Captain America and Falcon are being poisoned and dying.

After Panther was blasted out of the window, Red Skull quickly inconpacitates Iron Man’s armor, leaving Tony rather helpless in the same poison room as Falcon and Captain America. Shit then hits the fan between Skull and Panther and Black Panther drops one of my favorite lines in all of comics:

“I’m going to break your jaw”

Check out the rest of the fight after the jump! You don’t want to miss this!

Falcon used his abilities to telepathically talk to birds to distract Red Skull and give Panther a slight opening to put a straight up beat down on Red Skull… and make good on his promise.

At this point, Captain America, who Iron Man had saved, tells Panther that they need Red Skull’s blood to use as an antidote to the Red Zone poison.

 

Why I Chose This Fight:

1. It features the Black Panther, who is my favorite comic book hero. He doesn’t get a lot of time to shine outside of his own books so to see he was the one to “save the day” at the end with a beat down for the ages is refreshing and awesome.

2. Anytime Skull gets beat up, especially by someone he deems ‘inferior” such as an African super hero, it is glorious. Especially when he brutally gets his jaw broken.

3. “I’m going to break your jaw,” along with classic comic book/action movie trope of taking off gloves. Awesome. And the fact that it was not an empty threat was even better.

4. I also like in this arc how T’challa realizes that he needs to be more open with sharing Wakanda’s vasts amount of knowledge. His “I have been thinking like you lately” line points to the fact that he was acting as if he and his country was superior to others due to their vasts amount of knowledge, wealth, and power. Following this fight, Stark and T’challa agree to share scientific resources with each other.