Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates to Cowrite History-Making Marvel Comic

Two of contemporary literature’s most important black voices are combining their considerable talents to collaborate on a Marvel superhero series. Ta-Nehisi Coates, the man behind Marvel’s acclaimed and best-selling Black Panther, has tapped Bad Feminist and An Untamed State author Roxane Gay to cowrite Black Panther: World of Wakanda. And Gay, in doing so, will become the first black woman to pen a Marvel comic since the publisher’s founding in 1939.

Per The New York Times, Coates and Gay’s comic will build on the world that Coates and artists Brian Stelfreeze and Laura Martin introduced in Black Panther. The new series will be illustrated by Alitha Martinez, herself a woman of color. Black Panther: World of Wakanda will follow the adventures of a pair of the eponymous African king’s former warriors, Ayo and Aneka, who are queer women. Coates will cowrite the first issue with poet Yona Harvey, and Afua Richardson will draw it—both Harvey and Richardson are black women.

“My agent was not thrilled that I was taking on another project,” Gay told the Times. “The opportunity to write black women and queer black women into the Marvel universe, there’s no saying no to that.” This will be Gay’s first foray into writing comics, and the magnitude of it is by no means lost on her.