A couple caveats before I give my brief review: (1) I’ve only recently gotten back into monthly issues, so I don’t have much background pre-Marvel NOW; (2) I have zero background with The Black Panther.

With those two things in mind, my review:
What. The. F. Just. Happened?

Maybe it’s due to my ignorance, but I had no idea what was going on. I was able to follow the story on the most basic level, thus the 2, but in light of this being a #1 you might think it would be a little friendlier to new readers. I had to wikipedia the crap out of Black Panther to even get the faintest idea of what was happening, and even then I still have no clue why anything that happened was relevant or why I should care. The dialogue and basic writing itself was fine, and the art was good.

I really like Hickman, and I’ll probably pull the next issue to see how this goes, but purely from a new reader jumping onto a #1, I was disappointed.