As the current Blank Panther series which began in 2016 concludes on 26 May, Marvel Comics has revealed that the next thrilling chapter for T’Challa, Wakanda, and the Marvel Universe will begin in August 2021.

According to a report in the New York Times, the Academy Award-winning writer John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) will helm Marvel’s next Black Panther comic book series alongside Marvel’s leading artist Juann Cabal (Guardians of the Galaxy).

Created in 1966, Black Panther is the first Black superhero in mainstream comics and hails from Wakanda, a fictional African country. In his country, Black Panther is known as T’Challa. The current Black Panther series has been written by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Building from the epic last chapter of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ groundbreaking multi-year Black Panther run, in Black Panther (2018) #25 next week, Ridley will kick off an action-packed espionage story that will impact everything in T’Challa’s life and have ramifications for the entire Marvel Universe!

Revealing the plot of the new series, Ridley said, “It’s a hybrid espionage-Super Hero thriller, but at its core, it’s a love story and I don’t mean just romantic love, although there’s some of that as well. It’s love between friends.”

He further added, “We’re coming out of a summer where we saw Black people fighting for our rights, standing up, fighting in ways that we haven’t had to do in years and it was really important to me after the year we had where we can have these conversations with Black people and we can use words like love and caring and hope and regret and all these really fundamental emotions that everybody has.”

Black Panther #1 goes on sale in comic shops and digital comics storefronts in August.