There’s a validity to a plot where hostility disguises attraction, but not how it’s handled here, with dialogue alternating between trite and pompous accompanied by yearning thought balloons. It continues after Ayo’s graduation and her assignment alongside Aneka to protect Queen Shuri, the Black Panther’s sister. It begins with Ayo, proud new recruit to the Dora Milaje, and her immediately combative and competitive attitude toward Aneka her trainer. A bunch of perfect females whose entire purpose is to fight for, and if necessary lay down their life to protect their King? Isn’t that a power fantasy just a step away from Conan the Barbarian? Some recognition of this was surely behind the hiring of acclaimed feminist writer Roxane Gay to inject credibility into what could be construed as sexist old tosh. However, a greater sophistication is now supplied to superheroes, the Black Panther in particular, and given the amount of context added to T’Challa and Wakanda over the past decade, the Dora Milaje appear altogether more suspect. When they were introduced Black Panther was a simpler series, so the King of the world’s most technologically advance nation having the services of an elite trained all-female bodyguard was, well, neat. The purpose appears to have been to reposition the Dora Milaje. Martinez, with Black Panther writer Ta-Nehisi Coates credited vaguely as “consultant”. World of Wakanda supplies three stories, the longest of them being ‘Dawn of the Midnight Angels’ by Gay and Alitha E.
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