Last month, a celebrated writer from outside the world of comics landed in our little four-color ghetto with a thud when Ta-Nehisi Coates debuted his much-ballyhooed new Black Panther series over at Marvel — first issue sales were strong, but the comic itself sucked (to put it mildly), and if the shelves at my LCS are any indication, there are going to be a lot of copies of issue 2 available in the bargain boxes sooner rather than later. It’s too bad, of course, because Coates is both an interesting and important literary figure — as well as one with an apparently long-standing love for this much-maligned medium — but when the history of comic books in the 21st century is written, Black Panther circa 2016 looks likely to go down as yet another missed opportunity to bring new readers into the fold.

Still, there’s gotta be hope, right? I…