Black Panther Fact — October 30, 2026

Today's Fact

Verified against at least two independent sources. Issues cited below.

BLACK PANTHER'S GRANDFATHER HID A TIME MACHINE — SHAPED LIKE A BRASS FROG!

The Featured Fact

Jack Kirby launched T'Challa's first solo series, Black Panther Vol. 1 #1 (1977), not with a throne-room intrigue but with a treasure hunt for an object called King Solomon's Frog. The Frog is a small, jewelled brass amphibian — and a working time machine. Split into a matched pair, one half hauls people out of the present while the other summons people into it; joined together, the set can move its user through time and even across light-years of space.

The Wakandan connection is ancestral. T'Challa's grandfather Azzuri once held the Frog and, judging it too dangerous to circulate, hid it away. It surfaced anyway among a circle of obsessive antiquities hunters called the Collectors: Alfred Queely took it, Abner Little — Mister Little — recruited the Panther to recover it, and rival collector Princess Zanda sent flying soldiers to seize it for herself.

Mid-battle, a stray shot struck the Frog and switched it on. The device delivered Hatch-22, a human from six million years in the future whose evolved mind could attack everyone nearby. Knocking him out solved only the immediate problem: sending him home required the second Frog, buried in King Solomon's tomb. Panther, Little and Zanda — enemies an hour earlier — raided the tomb together, survived its guardians, stacked the two Frogs, and posted their unwanted visitor back to his own millennium.

Why It's Obscure

Wakanda's royal family tree includes a king who looked at a time machine, decided it was trouble, and buried the problem — which worked perfectly until treasure hunters dug the problem back up.

The pair

Two frogs, one machine — separated, each half performs only half the trick; the summoning half alone is how legends from Aladdin's genie to the Loch Ness Monster supposedly began.

Azzuri

The grandfather clause — Azzuri the Wise possessed the Frog generations earlier and concealed it precisely because a pocket time machine invites exactly this sort of afternoon.

Hatch-22

Six million years early — the accidental passenger was no caveman but humanity's distant descendant, over-evolved, furious, and extremely difficult to sedate.

The tomb run

Enemies, temporarily — Zanda tried to steal the Frog at gunpoint, then helped carry its twin out of Solomon's tomb, because even collectors prefer a present tense that still exists.

Gallery

Kirby-era Panther art, the Brass Frog itself, and Princess Zanda — the rival collector whose soldiers accidentally switched the machine on.

Black Panther Vol. 1 #1 cover by Jack Kirby — **Panther's Treasure**The cover of Black Panther #1 (1977): Kirby opens the solo series mid-hunt, with the Frog already causing trouble off-panel.

King Solomon's brass Frog artifact, comic art — **The Frog Itself**King Solomon's Frog in panel: a bejewelled brass trinket that happens to be one of the most powerful time devices in the Marvel Universe.

Princess Zanda, comic art — **The Rival Collector**Princess Zanda, whose pursuit of the Frog triggered its activation — and who then had to help undo what her own ambush started.

Sources

Every claim above is verified against at least two of these independent sources.

Bullpen Bulletins

King Solomon's Frogs — Marvel Appendix (Marvunapp)The Brass Frogs are a space/time device: one sends people from the present, the other brings people to it; first appearance Black Panther #1 (1977), with Azzuri, Abner Little, Alfred Queely and Princess Zanda among their possessors, and Hatch-22 among those summoned.
Kirby's Black Panther, Day 1 — Bleeding CoolKirby's 1977 series centres on the hunt for King Solomon's Frog; a fight with Zanda's men activates it, bringing the Six Million Year Man, and the second Frog in Solomon's temple is needed to send him home.
Black Panther #1 retrospective — ComicBook.comKirby's first issue, 'King Solomon's Frog,' has T'Challa helping Mister Little while Princess Zanda seeks the frogs, which T'Challa's grandfather Azzuri once controlled.