Black Panther Fact — October 31, 2026

Today's Fact

Checked against independent sources — the issues are cited below.

BEFORE HE WAS THE BLACK PANTHER, T'CHALLA WAS THE COAL TIGER — IN A STRIPED COSTUME WITH HIS FACE BARE!

The Featured Fact

Jack Kirby's surviving concept art for Marvel's first Black hero carries a different name written over a very different man: Coal Tiger. That draft wears a cape, a yellow-and-black striped tunic, matching striped boots and no mask at all, his face open to the reader. Stan Lee later said the Panther name came from a pulp adventure hero who kept a black panther as a helper, yet the drawing itself was labeled for a tiger made of coal.

By publication in Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #52 (July 1966) the stripes had burned away into a single sweep of black and the bare face had vanished behind a full mask, so the debut cover told readers nothing about the man underneath. He arrived in print months before the Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966, a sequence later retellings often reverse, and the resemblance in names was coincidence layered over a shared era.

Coal Tiger refused to stay in the sketchbook. An alternate-universe Coal Tiger later appeared in a 1990 Avengers story by Bob Harras, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer, and in Marvel's MC2 future the name passed down the royal line: T'Challa's son, T'Chaka II, fights as the Coal Tiger, a prince literally named for the grandfather his father never got to be.

Why It's Obscure

The most regal silhouette in comics started as a watercolor in stripes, and the family has been quietly reclaiming the draft ever since.

The sketch

Kirby draws him open-faced — The original design shows a smiling, unmasked hero in a striped tunic and cape, a courtly adventurer rather than a shadow crossing a rooftop.

1966

Black before the Party — T'Challa debuted that July; the Black Panther Party formed that October, so the comic cannot have borrowed a name that did not yet exist.

1972

The Leopard detour — Wanting distance from the Party association anyway, Marvel briefly renamed him the Black Leopard in Fantastic Four #119, then restored Panther when neither readers nor creators liked the substitute.

The heir

A son claims the draft — In the MC2 line, T'Chaka II takes Coal Tiger as his own codename, turning a discarded concept sketch into an inherited title.

Gallery

Comic art of Black Panther and the figures named in today's fact.

Jack Kirby original Coal Tiger costume artwork for Black Panther — **The Coal Tiger, as Kirby drew him**The printed Kirby original-costume page: striped yellow tunic, cape, striped boots and a completely bare face — the design that never reached a cover.

Black Panther in full black costume on a comic cover — **The Panther who shipped**The finished article on Black Panther #1 (2016): one unbroken black silhouette, mask sealed, every stripe from the sketch edited out by history.

Rise of the Black Panther comic panels with unmasked T'Challa — **The face behind the mask**Panels from Rise of the Black Panther (2018) end with T'Challa unmasked and triumphant, the openness of Kirby's first draft surfacing inside the myth.

Sources

Every claim above checks out against at least two of these independent sources.

Bullpen Bulletins

How Jack Kirby Almost Made Black Panther a New God — ComicBook.comDetails Kirby's Coal Tiger design with exposed face and colorful costume, the shelved anthology origin, and the name's later returns including T'Chaka II in the MC2 line.
Things You Didn't Know About Black Panther — LooperCovers the Coal Tiger concept name and costume, the July 1966 debut preceding the Party's October founding, and the brief Black Leopard rename in Fantastic Four #119.