Writer Reginald Hudlin

Pencils Scot Eaton and Kaare Andrews, for pages 21 – 24

Inks Klaus Janson

Colors Dean White

Letters VC’s Randy Gentile

Cover Frank Cho

Cover Dated September 2006

From BET, Toure and Ananda are the wedding commentators.  Black Panther and Storm are the ultimate power couple, and for good reason.  Toure comments on how the Superhuman Registration Act is being hotly debated, back in America.  By hotly debated, I mean that costumed folks are punching and kicking other costumed folks.

Luke Cage is surprised that Spider-Man is on Iron Man’s side so much.  This is after issue two of Civil War.  Spider-Man is in his Iron-Spider costume.

Susan is still standing with her husband, Reed.  Thing is already showing signs of wanting to be neutral.

Kitty and Lockheed seem super excited, to the point where Emma feels the need to calm her down.  Eaton draws one awesome Lockheed!

Cyclops wonders what the X-Men will be like without Storm, they will be okay and her absence will only really be noticeable by her hardcore fans.  For the Maid of Honor, Kitty seems to be pretty relaxed.

Meanwhile, the psychic parasite known as the Cannibal prepares his trap.  Cannibal is who I didn’t know from the previous two issues, who I referred to has Not-Malice.  How many villains fall under this body-less category?

Cannibal wants to take advantage of the situation and take any number of heroes but keeps his non-eyes on his prize, Black Panther.

Black Goliath (a horrible name) is impress when he sees Falcon wheel Isaiah Bradley.  Triathlon (who I know from Buisek’s legendary Avengers run) and Captain Marvel (Monica) come over to greet Isaiah.  We get an editor note to check out – Truth : Red, White & Black, for the full story.  Hudlin must have really liked that series, as he didn’t write it, Robert Morales did.

Elsewhere in the Place.  T’Challa and Ororo are talking.  He tells her that the Panther God will judge Ororo to see if she is worthy of marrying him.  Ororo isn’t thrilled with this and wonders what happens if she isn’t worthy of the test.  I would imagine that, this portion of the ceremony, probably should have done prior to the wedding invites.  T’Challa would give up his kingdom to stay married to Ororo, so the wedding will continue, no matter what.

Daily Bugle (what they used to call, Bullpen Bulletin – I like the in-comic universe name change).  I like them promoting New Adventures and New Number Ones.  New Number Ones – Annihilation / Heroes for Hire / Agents of Atlas / Claws.  New Adventures – Sensational Spider-Man 29 / Runaways 19 / X-Factor 10, a team member betrays the team.  I own issues nine and eleven, so that’s funny (and issue 23) / Black Panther 19, attacked by DOOM!

Xavier shows up as he will be walking her down the aisle.  This comes as a surprised to her, also a surprise to her, is that he is able to walk.  I like that he waves this off, like this happens from time to time – as it does.

Elsewhere in the Palace.  Black Panther stages a meeting between Captain America and Iron Man, neither of whom, are impressed with each other.  They both leave the wedding, both of them making sure that Black Panther apologizes for each of them, to Storm.

Meanwhile.  Doctor Strange, Brother Voodoo and Blade stop their conversation to take note that Uatu, the Watcher has arrived.  I like that a guidebook has been handed out.  Would it have been more awesome, if it was called – a handbook?  Perhaps

Back to the party guests.  President Bush 43 arrives, along with Fidel Castro and the late Nelson Mandela.  A huge wave of applause erupts as Oprah arrives.  Ororo’s grandparents arrive, the idiot that is her grandfather, tries to start saying that Bush doesn’t care about black people, which is still a ridiculous statement.  Luckily, his wife stops him before he can say those words.

Her grandparents get to sit with Ororo’s mother’s family.

Meanwhile.  Kitty really wants to see Storm’s dress, which wasn’t she there when Storm bought it?  I guess we didn’t see her buy it.  Lockheed is flying about.

The whole “Storm loved Black Panther for years” doesn’t quite worked for me, as we had decades of those two not having any panel time together but I get that he was her first crush (and her, his – maybe?) back in her African days, but that seems like an odd thing a carry well into someone’s thirties.  Am I still crushing on Katie O’Connor and Jennifer Fuller?  No, as when I think about to them, my mind stops at them being first and second graders, respectfully, so I don’t romanticism them, at all.  Though I do wonder if they are on Facebook but I don’t believe they are.  To be fair, if they grew up to be female versions of a handsome, rich and heroic King, I guess they would still be on the top of my mind.

Kitty finally gets to see the dress and instantly wants to wear it.  I wish we got to see Kitty visit Storm, even just once, while she was a Queen.

See that second to last panel, on the bottom?  Lockheed wants to eat those birds!  Nice touch, Eaton!

Black Panther, now in costume, wonders why Uatu is present.  He’s not going to be interfering, I know that much.  His uncle is excited about the children that will come from this union.

Black Panther gets to the alter, wondering where his wife-to-be is.  If he is anything like me, and we do have so much in common, he is going to have to wait for an intense fifteen minutes.

Storm arrives in the dress, that gets its own back up feature.  The credits page thanks the following folks for the design of the dress – Procter & Gamble, CBS Daytime (the two parent companies of), Guiding Light, Alan Locher, Ellen Wheeler, Maria Aguero, Alyson Hui and Shawn Dudley.

Poor Kitty, doesn’t do anything for the ceremony.

Once the ceremony begins, the Karee Andrews pages kick in.  They both are in the spirit world, they first see the Ape God.  They run from that one, right into the Panther God.  Panther God and Ororo have a stare off.  The Panther God roars and Ororo is deemed worthy.

They bounce back and Eaton takes over.  That must have been very exciting to those in attendance.  Did the invitations state to not be surprised when the bride and groom just stood around, starring into nothing.  Oh, it only lasted five seconds, so it wasn’t as awkward as I thought.  Reading is important.

The two are officially married!

Later, a huge party is had by all.  Prince is proving the music!  Cannibal’s essence is spotted by Doctor Strange, so the host body sneaks closer to Storm.  Doctor Strange and Brother Voodoo catch up to the host, who is laying on the floor.  Cannibal could be in anybody.

Cage asks Jessica if she would want to stay in Wakanda, T’Challa gave them an open invitation.  He goes on to say that Falcon and Photon (Monica’s codename – poor gal, that’s why you never want to be a legacy character!).  Jessica laughs at him, as he has been wanting to create a Black Avengers team, for years.

Spider-Man is enjoying a drink and introduces himself to, Man-Ape.  Man-Ape came to ruin the wedding but it turns out, he was on the invite list, so he is happy.  So issue 16’s cliffhanger, was for not.  Man-Ape has been drinking Scotch, as he should!  Spider-Man tries to be helpful, about how he can get more respect if he didn’t dress so silly.  Of course, this offends Man-Ape, as that is his royal garb.  Spider-Man keeps burying himself, as he named himself after an unpopular creature – people do seem to hate spiders – for some reason.  Man-Ape attacks Spider-Man, who wishes these gatherings didn’t always involve a fight of some sort.

A Few Hours Later.  We see some gifts that the newlyweds were given. Kitty gave Storm a holographic representation of the X-Men, which would be cool and I want one.

Ororo hands T’Challa a package with the Latveria seal on it.  T’Challa opens it, revealing a visual message from Doctor Doom.  Doom was not invited to the wedding, which does not seem right, from a political viewpoint.  Doom chalks it up to Black Panther believing that Doom was still in Hell.  Doom provides a warning, regarding Civil War, his friends may not be who he use to think of them as.  So Doom offers that Black Panther’s enemies, may also need to be reconsider.  He would like to have a conversation, once the newlyweds are settled.

Issue ends with some kissing!

Mail to the King!  Letters from – Tony K of Sydney, Australia / Paco Taylor / Regis Zoula and Christopher Smitho f Jacksonville, Florida.

Next issue, DOOM!

. . .

With this, we end our celebration of my wife and my seventh anniversary of our wedding!  Time sure does fly!