Comic Vine: For years, you were behind Black Panther as the writer for his series. What is it like to return to the character? Was Flags of our Fathers a story you had planned for a long time?
Reginald Hudlin: It was great to return to BLACK PANTHER. I was very proud of delivering a monthly book on time for four years while programming a network, but after a while I hit the wall on all of it. But doing a mini-series that didn’t involving coordinating character usage within a company wide event was a pleasure. Not that I don’t enjoy those. I’ve been loving SEIGE as a reader. But happy to sit it out as a creator.
I had wanted to do “historical” tales of previous Black Panthers for a while. I touched on it in the Black Panther annual, but knew there was a richer vein. I sometimes thought about doing back up stories, like the old TALES OF ASGARD in THOR, but never had time to focus on it till now.
== TEASER ==
CV: Where did you get the inspiration for Flags of Our Fathers?
RH: The story came from a desire to do a comic with Denys Cowan. We’ve been friends for a long time – the Milestone crew have really been key mentors to me in the comic book game. We’ve worked on animation projects, planned comic book concepts, but never actually did a book together. Since I was already writing Black Panther we started there, and we talked about exploring the relationship between The Panther and Captain America.
CV: Last year at San Diego we saw a clip of the Black Panther animated cartoon, do you have any news regarding that project?
RH: Every one whose seen it via bootleg seems to love it. It will be available legally sooner or later.
CV: Are you still heavily involved in the current Black Panther/Doom War storyline?
RH: No, I mapped out where I thought the series should go in terms of T’Challa getting revenge on Doom, but it’s Jonathan Mayberry’s book now. I’m on the edge of my seat just like everyone else.
CV: Was it hard for you to leave the character? Will you ever return to write BP's ongoing?
RH: I had to. I was just pooped. And now that I was free to make movies and TV shows, I needed to focus on that for a while.
CV: What character would you like to write that you haven't? Is there a story you would like to tell?
RH: There’s certainly characters and stories I’d like to play with in “mainstream” comics, but right now I’m focusing on some graphic novel projects and creator-owned material.
CV: Are you working on any other comic projects? Any projects unrelated to comic books?
RH: I can’t announce them yet, it’s too soon. But the scope is very large.
Hopefully this means we'll be the ones to get the scoop on what Reggie has up his sleeve? Have you been reading Flags of Our Fathers?