In Artforum’s January 2026 issue, James Meyer considers the art of Kerry James Marshall and his major exhibition “The Histories” at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. This week, in advance of the show’s closure on January 18, Artforum revisits an essay Marshall contributed to the magazine’s September 2016 issue on Marvel’s Black Panther comic book, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze. In the text, Marshall, renowned for his own graphic novel series Rhythm Mastr, 1999–, offers some constructive criticism on the first two issues of the eleven-episode series.

“Shot selection, framing, dialogue, and lettering all contribute to the physiological and psychological dynamics experienced by the reader of sequential art,” Marshall writes. “The language in this first issue is spare and sluggish. Instead of crisp dialogue, Coates opens with a solipsistic dirge in tune with the brooding monologues of despots like former Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and Zimbabwean president-for-life Robert Mugabe. Compounding the linguistic dullness, poorly designed page layouts and weak, almost perfunctory compositional arrangements behave like those vinyl storyboard plates in Colorforms toys from the 1960s or like clip art, without personality or detail. Maybe this is what Stelfreeze meant when he said that ‘as a creator, I try my best to be invisible.’ But this is not the way to put your stamp on a character with an already rich legacy.” 
—The editors

“In this Artforum Dossier, we have gathered texts that focus on artistic practices that reflexively engage with the specific materiality of celluloid—the transparent plastic that served as the most common substrate for moving images before the advent of analog and digital video. These practices typically focus less on storytelling than on the aesthetic possibilities of directly manipulating celluloid film stock, creating sequences of celluloid film frames, or running celluloid film strips through projectors. The results usually emphasize our perceptual experience of light, color, sound, pattern, movement, and space—that is, those elements that provide the language of all moving-image experiences.”
—Tina Rivers Ryan