Black Panther (Vol. 1) #11-13 "Kiber the Cruel" picks up shortly after the Black Panther has developed new psychic abilities from exposure to the Vibranium Mound. T'Challa recovers in his royal chambers attended by his aides, Joshua Itoba and N'Gassi. As the story begins, T'Challa wakes from a nightmare in which he is doing battle with "the uglies," the mindless soldiers of Kiber. He does not yet know who these gruesome creatures are, but his new powers of clairvoyance tell him that he will fight them in the future. Meanwhile, T'Challa's kinsmen, Khanata, whose penchant for auto racing is well known in the Wakandas, is captured by the uglies and taken to Kiber's lair. Khanata is interned with a dozen or so men who inform him of the grisly fate that awaits them. Outside the prison cell, Kiber has a matter transmission chamber that converts people into raw energy contained in an E-Globe which Kiber himself absorbs in vampiric fashion. Most of the men are despondent, resigned to their fate, but Khanata is defiant, confident in his royal lineage and that the Black Panther will come to his rescue. Kiber becomes intrigued by this Black Panther, whose energy stores must be great. Kiber does not have to wait long because the Black Panther comes looking for him. In addition to clairvoyance, the Panther has acquired limited telepathic abilities which enable him to contact Khanata. Khanata describes his plight and the Panther vows to find him. While searching the site where Khanata was last seen, the Panther is attacked by the uglies, who materialize like ghosts through a mountain wall. Their powers enable them to dematerialize others as well. They capture the Black Panther, dematerialize him and return him to Kiber's lair. Kiber introduces himself to the Black Panther and shows off his uncanny ability to dematerialize his body. In addition to being able to go through solid objects, Kiber has the ability to individually manipulate his disconnected body parts. Kiber tells the Panther about his matter transmission experiments and attempts to lure the Panther into the energy chamber. Before Kiber accomplishes his goal, however, Khanata calls out to the Panther to warn him. The Black Panther asks Khanata to lead a prisoner revolt as a diversion while he deals with the greater threat of Kiber himself. The Panther brawls with the uglies while the prisoners burst through the walls that contain them. While running through Kiber's headquarters, the Panther discovers that they are located on a small and rocky island off the coast of Africa. He takes a moment to proclaim his annexation of the island as part of Wakanda and returns indoors to battle Kiber and the uglies. Meanwhile, the Black Panther discovers that the Kiber he met was only a projected image. The real Kiber is a huge, misshapen and jaundiced-looking being, warped by his matter transmission experiments. He is dependent on the energy from the matter transmission chamber and desperately wants to consume the energy of his last several victims. The Panther and Khanata defeat Kiber and the uglies. Kiber explains that the only hope for the continued life of his victims is to allow him to consume their energy, thus making them part of his being. The Black Panther denies Kiber his request and keeps the E-Globe to return it to Wakandan laboratories with the hope of restoring its victims somehow. He then turns his back on Kiber, leaving the mutated being to his own fate.

Writer: Jack Kirby (completed by Jim Shooter and Ed Hannigan) Artists: Jack Kirby, Jerry Bingham "Kiber the Cruel" was Jack Kirby's last Black Panther story. Unfortunately, Kirby was unable to complete the story before moving on to greener pastures. While Kirby's work on Black Panther (Vol. 1) was fairly controversial, the Kiber story had all the makings of a Kirby great: bizarre, disembodied antagonists, beastly henchmen, and a frenetic, harried hero to take on the badguys. Kirby's later Marvel work was often criticized, mostly for his writing. Both his late 1970s Black Panther (Vol. 1) and Captain America (Vol. 1) work met with mixed reviews. Loyal Kirby fans hailed the return of the King to Marvel, but critics noted that the stories he told did nothing to advance the characters and that literally any superhero could be inserted into these stories to make them work. The Panther and Cap were almost ciphers, just cogs in the works of Kirby's stories. While that may have been true in the beginning of Kirby's Panther run, we begin to see signs of character development in "Kiber." References to the Vibranium mound and T'Challa's royal responsibilities begin to appear with far greater frequency and the reader can see a greater attempt by Kirby to differentiate the Black Panther from other costumed heroes. The second part to the story ends with a cliffhanger, just as the Black Panther is going to discover the true identity of Kiber and so ends Kirby's tenure on the title as well. While writers Shooter and Hannigan and artist Bingham do a credible job of finishing the tale in Black Panther (Vol. 1) #13, the reader is left to wonder if that's the way Kirby would have finished the story. The final chapter of the story doesn't read like a Kirby tale and though Bingham's art is solid, his more realistic style is a sharp departure from Kirby's wild, cartoony renderings. "Kiber the Cruel" is an entertaining read and well worth seeking out, but upon completion, you can't help but wish Kirby could have completed it the way he originally envisioned. This story would have undoubtedly merited a higher mark if he had.

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