In 1988, the creators of the successful independent comic series ASH -- Joe Quesada, Jimmy Palmiotti and Nanci Dakesian -- were hired by Marvel Comics to reboot a bunch of second-tier characters like Daredevil, Black Widow, the Inhumans, Ghost Rider and Black Panther.

They called the group "Marvel Knights" -- a loose-knit crew of superheroes who could go on more gritty & "mature" street-level adventures than the brightly-clad Avengers, FF and Spider-man.

Over the previous few years, our team at Comicraft had become the in-house-though-out-of-town graphics department for Marvel, lettering most of their comics as well as designing letters pages, book collections and logos.

I'd worked closely with Joe and Jimmy on their relaunch of Daredevil with Kevin Smith earlier that year (another one of my logos that's had a second life onscreen!) so when it came time to brand the Marvel Knights titles, they gave me a call.

In their new comic, Black Panther was moving from the jungles of Wakanda to the streets of New York City. As soon as I heard "streets," well, I started sketching graffiti logos. I was obsessed with that look at the time, and attempted to apply it to pretty much every logo I designed. There weren't many takers... but the letters sure are fun to draw!

I also sketched an idea where the logo formed the shape of a leaping panther, with spiky pointed ends that mimicked his claws and necklace.

They thought the second idea was more promising, so after tracing the letter shapes in Illustrator, I applied a variety of outlines, curvy swoops and shadow effects, some angled like the Daredevil logo in reverse.

But they decided Panther neede something “stronger and more heroic”. T'Challa was the most high-minded and noble of their team of Knights -- like the Captain America, Superman, or Samaritan from Astro City -- and these letters were a bit too delicate.

In the sketch above, you can see I wrote down that Joe thought it might work for Black Widow, but we ended up going in a different direction on that one, too.

Next I created this, which I thought was a bold combination of tribal and futuristic, with a superheroic lean and 3D extrusion. 

Joe found the letters too fussy, but liked the way the words were arranged, with the emphasis on PANTHER and taller P and R. He urged me to go in a classier, more typographic direction (that still had edge and aggression) and mentioned Tom Orzechowski's Wolverine logo as an example. 

As a type designer, I keep folders full of partially completed alphabets. I found a file where I'd extrapolated most of an alphabet from the Wolverine letters, and combined them with some Victorian and Art Deco type catalog samples while working on a Green Lantern logo. They chose a different design, but no vectors ever go to waste!

I combined, arranged and tweaked those letters to match the shape of my previous version, and tried a bunch of outline effects, drop shadows and good ol' superheroic lean and swoop.

Looking familiar yet...?

Joe thought it was on the right track, but asked for a version where BLACK was fully contained between the P and R of PANTHER, for a more compact shape.

In the end, they chose this version, with a few tweaks.

And that was it -- bold, classy and heroic with edge!

My logo was used for 49 issues of the Black Panther comic, and then changed -- to something more "gritty and street," of all things -- when another writer and artist took over.

So I'd more or less forgotten about it, until I saw this in an announcement for an upcoming Black Panther movie:

Hey, that looks kinda familiar!

I thought the rendering was beautiful, and was thrilled that, of the many Black Panther logos created before and since, mine was chosen to represent this amazingly creative and cool movie, and become the one forever most associated with the character.

Now if they could just make me one out of Vibranium... Shuri?