| My first encounter with superheroes was the 2002 film Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. Like Peter Parker, I was a bookworm as a child and identified with feeling like something of an outcast at school. That, however, was where the similarities ended. When I saw my classmates pretending to shoot spider webs out of their palms at recess, I couldn’t help but feel like I could never acquire such powers. Even at seven years old, I recognized that being a “superhero” was something special and because Parker looked nothing like me, I assumed that I probably wasn’t. That was, until Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of T’Challa, King of Wakanda, in the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther. There are few artists whose legacy includes making box office history, inspiring an entire generation and disrupting a well-established industry, all while silently battling a terminal illness. This is how the late Boseman, who passed away at the age of 43 on August 28 after a long, quiet battle with colon cancer, will forever be remembered. |
