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Exclusive: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jen Bartel to partner on new comic book

The National Book Award and MacArthur "genius" grant winner has announced he will author a comic book with the Marvel Comics illustrator.

Left: Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has announced he will author a comic with Marvel Comics illustrator artist Jen Bartel, right.
Left: Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has announced he will author a comic with Marvel Comics illustrator artist Jen Bartel, right.Read moreLeft: Gabriella Demczuk; Right: New York Comic Con
    by Dawn Fallik, For The Inquirer
    Published 

The author Ta-Nehisi Coates has confirmed that he is writing a comic book about X-Men character Storm with Marvel Comics illustrator Jen Bartel.

In Coates' Black Panther comic book series, the title character, T'Challa, was married for a while to Storm. Coates met Bartel for the first time at the New York Comic Con this month. Bartel, known, among other things, for her work on the Jem and the Holograms comic, had illustrations of Storm. Coates bought one and posted it on his Twitter feed, mentioning only that they "got to talk about collaborating."

In an interview Wednesday about his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, the 2015 MacArthur fellow confirmed the collaboration. "I guess there's no point in being coy about it. Yeah, there's going to be a  book, myself and Jen Bartel, who is amazing," he said.  "I'm not sure when."

Coates, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, won the 2015 National Book Award for Between the World and Me. His Nov. 2 appearance at the Free Library is sold out. An interview with him is to appear in the Inquirer on Oct. 29.