“I remember all these African fables and stuff that I’d read, and I thought, ‘Damn, this would be really, really cool.’ The first one — ‘Either you’re a nation or you’re nothing’ — actually pulls from the battle of the Ethiopians at Adowa in opposition to the Italian colonizers. I thought that had great resonance with Wakanda, this place that’s never been conquered. I tried to layer that book as much as possible.”