Review: The Wakanda Files: A Technological Exploration of the Avengers and Beyond

By Troy Benjamin
Available now from Epic Ink
Review copy

I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I eagerly dived into The Wakanda Files: A Technological Exploration of the Avengers and Beyond. The conceit of The Wakanda Files is that Shuri has ordered the publication of Wakanda's intelligence files regarding the Avengers technology. Through this conceit, various aspects of all the MCU movies so far are explored.

Illustration of Maya Hansen's badge

There's also a fun gimmick. The Wakanda Files also includes a Kimoyo bead–shaped UV light. Some pages have Shuri's commentary written on them, which can be revealed by the UV light. It is a pretty small beam that needs to be held close to the page, but the words can be read even in full light. I also like that effort was put into ensuring the small Kimoyo bead light wouldn't be lost. It magnetically attaches between two other Kimoyo beads, and a clear plastic slip case ensures that everything is kept together.

Troy Benjamin's writing is pretty workmanlike, given the point of view of the text, but it does pay attention to detail. It is also accompanied by cool illustrations and renders made by a variety of artists and studios, including a pull-out on the Iron Man suit.

Blurred screenshots of the Hulk

However, The Wakanda Files does have one big failing. When it includes photos from the movies, it applies a heavy Gaussian blur over them. It looks terrible, especially when those photos are huge and cover half a page or more. I suppose the intention was to make them look like the illustrations, but they don't. They just look back. This is a huge detraction in an expensive table book meant to be nice to thumb through.

This odd decision keeps me from recommending The Wakanda Files. The text isn't interesting enough to make up for the horrible quality photos.