By: John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
The first volume of March is a very powerful story about the Civil Rights Movement and blacks marching the streets to protest for equal rights. The story developed around Congressman John Lewis his extraordinary life's history, accomplishments and the movement he lead. During the beginning of the story they write about the events of the very christian praying protestors getting arrested for being in a bar or refusing to move sitting in the back of the bus. Eventually there were so many people in jail the policeman decided to let them go. "Bloody Sunday," was a very aggressive time when they were fighting for equal rights, marching and where police were blocking their path. They were then attacked after John Lewis's orders with many getting injured. It then jumps straight to Obama's inauguration. We notice Lewis is telling his story to people who visited him in his office in congress.
Lewis, Aydin and Powell create a comic book with a strong vision, message and storyboard like illustrations using a lot of graphic lines to communicate the emotion. They use very dramatic compositions and simple character designs, which communicate the story very well. Powell uses a very interesting technique using black, gray and white washes and markers to create some really good storytelling. They succeed in describing Lewis's life story and his becoming of a true and very prayful christian and civil rights leader. His life was very extraordinary. He held funerals for chicken that died instead of eating them or throwing them away. He also spoke of Ghandi, talked about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, War Resistance and Nonviolence. They reference racism and how evil it was, how evil poverty was and how evil war was. They just do such a great job with capturing us in the moment and to me it felt like I was part of the civil rights movement and experienced a time of such hardships for the blacks.
Just curious: now that you've read March, would you participate in a Black Lives Matter march, knowing full well that it could be harmful to your reputation and the situation could get violent (despite you and the other marcher's swears to non-violence)? Did the story change your perspective on how you'd go about deciding to participate in social movements, and if so: how?
ReplyDeleteI bring this up because I've been a part of the less assertive crowd of people advocating for minority rights; I've been an active member and youth leader of the LGBT+ community back in New Jersey, going to Pride and running anti-bullying campaigns, but I never witnessed something as starkly oppressive and violent as the depictions of white bigots in March. Petty, ignorant acts from people, sure- but seeing how much people had to deal with only a couple decades ago was sobering, to say the least. And what with a resurgence in violent acts and hate crimes from fundamentalists on top of a now completely negligent office in power, it all seems so much more... apparent. That's what March made me think about: I should be doing more to help other people dealing with this right now. Or, at the very least, I should be asking people that know what's going on to think about joining, too.