By John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell (Top Shelf Productions)
ISBN: 978-1-60309-383-5 (HB), 978-1-60309-300-2 (PB), 978-1-60309-302-6 (Digital edition)
It’s a lazy cop-out we reviewer always fall back on, but honestly, some books just need to be read. March is one of them. It’s the story in his own words of legendary civil rights pioneer and properly-evolved human being John Lewis: the first of three describing his path from oppressed and sidelined southern child to non-violent activist to the halls of America’s Congress.
Adapted by his assistant Andrew Aydin and multi award-winning cartoonist Nate Powell (Two Dead, Come Again, About Face, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence of Our Friends) it charts, with astonishing intimacy and warmth, a story of the good guys winning in the end…
The illustrator’s sensitive monochrome washes and tones painstakingly capture the dignity, determination, humour and pervasive quiet tension of the South during those fraught times and the growing groundswell of peaceful resistance that culminated in a very public confrontation on a bridge, a long walk to Washington and the start of a process still sadly underway every day.
March proudly celebrates everything the 45th/47th PotUS seems determined to roll back, and thus far has failed to accomplish, too so that’s a big Yar, Boo Sucks! to him too while we’re on the subject. Lots of luck on November third Donnie…
March Book One was first released in 2013 as a paperback, again as a lavish oversized (210 by 305mm) hardback three years later. One of the most lauded and awarded biographies of recent times, it’s available in digital formats and is immensely enjoyable and uplifting. You need to see it and the concluding volumes, too.
March Book One © 2013, 2016 John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. This edition © 2017 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.