One great way to celebrate Martin Luther King Day is to take the day off. How’s that for a novel idea? Another is to read a graphic novel — or three, if it’s Ho Che Anderson’s acclaimed King series.
Comic Book Bin calls it, “an essential edition to any comic book library.” (I suppose they would know, eh?) I simply call it an intriguing approach to biography. I dug into the series when I first discovered it in 2003 shortly after the publishing of Volume 3, though I was decidedly late to the party of insiders who’d been following Anderson since Volume 1 debuted a decade earlier.
If you’re not familiar with graphic novels, these are not at all comic books by the common definition. Anderson underscores this with a dark, moody tone to the imagery and narrative, and what would appear to be a somewhat objective eye on not only the man’s triumphs but also the less flattering details of Dr. King’s life framed in the context of the hard-fought struggles of a man who would be, well, King. It is, however, the artist’s subjective and richly realized visual interpretation of the story we think we know so well that makes the trilogy worth a read or, at the very least, a quick flip-through at the Barnes & Noble.
Posted by: Colin Mangham