Top Shelf Productions has announced the release of a commemorative poster to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the publication of March: Book One, the first volume in the award-winning graphic memoir trilogy by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell about Lewis and his colleagues’ life on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement.
These full-color posters feature brand-new artwork from Nate Powell, evocatively depicting the educational and inspirational power that the March trilogy activates within readers of all ages and walks of life.
Now considered one of the most important literary and comics works of the modern century, March broke new ground from its first conception, and swiftly became one of the most widely taught comics works in the United States. Winning the National Book Award in 2016, March became the first comics work to win one of the “major” literary awards in competition. The next year, March achieved an unprecedented sweep of the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King Award, Printz Award, Sibert Medal, and YALSA Nonfiction Award, winning more ALA book awards than any other work in history. Among the series’ many other honors and accomplishments, March has made over 130 appearances on New York Times Best Seller lists, often at #1, and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.
Because of its rigorously researched primary-source-based accounts and powerful imagery, teachers have embraced March as a thrilling and sophisticated resource for students in middle schools, high schools, and colleges, while countless libraries, many of the nation’s top universities, and even entire states have used March to engage in holistic dialogues through “One Book” community-wide reading programs over the past decade. Today, March is widely considered an essential work for understanding America’s past and shaping its future.
The new posters “Celebrating 10 Years of March” will be distributed free of charge to comic book shops, bookstores, and libraries. Retailers and libraries are encouraged to contact their representative at Penguin Random House to request copies (SKU: MKT1000061855). While supplies last, readers can also pick up a copy from the creators, Top Shelf Productions, and IDW Publishing, at upcoming conventions.
In addition, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell are currently scheduling their participation in reading programs for the 2024-2025 academic year. Please reach out if you are interested in organizing a community-wide reading program featuring visits from the creators.
For more details about March, including educational support resources, visit topshelfcomix.com/march.
It’s a new week! We’ve got a lot coming at you after a busy weekend at Baltimore Comic Con and SPX! We’ll kick it off with some comic news and reviews you might have missed!
It looks like Congressman Robert Garcia isn’t the only person to be sworn in on a comic. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty took her oath on a copy of the graphic novel March.
Hennepin County, located in Minnesota, elected Moriarty as county attorney after she helped spotlight racial profiling in her community continuing the fight depicted in March. Early in her career she was a public defender and after 25 years was selected as the county’s chief public defender overseeing 45,000 cases per year. There, she and her team exposed inequities in the criminal legal system in the county. Moriarty won the County Attorney position with 36.36% of the vote in a seven way race.
March is the award-winning graphic novel co-written by Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin with art by Nate Powell about Lewis’ experiences during the Civil Rights movement.
The following elected officials took their oaths of office today. Congratulations to Hennepin County's new and returning leaders! 👏 • Dawanna Witt, County Sheriff • Mary Moriarty, County Attorney@MaryMoriarty@SheriffWittHCSO (1/2) pic.twitter.com/Ph1pHlPrrA
A county attorney in MN who helped spotlight racial profiling in her community, @MaryMoriarty, just took her oath of office by placing her hand on a novel about the late Congressman John Lewis. 👏👏👏
First, he marched. Then he ran. Run Book One picks up after the Selma March to continue the story about Civil Rights Leader John Lewis.
Story: John Lewis, Andrew Aydin Art: L. Fury, Nate Powell
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
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First, he marched. Then he ran. Run Book One picks up after the Selma March to continue the story about Civil Rights Leader John Lewis.
Story: John Lewis, Andrew Aydin Art: L. Fury, Nate Powell
Get your copy now! To find a comic shop near you, visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com or call 1-888-comicbook or digitally and online with the links below.
This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, we’ll receive a percentage of the sale. Graphic Policy does purchase items from this site. Making purchases through these links helps support the site
After delays, the release date of Run: Book One will be released on August 3. The graphic novel is the follow-up to the best-selling and award-winning March trilogy and was completed before the civil rights icon’s death last July. Cong. John Lewis will once again collaborate with March co-author Andrew Aydin and March artist Nate Powell. L. Fury will make her graphic novel debut as the artist. Run was announced in 2018 and is being published by Abrams ComicArts.
The cover for Run: Book One is by Powell and Fury and reflects the events after “Bloody Sunday” in Selma and the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Some are shown running from and toward the violence while others get prepared to run for office.
And that’s where the graphic novel takes us. It picks up after March and shows how Lewis went from an activist and “radical” to a public servant. The graphic novel continues the Congressman’s journey to show his fight continued after the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
Run: Book One covers 1965 to 1066 as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founding member Julian Bond runs for office in Georgia and Lewis loses his SNCC chairmanship to Stokely Carmichael. At the same time, the violence continues.
Twelve Reasons to Die acts as the source material for the 2013 concept album of the same title by Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah, and the record’s producer/composer Adrian Younge and executive producer RZA even get story and writer credits respectively on this comic, which is finally being released as a collected edition.A pre-4 Kids Walk Into A Bank/Marvel Matthew Rosenberg and Patrick Kindlon handle the brunt of the scripting though. The comic is a multi-generational crime saga in the mold of such classics like The Godfather Part II, Goodfellas, and Once Upon A Time in America with a horror spin. With the exception of the final one, each issue tells two parallel stories. The first is about the rise of African-American gangster Tony Starks (One of Ghostface Killah’s aliases.) from muscle for the DeLuca family to a kingpin in his own right, and it is drawn predominantly by artist Breno Tamura. Gus Storms handles the other story which features “crate digger” Michael Migdal looking for 9 rare records for Lucraze, the don of the DeLuca crime family, because he feels like they’re cursed and wants to destroy them.
The parallel structure of Twelve Reasons to Die allows Rosenberg, Kindlon, RZA, Tamura, Storm, colorist Jean-Paul Csuka, and the various guest artists to play with different genres, art styles, and palettes like Younge and Ghostface Killah play with different beats, instrumentation, samples, and deliveries on the album. Starks’ story is a crime saga while Migdal’s story is more horror, and both use elements from the blaxploitation genre. This really shows up in the artwork with Tamura’s work being looser with scratchy inks and Bronze Age era Ben-Day Dots while Storms’ art is softer and more grotesque with the mysterious “Ghostface Killer” lurking around the edges like something out of a bad dream waiting for the needle to drop and to bring vengeance.
The different guest artists, like Nate Powell, Joelle Jones, Edwin Huang, and Riley Rossmo, meld well with Storms and Tamura while bringing extra flair to key scenes like Starks torturing a racist DeLuca made man and framing him for having an affair with the boss’ wife, Logan (Who Starks is actually sleeping with.) or several night club and murder sequences. Csuka’s colors really tie everything together and control the mood of each sequence whether that’s the sleazy red and blue of the strip club where Starks gets his first assignment from the DeLuca (and later runs) to the pop art pink of a “masqua-rave” that Migdal goes to get one of the records from a DJ, who decides to play the record and gets devoured by ravers turned into insects. It’s a Kafka-esque acid trip that shows the decadence of the DeLuca “social club” (They’ve filed off the serial numbers of their criminal enterprises.), and of course, there’s a panel where Migdal vomits.
Twelve Reasons to Die doesn’t shy away from showing the racism that Tony Starks faces from his employers, the Delucas, who bar him from becoming a made man because of the color of his skin and hurl slurs and stereotypes at him throughout the entire comic. Starks gets passed over for the mob equivalent of a promotion even though he has killed, tortured, and general gone above and beyond the call of duty because of the color of his skin. Eventually, this causes him to band together with his colleagues from the Black community to take over the DeLucas’ turf and even have some DeLuca foot soldiers work for him. There’s a dark, cathartic glee to watching him topple an empire in twelve months that had been established 30+ years ago. (See the prologue featuring Mussolini, mainland Italy vs. Sicily, and double page map spreads.) Starks’ ruthlessness is magnetic, yet frightening as he goes from possibly negotiating with one of the DeLuca’s made men to pistol whipping him in an alley and then tying his neck to the back of a car and having him dragged. This comic definitely uses torture creatively a la “Method Man” from Wu-Tang Clan’s classic album, 36 Chambers.
However, Rosenberg, Kindlon, and RZA also take time to develop Tony Starks’ softer and more vulnerable side through his relationship with Logan, who he genuinely cares about and basically uses as a spy for the DeLucas (Although she betrays him because femme fatale trope.) and especially for his love of records. There’s a touching scene where Starks says that his only dream is to get his hands on the most “hype” records, and he uses his organized crime money to build a factory where he can press his own wax. This is why his demise in that same factory is so tragic, and his vengeance via the drop of a needle is so satisfying as the Ghostface Killer slays the men who betrayed him in new and fucked up ways, or just a single page beheading. (I guess that’s pretty messed up though.) The exception is the noble fencer Batiato, who gets an epic sword fight complete with Ghostface in samurai armor and some fun, blocky cartooning from Edwin Huang.
I haven’t really touched much about Migdal in this review, and initially he seems quite distant from sex, violence, and racism-tinged world of Tony Starks and the DeLucas. He’s just a guy with a sarcastic sense of humor, who you’d see digging through the crates at your local record store, probably every day. However, as he continues to be treated like shit by the aging DeLuca crime bosses and see more horrific things, Migdal seems more attuned to this grindhouse movie of a world even though he doesn’t lose his innocence making the high energy Chris Hunt-drawn finale have a tinge of sadness. He really just wants to get paid so he can buy more records.
Even though it has an entire restaurant of chefs in its proverbial kitchen, Twelve Reasons to Die is a damn good fusion of the crime and horror genre with a charismatic protagonist and a social conscience in the midst of all the schlock. However, it never gets preachy. For three decades, Ghostface Killah has been one of hip hop’s best storytellers, and his vision translates really well to the comic book page thanks to Matthew Rosenberg, Patrick Kindlon, RZA, Breno Tamura, Gus Storms, Chris Hunt, Jean-Paul Csuka, and the guest artists that are the visual equivalent of that perfect drum sound or soul sample that raises a track from skippable to total earworm. Finally, and it goes without saying, but this comic pairs really well with the 12 Reasons to Die album.
Story: Ghostface Killah, Adrian Younge, C.E. Garcia Story/Script: Matthew Rosenberg, Patrick Kindlon with RZA Art: Breno Tamura, Gus Storms, Chris Hunt Guest Art: Kyle Strahm, Joe Infurnari, Tim Seeley, Nate Powell, Tyler Crook, Toby Cypress, Joelle Jones, Edwin Huang, Russell Roehling, Ryan Kelly, Riley Rossmo Colors: Jean-Paul Csuka Letters: Jim Campbell and Nic J. Shaw Story: 8.0 Art: 8.7 Overall: 8.4 Recommendation: Buy
Black Mask Studios provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Created by: Ghostface Killah / Executive Produced by: RZA Written by: Matthew Rosenberg & Patrick Kindlon Illustrated by: Ronald Wimberly, Breno Tamura, Gus Storms, Kyle Strahm, Joe Infurnari, Christopher Mitten, Jim Mahfood, Tim Seeley, Nate Powell, Ben Templesmith, Tyler Crook, Toby Cypress, Juan Doe, Joelle Jones, Edwin Huang, Johnnie Christmas, Russel Roehling, Ryan Kelly, Michael Walsh, Chris Hunt, Riley Rossmo, David Murdoch, Garry Brown, Johnny Ryan, Shaky Kane, Benjamin Marra, and Brian Level Colored by: Jean-Paul Csuka Lettered by: Jim Campbell, Nic J. Shaw Mature / $24.99 / 180 pages
Guns. Sex. Vinyl. Revenge. Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah and RZA teamed with then young-gun writers Matthew Rosenberg (Uncanny X-Men, 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank) & Patrick Kindlon (Survival Fetish, Nobody Is In Control) for this brutal tale of a dangerous crime lord’s rise and fall.
Rep. John Lewis dedicated his life—repeatedly risking injury and arrest—to defending every American’s right to vote. The icon passed away on July 17 leaving a legacy of fighting for justice and inspiring so many to continue his battles. “The vote,” he often said, “is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool or instrument we have in a democratic society and we must use it.”
Ben & Jerry’s is honoring his legacy with this livestream launch of The Long March, a new art installation dedicated to telling the congressman’s story and inspiring everyone to get out and vote! The exhibit is based on the best-selling award-winning graphic novel by Rep. Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell.
The virtual launch takes play on September 22 at 7pm EST.
The world is now marking the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of World War I, “The War to End All Wars” that brought the cry, “Never Again!” Nearly four decades later, Never Again was a rare two-issue anti-war comic book with a host – a WWI doughboy referred to as The Unknown Soldier – who told gripping war stories with a strong anti-war stance.
The comics from Never Again and other arcane historical comic book sources are carefully restored and showcased in an important new book, The Unknown Anti-War Comics. An action-oriented medium, comics have long used wars – real and fictional – as narrative fodder, often with a strong message attached. Buried in the comics published during the Cold War were powerful combat, fantasy, and sci-fi stories that strongly condemned war and nuclear weapons, boldly calling for peace.
The Unknown Anti-War Comics features the art of Steve Ditko and leads off with two noteworthy introductions. The first introduction is a comic story created especially for the collection by Nate Powell, artist of the National Book Award-Winning March books about Civil Rights leader John Lewis. The second introduction is by Noel Paul Stookey, activist and singer/songwriter of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame.
The 224-page book’s artful advocacy of peace is as important as ever in a world still embroiled in war.
The Unknown Anti-War Comics is edited by Craig Yoe, multiple Eisner Award winner, Mobius winner, and recipient of the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators. Now available for pre-order via online booksellers and comic book specialty retailers, The Unknown Anti-War Comics is slated for release in January.
The world is now marking the 100th anniversary of the Armistice of World War I, “The War to End All Wars” that brought the cry, “Never Again!” Nearly four decades later, Never Again was a rare two-issue anti-war comic book with a host – a WWI doughboy referred to as The Unknown Soldier – who told gripping war stories with a strong anti-war stance.