Week #8

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

     By reading this non-fictional comic March, first of all, I was impressed by how much I learned from one comic book. I didn’t know much about the history of racial segregation (which I really should’ve…only thing I knew were about Martin Luther King Jr. and how those restaurants/restrooms were segregated), thus March was really educational for me. Compared to Maus I read last week, I felt that March was more visually expressive and thus easier to read for me.

     While March is about the racial segregation and how the activists fought for their right, the story, especially the episodes of John’s childhood, is pretty personal (such as his episode about how he was attached to the chicken his family owned). And yet, the racism he was experiencing are connected to the well-known ideas of segregation, such as the problems about restrooms, school bus, the quality of school building, and so on. Therefore, I was able to relate to the characters although the theme of the book is deep and difficult matters. There are many facts I learned from this book for the first time; the case of Emmett Till was especially shocking and struck me, and it even made me realize that I need to learn more about the history of racial discrimination.

     Although I tend to focus more on the story of March (because of this profound contents), the visual storytelling technique in March is also outstanding. While this comic book does back and forth between the past and 2009, it is not confusing because each transition is very smooth. For example, I loved how the creators use the telephone (ringing in John’s room in 2009, and shifts to the scene where the phone is ringing in the past.) Also, some panels in March are very expressive and convey the feeling and experience of the creator John Lewis. In page 107, when all the group members goes to court, the white jury is obviously not listening to the evidence Alexander Looby presents; in this scene, there is a panel showing the court in long shot. This panel clearly depicts the jury’s indifference and the distance (physically and psychologically) between the jury and the activists. Another impressive scene was in page 93, when the owner of the restaurant turns off the light although the group members are still sitting at the counter; using the entire page, the panel shows a shocking fact and the group’s anger and humiliation. Those facts depicted in March are almost hard believe, but sadly, they are truth. March significantly contributes to remind people -including people like me, who knew only little about it- the history of racial segregation and that it should never be repeated.