King: A Comics Biography

AUTHOR: Anderson, Ho Che

ARTIST: Ho Che Anderson (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Fantagraphics Books

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1993 (Volume 1), 2002 (Volume 2), 2003 (Volume 3)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2005

Publication History

King: A Comics Biography, a special-edition comic book originally published in three volumes, took Ho Che Anderson a decade to complete. It was published by Fantagraphics Books, which had previously published Anderson’s adult comic I Want to Be Your Dog (1990-1991).

Anderson was born in London and raised in Canada. He began creating comics at a young age, approaching publishers such as Vortex when he was in his teens. In the early 1990’s, after Fantagraphics Books contacted him about writing a historical graphic novel about Martin Luther King, Jr., Anderson began reading extensively about King and the era in which he led the United States toward a greater awareness of the need for civil rights for all. Initially, the book was planned to be a short volume about King’s life and work. After working on the script, Anderson realized his vision for the project exceeded a single volume.

Over a thirteen-year period, three volumes were completed. The first volume, released in 1993, focuses on King’s life from childhood through his success as a prominent leader of the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956). The second volume, published ten years later, highlights King’s complicated negotiations with John F. Kennedy and his involvement with civil rights groups such as the Freedom Riders. The volume ends with his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. The final volume begins with Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and ends with King’s murder in Tennessee in 1968. In 2005, a special edition of the book was released, combining the three volumes and including an introduction by Stanley Crouch.

Plot

King: A Comics Biography has been called an interpretive biography. Anderson dramatizes secondary research and fictionalized details about aspects of King’s life, beginning with his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1930’s. The book opens with a fictionalized black-and-white scene set in 1935 that shows King helping his father don his robe before a sermon, foreshadowing a later scene introducing King’s own ministry. Next, a group of fictionalized witnesses, reminiscent of the chorus in a Greek or Shakespearean play, appears. The witnesses are individuals who provide a counternarrative to the national narrative that exists around King. Witnesses throughout the book provide commentary that ranges from admiring praise to envy. Some offer details about the historical context and the tone of the country.

When King appears next, it is more than fifteen years later; he is studying at Boston University and trying to get to know Coretta Scott and a few other women. King and Coretta enjoy a short courtship and move to Alabama after their wedding. There, King becomes pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and befriends Ralph Abernathy. When offered the role of president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, King reluctantly takes it, joining E. D. Nixon and others in the Montgomery bus boycott resulting from Rosa Parks’s arrest for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white passenger.

With the success of the boycott behind him, King founds the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, and in 1960, he begins negotiating with Kennedy, hoping to obtain his support for civil rights efforts in exchange for the black vote during the upcoming presidential race.

Glimpses of King’s home life show him to be a loving father and supportive husband, despite his attraction to women other than his wife. King and Coretta bicker about her discontent with moving back to Alabama, her birthplace, but she remains devoted to him. Though King’s home life is important, he never strays too far from causes such as the Freedom Riders activist movement and the march in Birmingham.

King’s days are spent trying to solve one dispute after another. He urges members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to wait patiently for desegregation to occur, attempts to deflect J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance, and works to convince President Kennedy to sign the Civil Rights Act and support the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, organized by Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph. A few months later, Kennedy’s assassination threatens to choke the momentum of the Civil Rights movement, but President Lyndon B. Johnson passes the Civil Rights Act in July of 1964.

In 1966, vigilant in his effort to help all people obtain equal rights, King moves his civil rights work out of the South and into Chicago, where he joins with the locals in a fight for housing equality. There, he meets additional adversity from young activist groups such as the SNCC, which question whether nonviolence is viable or the best course of action. Two years later, King is murdered while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, the day after giving a seemingly prophetic speech titled “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”

Characters

•Martin Luther King, Jr., the protagonist, is a preacher from the South and one of the major leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

•Ralph Abernathy is a leader in the Civil Rights movement and one of King’s closest confidants. A native of Alabama, he is a pastor of a church near King’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He supports King and is a founding member of the SCLC.

•Coretta Scott King is King’s wife. She does not want to live in the South but supports her husband in his efforts to transform it. After King’s death, she continues many of his activist efforts and works to preserve his legacy.

•Rosa Parks is a woman who is arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger on December 1, 1955. She becomes the catalyst for the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Montgomery bus boycott.

•E. D. Nixon is one of the founding members of the Montgomery Improvement Association. A leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he, along with others, organizes a one-day bus boycott four days after Parks’s arrest.

•Bayard Rustin is one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.

•A. Philip Randolph is an activist known for his work on behalf of unions, particularly the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

•John F. Kennedy is a senator who supports some of King’s civil rights efforts. After becoming president in 1961, he is solicited by King on numerous occasions. His lack of full support is a constant irritation to King.

•Lyndon B. Johnson is the president sworn in after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. After much negotiation with King and other leaders, Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

•J. Edgar Hoover is the director of the FBI. He requests permission from the attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, to place King under surveillance. He suspects that King is a communist and identifies King as one of the most powerful African American leaders in the United States.

Artistic Style

Anderson’s artistic style and use of color changed over the years. King begins in black and white, with an occasional splash of color. For example, when King is stabbed by a woman during a book signing in 1960, King’s body is drawn in black and white while a pool of red blood seeps from his chest. Next, two double-page spreads depict King reaching for the sun as he attempts to survive his injury and include the colors yellow, brown, and orange. Color is used again during King’s rousing “I Have a Dream” speech; a black-and-white King stands beside a red, white, and blue flag. In contrast, the final section of the book is in full color, complete with blue speech bubbles that indicate when King speaks.

King has a unique style that incorporates photographs, collages, paintings, and cartoons. Anderson has noted that he was interested in a photo-realist style when he began the book but later lost interest in it, resulting in a style that changes from panel to panel. For instance, manipulated photos share a page with cartoons. These familiar photos from historical archives are reminiscent of images in a documentary.

The story line often shifts without warning, making it difficult to determine the event that is taking place and, in some cases, the character who is speaking. Similarly, the artwork is at times indistinct, making it difficult to distinguish between characters. It is especially difficult to differentiate between King and Abernathy or others in his camp. The female characters, often nameless, are difficult to tell apart as well.

Themes

Throughout the book, panels present the views of witnesses or attesters who provide a commentary, sometimes oppositional, to the events in the main narrative that is King’s life and career. The witnesses watch as King develops from a young man into a national hero. In the beginning of the novel, he is reluctant to take on the responsibility of leading the movement in Montgomery; he is content with his role as pastor and family man. However, he quickly ascends and successfully leads the movement that thrusts him into the national consciousness and offers him additional power.

King enjoys immense political power and influence, but he wields spiritual power as well. As a trusted minister, his power leads him to galvanize the South and convince many throughout the nation to support a presidential candidate, protest housing inequity, and question a war. In a climate of violence, he demands nonviolence, leading thousands to put themselves in dangerously precarious positions. However, such power can be intoxicating. On King’s journey to self-actualization, his humanity becomes apparent. His ego and questionable morality reveal he is a mere man, not a saint as he is often depicted.

Impact

King: A Comics Biography is an important nonfiction graphic novel that illustrates the versatility of the medium. Critics have lauded it for its appealing cinematic quality and use of multimedia. Anderson offers a multifaceted portrayal of King, depicting aspects of him that few knew existed. King continues to be appreciated for its text and art that allow readers to travel with King as he transitions from an unknown preacher in the South to a civil rights hero and Nobel laureate.

Further Reading

Laird, Roland Owen, and Taneshia Nash Laird, and Elihu Bey. Still I Rise:A Cartoon History of African Americans (1997).

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese (2006).

Yang, Gene Luen, and Thien Pham. Level Up (2011).

Bibliography

Anderson, Ho Che. “Interview with Ho Che Anderson.” Interview by Dale Jacobs. International Journal of Comic Art 8, no. 2 (Fall, 2006): 363-86.

Chaney, Michael A. “Drawing on History in Recent African American Graphic Novels.” MELUS 32, no. 3 (Fall, 2007): 175-200.

Whyte, Murray. “King’s Life in Pictures of Every Kind.” TheNew York Times, August 10, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/10/arts/art-architecture-king-s-life-in-pictures-of-every-kind.html.