MARCH-- 10 year anniversary poster free for shops, schools & libraries!

It’s my pleasure to reveal this brand-new poster to celebrate 10 years of March— our publisher Top Shelf is distributing it free to comics shops, bookstores, schools & libraries! (Please see Top Shelf’s linked announcement— if this is you, get in touch with your Penguin Random House rep, and the poster’s SKU is MKT1000061855.)

You can also grab the poster from Top Shelf/IDW at their table at shows, and I’ll have some that’ll also be free for anybody who gets a March trilogy boxed set from me at shows.

Thanks to everyone who’s been moved by this work over the past decade, and who’s doing their part to defend accurate history, comics in the classroom & libraries, magnifying marginalized voices, and fortifying our right to information and ideas.

20% off all original artwork until Halloween

If you’re interested in buying any of my original artwork, now’s a great time: everything available at Athenaeum Comic Art is 20% off until the end of October! This includes the pricier March pages as well as Sweet Tooth, Black Hammer, Two Dead, Come Again, Any Empire, The Silence of Our Friends, The Year of the Beasts, and Swallow Me Whole.

After that, we’ll be restocking with some new originals, including some art from Run and Save It For Later, some X-Men pieces, Nib illustrations, and more. Stay tuned!

Remembering John Lewis, 3 years later.

Today marks 3 years since we lost the big boss, John Lewis— freedom fighter and friend, collaborator and hero. I’ve been thinking about the hundreds of times we parted ways with a hug, taking for granted that the team would reconvene the next weekend or whenever.

He was such a good sport with all the adventures March took us on— so generous, and such a true believer in what we and Andrew built together with these books, and their potential to incite an intergenerational awakening.

Let’s keep building the fire.

If you’re so inclined, here’s a piece Andrew Aydin and I wrote about the urgency of carrying on John Lewis’s legacy, published by CNN after his passing.

A2CAF event added: panel w/ Thien Pham & Raina Telgemeier!

I’ll be discussing my nonfiction, historical & memoir work on this “Comics Out Of Life: Conversations With Our Past” panel, alongside Thien Pham and moderator Raina Telgemeier— as a part of A2CAF in Ann Arbor, Michigan!

The panel will be on June 9th at 2pm, at the Koessler Room, Michigan League (911 N. University). Check here for more details, and here for more info on A2CAF, where I’ll be tabling all weekend.

MARCH added to Jersey City school curriculum!

In New Jersey news: what an honor to have March included in Kamala Khan’s hometown curriculum (alongside Nikki Giovanni, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and the Spider-Verse books!) as proof of concept that young people are not afraid to learn accurate history and how to apply its lessons today.

We’ve been saying this for years now: memory laws, “discomfort” laws, and book-ban campaigns seek to exploit the emotions and weaknesses of many white parents who don’t want to answer their kids’ questions, or nurture their curiosity. (Here’s my Washington Post op-ed comic with Andrew Aydin from 2022 about all of this in the context of March and specific cookie-cutter book-ban legislative language.)

But young people want to learn and question— so let’s continue to help them grow. This is the 10-year anniversary of the release of March: Book One— let’s continue to honor the legacies of the civil rights movement, and the late, great freedom fighter John Lewis by keeping this history alive and available.

Fellow pro-democracy, antifascist white people: don’t sit this out.

April roundup: podcast interview & cartooning workshop video

It’s been a few weeks, so here’s a quick roundup of recent stuff while I keep my head down to finish drawing Lies My Teacher Told Me by the end of the year— both that book AND Fall Through will be released in 2024!

• Here’s a recently-published interview I did last year with the thoughtful Chauncey Devega about my work (specifically Save It For Later, “About Face”, and the March trilogy) and how it intersects with our world.

• March was recently included on this great list of “22 of the Best Graphic Novels of All Time” over at Book Riot!

• Here’s a video recording of a recent class I hosted at Sequential Artists Workshop— the theme is “Crossing Senses: Conveying Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch, and the Spidey-Sense Visually.”

Thanks for checking in!

10 years since finishing MARCH: BOOK ONE.

10 years ago this weekend, I had just finished drawing March: Book One and joined my collaborators John Lewis & Andrew Aydin on a pilgrimage to sites of the civil rights struggle in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, Alabama.

It’s increasingly hard to wrap my head around that weekend’s sincerity and sense of reckoning, in the knowledge that the last decade’s rise of mainstreamed fascism and white supremacy— including concrete work to dismantle the entirety of our society’s gains from the civil rights movement onward, as well as consolidated efforts to suppress the history and context of the civil rights movement itself. That includes coordinated intimidation campaigns and legislative attempts to ban and suppress our own work on March, including schools in John Lewis’s own congressional district. (I’ve written about all of this additionally at CNN, the Washington Post, and the Nib.)

Other specific moments, like then-Montgomery chief of police symbolically removing & giving his badge to John Lewis (specifically identifying the white supremacist police forces preceding him as “doing the work of evil”), and then being fired for it shortly afterward— a decade later, this kind of gesture is unthinkable as police have far beyond passed a point of no return.

I’m remembering that powerful weekend through the lens of still being fairly early in our work on the March trilogy, but I’m mostly struck with sadness and anger at a majority of white American adults’ refusal to question, learn, grow, and fight back against the rapidly-consolidating monster of fascism today. Fascism will come for them, too, and you, too— unless we stop it.

Our institutions absolutely will not save us. Only we will save us, strangers as neighbors. All power to the people— and especially all power to the young people.

Artwork on exhibit at Boston University through March 24th

I have some original artwork from March and Save It For Later currently on display at Boston University’s Stone Gallery (855 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215) through March 24th as a part of the “Comics Is A Medium, Not A Genre” exhibit curated by Joel Christian Gill. If you’re in New England, go check it out— thanks!

MARCH used for public defender's swearing-in!

Absolutely mind-blowing: Minneapolis county attorney Mary Moriarty was sworn in yesterday with her hand on a copy of March! I know John Lewis would be beside himself, beaming with the spirit of history in effect.

Original artwork for sale!

If you’re interested in original artwork, I have a few dozen pages for sale via Atheneum Comic Art— this includes pages from most of my pre-2020 books. Listings are being updated currently, and there should be a good sampling of Sweet Tooth and Black Hammer pages added in the next few days as well! All pages are signed and dated by the year in which they were drawn.

(To prevent undue shock, please be aware that my March pages are considerably more expensive than my other work. This has always been the case whenever they’ve been available for sale, and I’m not in a hurry to part with them. Thanks for understanding.)

Original artwork for sale

I’ve teamed up with Sean at Athenaeum Comic Art to begin selling some of my original artwork for the first time since 2015— currently available are some pages from Two Dead, Come Again, Black Hammer, March, Sweet Tooth, The Year of the Beasts, The Silence of Our Friends, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, and a few one-off and unpublished pieces.

Athenaeum will be publicly launching these art sales in the coming weeks on their site (and please check out the artwork from the fantastic roster of fellow cartoonist friends!). Until then, if you’re interested please contact Sean at the Athenaeum site for inquiries. Thank you!

New interview up at WFIU's "Inner States"

Here’s a brand-new interview I did with Kayte Young of WFIU’s Inner States about my work on Save It For Later, the March trilogy, and how they’ve interwoven with my life as a dad and as someone who shows up to fight for and against numerous conditions. Enjoy!

Saturday at the Mississippi Book Festival!

My collaborator Andrew Aydin and I will be discussing our work on the March trilogy and its follow-up Run (mostly drawn by the amazing L. Fury!) as a part of the Mississippi Book Festival— our panel is at 10:45 am at the Galloway Methodist Church (305 N. Congress St.), with a signing to follow. See you there!

Two years after losing John Lewis: recollections and a still-urgent warning.

The world lost John Lewis two years ago today, and sharing that loss, I additionally lost a friend, collaborator, and personal hero. Someone who’s guided my approach to parenthood and fellowship as much as he guided my social and political sensibilities— because they’re all intertwined.

I’m re-upping a piece Andrew Aydin and I wrote for CNN two years ago— every word burns brighter, and the warning is just as stark:

“It is no vindication that today his mandate is increasingly seen as a necessity for the very survival of our democracy. We've all lived the consequences of nationalist myth clouding our shared history, as well as the struggles endured to maintain a precarious democracy. But we're only at the beginning of those potentially catastrophic consequences. Truth matters. History — told by the people who lived it — can and will determine our ability to sustain and fight for a society holding actual equality, actual justice, actual freedom, and actual peace as ideals.

“John Lewis spent his massive lifetime marching toward that promise, and we must fulfill it. We can. But we must do it together, now, even with the possibility that nothing already lost will return.”

Read the full piece here. Then show up. Truly, everything depends on it— or it all goes away.

"Banned Comics & Education" virtual panel July 15th!

I’m proud to participate in this upcoming “Banned Comics & Education” panel this Friday, July 15th at noon Eastern Time alongside the great Jerry Craft, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Tim Smyth! Please register for the panel here.

If you’re interested, I’ve recently made 3 short comics covering interrelated aspects of the mainstreamed fascist right’s very serious push to enact memory laws and limit access (in schools, libraries, AND private businesses) to histories and fiction featuring the perspectives and voices of people of color and LGBTQ+ people:

Part 1— “Shelf It” via The Nib

Part 2— “Divisive Concepts” op-ed w/ Andrew Aydin via Washington Post

Part 3— “Comics and Their Strengths” info-comic via Booklist

New op-ed collab w/ Andrew Aydin in the Washington Post

Andrew Aydin and I got the band back together, conjuring the voice, spirit, and concerns of our collaborator and friend John Lewis, in a Washington Post comics op-ed piece to continue highlighting the dangers of ongoing far-right legislative efforts to diminish and outlaw the inclusion of uncomfortable history (largely through the lens of Black and LGBTQ voices) in school curricula and libraries. Please do what you can where you live to speak up for the importance of including truthful first-person historical accounts in our communities!

This follows a related comic I did called “Shelf It” for The Nib in February, shedding light on the historical context for comics as targets of book bans and challenges— please read that piece as well. Thank you!

MARCH cameo on "The Proud Family"!

It’s amazing to see that March made its way into a scene of the new The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder series on Disney Plus! Congressman Lewis would be beaming. Thanks to everyone who gave me a heads up!

"Shelf It"-- new book-ban comic up at the Nib today.

My new comic is up at The Nib: some early warning signs of this wave of book bans and intimidation while making March back in 2014, with comics as an easy target to remove truthful historical accounts from the classroom.

Please read and share on whatever platforms you may use— and importantly, let the world know about the comics which have transformed and expanded your ways of thinking about the world! Thank you.

New book-ban comic at the Nib next week.

I just finished up a short comic yesterday about book bans/challenges, intimidation of teachers & librarians, and “memory laws”, filtered through comics and our own early experiences making March, seeing early stirrings of this back in 2014.

It’ll be published next Tuesday, February 1st at The Nib.

In the meantime, I’ve done a few other comics for The Nib here. Thanks— keep the faith!

New podcast interview about SAVE IT FOR LATER + MARCH + RUN + COME AGAIN

I was recently interviewed by Geoff Grogan about my work on Save It For Later, March, Run, Come Again, and more for his Blockhead Podcast— listen here!